Overview
- The Department for Business and Trade said Bates’s claim “has reached the end of the scheme process and been settled.”
- Reports describe a seven‑figure payout, with one unnamed source estimating £4m to £5m, a figure that remains unconfirmed.
- Bates previously said the government’s final offer represented 49.2% of his original claim after earlier offers of about one‑sixth and then one‑third.
- The government states more than £1.2bn has been paid to over 9,000 victims through compensation schemes that Bates has criticised, with disputed awards adjudicated by former judge Sir Ross Cranston.
- The resolution caps a decades‑long campaign over Fujitsu’s faulty Horizon system, which led to widespread wrongful prosecutions and was later condemned by a public inquiry that linked the scandal to at least 13 possible suicides.