Alan Bates calls for protection of legal funding that helped bring Horizon scandal to court | Post Office Horizon scandal
Alan Bates has warned of a “concerted effort” by big business to constrain access to the kind of funding that allowed the post office operators to bring a landmark case against their former employer. In an article for the Guardian, Bates, who exposed the Horizon scandal that has been described as one of the UK’s “greatest miscarriages of justice”, said ministers should push forward with legislation to protect the litigation funding sector. Litigation funders give financial backing to legal battles that they calculate are likely to succeed in exchange for a share of the compensation. It allows expensive class action-style cases to be launched by people who could not otherwise afford them. The government’s bill, which is going through parliament and applies to England and Wales, seeks to overturn the effects of an obscure supreme court ruling last year that threw litigation funding into disarray. The Guardian reported this week that Fair Civil Justice, a campaign linked to the US and UK chambers of commerce, wrote to ministers twice in March lobbying against the legislation, …
