Post Office campaigner Alan Bates marries partner on Richard Branson’s private island

The Post Office campaigner Alan Bates has married his partner, Suzanne Sercombe, on Richard Branson’s Necker Island in a ceremony officiated by the Virgin tycoon.

The wedding took place last month on the entrepreneur’s private island in the British Virgin Islands, the Sunday Times reported.

Branson reportedly invited the couple to the island after the recently knighted former post office operator, 70, said in an interview in January: “If Richard Branson is reading this, I’d love a holiday.”

The wedding came as a surprise to the new Lady Bates, 69, who had to wear a patterned sundress she had packed for the holiday, the newspaper reported.

Branson, 74, told the Sunday Times: “It was an absolute joy to play a small part in Alan and Suzanne’s love story, and I know they will continue to spread the beautiful light they share with everyone around them.”

The couple, who live in Wales, have been together for 34 years.

Bates, founder of the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance, came to prominence after an ITV drama earlier this year explored his campaign over the Horizon IT scandal.

He was played by Toby Jones in the ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office.

More than 700 subpostmasters were prosecuted by the Post Office and given criminal convictions between 1999 and 2015, as Fujitsu’s faulty Horizon IT system made it appear as though money was missing at their branches.

The Post Office inquiry will resume on 23 September.

In an article for the Guardian in May, Bates wrote: “If the Horizon scandal has taught us anything about our legal system, it’s that it is skewed in favour of those with deep pockets.

“Large corporations can exhaust their opponents’ reserves – both in terms of finances and resilience.

“A prime piece of evidence for this is an internal Post Office memo, released as part of the current statutory inquiry into the Post Office, which only came about as a result of the findings of our original case.

“It is from Post Office lawyers pledging to: ‘stretch out the litigation process so to increase costs in the hope that the claimants, and more particularly their litigation funder, decide that it is too costly to pursue the litigation and give up’.”