Sir Alan Bates has told MPs that the Prime Minister has not yet responded to their requests for help to resolve reparations claims from those affected by the Horizon scandal.

The leading campaigner and former deputy postmaster told the Business and Trade Committee’s brief inquiry into ensuring a “swift and fair redress” on Tuesday that he wrote to Sir Keir Starmer about a month ago requesting help.

Sir Alan represented the claimants of the 555 subpostmasters who took the Post Office to the High Court between 2017 and 2019, also known as the GLO scheme.

He told MPs that 70 of the GLO scheme applicants have died while compensation is being worked out, and others are now “over 80 years old… who are still suffering”.

The campaigner said he wrote to the Prime Minister again a few days ago “to remind him that he had never received a response” to his initial letter urging him to help set next year’s March deadline for the Department of Business and Commerce (DBT) to classify all repair claims.

Sir Alan said another campaign for justice in the courts was being considered, adding: “I won’t say I haven’t spoken to people about this.”

Committee chairman Liam Byrne asked Sir Alan: “Do you know when it will come to an end?”

The former deputy postmaster replied: “I wrote to the Prime Minister about a month ago.”

Mr Byrne chimed in: “You did, you’ve written twice.”

Sir Alan continued: “I initially wrote to him about a month ago and said it should be finished, it should be finished, by the end of March 2025.

“A deadline should be set and we ask for your help in setting it.

“I never received a response. I wrote to you a few days ago to remind you that I had never received a response.

“We are now five months out to the end of March 2025.”

Sir Alan added: “People have been waiting too long, for over 20 years and over 70 people have died on the road in the GLO group.

“There are people over 80 who are still suffering.

“They have to put up with this too. They shouldn’t do it. “They really shouldn’t.”

More than 900 sub-managers were prosecuted between 1999 and 2015 after faulty Horizon accounting software made money appear to be missing from their stores.

Asked if he would consider returning to “the courts with a crowdfunding campaign for justice”, Sir Alan said: “I would never say never. It’s a consideration.

“I won’t say I haven’t talked to people about this, but I do know that if we decide to go down that path, we will stop the current plan, and it will be at least another six, 12, or even 24 months before we move in that direction.

“That might be a choice people are willing to make.

“We have a group meeting in a few weeks and that is one of the options we are going to discuss, that and some other options as well.

“But we have to move this forward.”

Sir Alan added: “It is timescales that need to be set on this, the department is terrified of timescales being set.”

Appearing alongside Sir Alan were former subpostmaster Dewi Lewis, who was jailed for four months after being wrongly convicted of theft at his branch, and Jill Donnison, a claimant who worked at her late mother’s branch.

Ms Donnison criticized some of the questions she was expected to answer as part of her efforts to obtain compensation as “long-winded and impossible to answer”.

He said claimants were expected to know how much they had lost even though key data was missing from records, and documents provided by the Post Office were “virtually illegible”.

“I was doing this on behalf of my mother who had passed away and it was just impossible to respond,” he said.

She described the Post Office’s expectations of applicants, who she said arrived without any offer of support, as “shameful”.

Lewis questioned whether he would have received a £200,000 payment which was only sent after his appearance before the select committee.

“Until last week we had no idea when we would receive the down payment. Lo and behold, it was announced that it was going to be before you… surprise surprise, by Friday morning the 200,000 had arrived. “I try not to be cynical, but I find it very difficult,” he told parliamentarians.

Since being “strongly recommended” to plead guilty to the wrongful charge, Lewis said he had lost both of his parents, gone through a divorce and had to start taking anxiety medication just “to help me cope.” .

“I served four months in Her Majesty’s Altcourse Prison. It was terrifying to see mom and dad come in. I felt more bad for them than for myself. That being said, I was lucky. There were postmasters who had to go through much worse prisons than Altcourse,” he said.