Alan Bates tells Horizon IT inquiry the Post Office tried to 'outspend us' in 'aggressive' tactics

Giving evidence in front of Post Office chief executive Nick Read on Tuesday, Mr Bates said the organisation “needs disbanding” and called it a “dead duck” that is “beyond saving”.

Mr Bates also took aim at the UK government’s “fundamental flaw” of being unable to deal with issues such as the Horizon scandal “easily and sensibly”.

The campaigner said the mediation scheme set up to address the scandal was part of a “cover-up” and a “fishing expedition” to discover what evidence sub-postmasters had about Horizon.

The Post Office has come under fire since the broadcast of ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office, which put the Horizon IT scandal under the spotlight.

More than 700 sub-postmasters were prosecuted by the government-owned organisation and handed criminal convictions between 1999 and 2015 as Fujitsu’s faulty Horizon system made it appear as though money was missing at their branches.

Mr Bates had his contract terminated by the Post Office in 2003 after refusing to accept liability for shortfalls in the accounts at his branch in Llandudno, North Wales.

The inquiry was shown slides from an undated presentation about Horizon integrity prepared by former Post Office manager Dave Smith, which said Mr Bates was sacked because he was “unmanageable”.

One slide read: “Bates had discrepancies, but was dismissed because he became unmanageable. Clearly struggled with accounting, and despite copious support, did not follow instructions.”

The inquiry also heard an internal review of Mr Bates’s dismissal concluded he was “unsuitable” to be a postmaster, and said: “The decision to terminate was not only right – it was the only sensible option.”

Former postal minister Sir Ed Davey also came under fire for a “disappointing and offensive” letter in 2010 in which he declined a meeting and told the campaigner the government had an “arm’s length relationship” with the Post Office despite it being the sole shareholder.

Sir Ed’s words prompted Mr Bates to respond with another letter that read: “It’s not that you can’t get involved or cannot investigate the matter, after all you do own 100 per cent of the shares and normally shareholders are concerned about the morality of the business they own.

“It is because you have adopted an arm’s-length relationship that you have allowed a once great institution to be asset stripped by little more than thugs in suits, and you have enabled them to carry on with impunity regardless of the human misery and suffering they inflict.”

A Liberal Democrat spokesman said Sir Ed was “lied to” and was “sorry that he didn’t see through the Post Office’s lies, and that it took him five months to meet Mr Bates”.

Mr Bates said the government needed to be held “responsible” for its part in the Horizon scandal after “pumping huge amounts of money” into the Post Office.

The former sub-postmaster also reiterated his thoughts on the Post Office’s culture, saying: “It’s an atrocious organisation. They need disbanding. It needs removing. It needs building up again from the ground floor.

“The whole of the postal service nowadays – it’s a dead duck. It’s beyond saving. It needs to be sold to someone like Amazon. It needs a real big injection of money and I only think that can happen coming in from the outside.

“Otherwise it’s going to be a bugbear for the Government for the years to come.”