Litigation funders didn’t ‘exploit’ subpostmasters, they helped us. Those who attack them have corporate interests at heart
- Alan Bates is founder of the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance
You are probably familiar with the case Alan Bates and Others v Post Office Ltd. The high court found that I and 554 other former subpostmasters were right about the Post Office’s faulty Horizon IT system. What you might not know, however, is that this case would not have been possible without something called litigation funding.
This is when a third party provides the money for a legal battle in return for a share of the damages or settlement in the case of a victory. The arrangement worked very well for us. In fact, there would have been no justice for subpostmasters without it, given the exorbitant costs of the legal system in England and Wales. But there is now a concerted effort by big business to constrain access to litigation funding.
Alan Bates is a former subpostmaster and the founder of the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance