The Post Office CEO job description advertised in 2019 didn’t mention the landmark High Court judgment against the organisation and its ramifications on the role, the Horizon public inquiry has been told by the man who took the job.
Nor were candidates made aware of the large and complex IT project that was required to replace the Post Office’s troubled Horizon IT system.
In 2018/19, through a group litigation order (GLO) in the High Court, former subpostmasters, led by Sir Alan Bates, defeated the Post Office and its claim that the software used in branches could not have caused unexplained account shortfalls that the Post Office branch operators were blamed and punished for.
Nick Read replaced Paula Vennells in 2019 when she left in disgrace following the conclusion of the case, but he said he was not told about the extent of the challenge the organisation faced as a result of the court ruling.
During the latest Post Office Horizon scandal public inquiry hearing, outgoing CEO Read said senior leaders at the Post Office were, at the time, in denial of the damaging High Court judgment against them. He agreed that bosses were “living in a dreamland” and “oblivious” to the harm that they and their Post Office predecessors had done to subpostmasters.
He said when he arrived, the Post Office board and executive teams were only focused on the business metrics rather than righting wrongs and settling with subpostmasters. He said the majority of early conversations with then-Post Office chair Tim Parker were “focused on preparing the Post Office for the future”.
“There was an element of denial,” he told the inquiry, adding that they “simply did not believe they would lose the GLO”.
Read said the effect of the court ruling had been played down by Parker, revealing that Parker told him: “The litigation is not the huge PR risk to the Post Office that [the government] believe it to be.”
Read also revealed that, on joining the Post Office, he was also told not to look too closely at the Post Office’s controversial practice of privately prosecuting subpostmasters and branch staff, which was under the spotlight after the GLO judgment.
He said in his witness statement: “Private prosecutions were presented to me as a historic issue that had ceased before 2015 and that I did not need to dig into the details of what had happened at the Post Office in the past as this conduct had ended.” Read confirmed that Ben Foat, Post Office general counsel, gave him this advice. The Post Office used these powers to wrongfully prosecute hundreds of subpostmasters and their staff, using Horizon data as evidence.
The Post Office scandal was first exposed by Computer Weekly in 2009, revealing the stories of seven subpostmasters and the problems they suffered due to Horizon accounting software, which led to the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British history (see below timeline of Computer Weekly articles about the scandal since 2009).
• Also read: What you need to know about the Horizon scandal •
• Also watch: ITV’s documentary – Mr Bates vs The Post Office: The real story •
• Also read: Post Office and Fujitsu malevolence and incompetence means huge taxpayers’ bill •