Post Office campaigner Bates offered half his claim

Sir Alan Bates has said the government's compensation schemes for victims of the Horizon IT scandal have been "turned into quasi-kangaroo courts".

- ELLIE CRABBE

The former subpostmaster, who has campaigned for justice for colleagues, added that he has been offered compensation which he said amounts to less than half of his original claim.

Writing in The Sunday Times, he said: "The subpostmaster compensation schemes have been turned into quasi-kangaroo courts in which the Department for Business and Trade sits in judgement of the claims and alters the goal posts as and when it chooses.

"Claims are, and have been, knocked back on the basis that legally you would not be able to make them, or that the parameters of the scheme do not extend to certain items." More than 900 subpostmasters were prosecuted between 1999 and 2015 after faulty Horizon accounting software made it look as though money was missing from their accounts.