The chief executive of the Post Office has agreed the organization’s leadership team was living in a “dream world” in the months leading up to the launch of a statutory inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal, one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in UK history.
Appearing before the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry, Nick Read admitted that both the interview process for his appointment in 2019 and the job specification for the role failed to mention ongoing legal proceedings against the Post Office for its part in the Horizon IT scandal.
Horizon is an EPOS and back-end finance system for thousands of Post Office branches around the UK, first implemented by ICL, a UK technology company later bought by Fujitsu. From 1999 until 2015, around 736 sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses were wrongfully convicted of fraud when errors in the system were to blame. A statutory inquiry into the mass miscarriage of justice launched in 2021 is ongoing.
In his written evidence to the inquiry, Read said that before and during the interview process, he was aware that it was facing litigation connected to allegations of historic bugs in the IT system and the requirement for postmasters to repay the shortfall. He said that at that stage he didn’t have a detailed understanding of litigation or allegations.
Speaking for the inquiry today, Jason Beer KC said when Read was appointed, the common issues judgment – which related to contractual relationships with the postmasters – had been handed down already, while the related Horizon issues trial was about to start.
“The job specification does not properly address or describe the role that you were, in fact, needed to perform,” Beer said. Read agreed.
After Read’s appointment, the Horizon issues judgment was handed down in December 2019. It said that the Post Office’s attempt to defend its Horizon IT system “amounts to the 21st century equivalent of maintaining that the Earth is flat.”
It found the system was the cause of accounting irregularities and the Post Office’s failure to investigate the problems suggested “the most dreadful complacency … bordering on fearfulness of what might be found if they were properly investigated.”
Read told the inquiry that after the judgment was handed down, neither the Post Office’s executive or board were seriously concerned.
Beer asked: “Looking back, would you agree that this description is of a leadership team in 2019 that was living in something of a dream world given the content of the Horizon issues judgment?”
“I think it’d be impossible not to conclude that,” Read said.
The Horizon scandal became known to the wider public from the beginning of 2024 when ITV broadcast a dramatization of the postmasters’ fight for justice. Since then, the government has promised faster compensation for the victims, former CEO Paula Vennells has returned her CBE, and Paul Patterson, director of Fujitsu Services Ltd, has apologized to MPs for the company’s role in the scandal.
The inquiry continues. ®