Sir Ed Davey is facing demands to resign as Liberal Democrat leader over his role in the Horizon Post Office scandal.
Anger is growing after it emerged he turned down a request to meet with former sub-postmaster Alan Bates while Minister for Postal Affairs in 2010.
At the time he said he did not believe it “would serve any purpose” but has now said he was “deeply misled by Post Office executives”.
More than 700 sub-postmasters were handed criminal convictions between 1999 and 2015 after faulty software wrongly suggested the employees were stealing money.
It has since emerged that Sir Ed, along with several other ministers, faced repeated warnings about the accounting problems and issues with the software.
Jo Hamilton, who led a landmark appeal in the campaign for postmasters said the Senior Lib Dem should have “done his job”.
Ms Hamilton said: “Of course Davey should have been asking more questions, he’s the minister, what does he get his ministerial salary for if he’s not asking questions. What did he think, we were just moaning? I can’t believe it.”
“If you’re the minister you deal with stuff — that is the job. You have to earn your money for doing the job like the rest of us. They’re called public servants but they do anything but serve the public.”
“He always calls for other people’s resignations, now it’s time for him to look in the mirror.”
Ex-postmistress Sally Stringer called for a “concerted effort to get the responsible individuals”, claiming that the root of the scandal “goes back to ministerial decisions” – some of which she described as being “wicked”.
Sir Ed has taken to Twitter 31 times to call for public figures to resign their positions since becoming Lib Dem leader in April 2019.
Tory MP Bob Seeley said Sir Ed should take some of his own advice.
“Time for him to set an example,” he said.
Treasury minister Bim Afolami said Sir Ed should “be honest with people” and explain why “he didn’t ask the right questions”.
“There are a lot of people in the civil service working very hard on your behalf, but what you have to do is you have to ask the key questions and interrogate what you’re told, and I think that Sir Ed needs to explain what he was told and why he allowed certain things to develop in the way that they did,” he told LBC.
Conservative MP Damian Green warned: “Ed Davey has serious questions to answer on this, I think he’s in big trouble.”
But former Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable claimed Sir Ed is being made a “scapegoat” in the Horizon scandal Sir Vince told BBC Radio 4’s World At One programme that all ministers who dealt with the issue did so “in the same way” as Sir Ed when he was postal affairs minister.
“He is now being highlighted. I suspect the reason is that this is election year, and it’s quite good for somebody to try to make a scapegoat of a Lib Dem minister,” Sir Vince said.
Asked whether he wanted to apologise, Sir Vince said: “Yes of course, I feel a sense of responsibility that I and a lot of other people, had we known how to do it, would have intervened more actively.”
A Liberal Democrat spokesman said Sir Ed did meet with postmasters while he was Post Office minister, claiming he did raise their concerns.
The spokesperson added: “Ed completely understands the victims’ anger at this appalling miscarriage of justice, and in hindsight he wishes he could have done more to help them.”
“His focus is now on getting justice and compensation as quickly as possible to all those affected.”
“Ed deeply regrets not realising that the Post Office was lying to him and other ministers on an industrial scale in what amounts to a conspiracy against the public.”
“He will fully cooperate with the inquiry and is keen to give his evidence as soon as possible to help get to the bottom of this scandal.”
