Three people are currently under investigation by the Post Office, chief executive Nick Read today (9) told the Horizon IT scandal inquiry, adding that when he joined, he was told that he need not dig into the past details of sub-postmasters’ prosecutions.
Read, who was recently accused of overseeing a “culture of misogyny”, appeared to give testimony at the Horizon IT public inquiry. He explained that when he started as CEO in 2019 there was a sense that the Post Office needed to “move on” from the Horizon scandal.
Writing in his witness statement, the Post Office boss said, “Private prosecutions were presented to me as an 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.”
When asked who told him this, Read said it was Ben Foat - the Post Office’s General Counsel, who is currently on a leave of absence.
Read said, “Yes, the reassurance that Mr Foat was trying to provide was that this was historic action and activity, as I say that had ceased in 2015, and had not been initiated [since] 2013. We were now in 2019 and this is activity that had ceased within the business."
Read added that that there was a “degree of denial” in the Post Office about the fact the Horizon scandal had been proved in law courts when he joined the business.
The Post Office CEO said there was an “underestimation” of the impact on the Common Issues Judgement in 2019 - which found in favour of claimants Sir Alan Bates and his 554 colleagues.
Read said, “There was a degree of denial I think is the point I was trying to make in the sense that I don’t think people had come to terms with having lost the common issues judgement or indeed that the implications of losing it were.
“And I think for the vast majority of the organisation they believed they’d been doing a good job what they’d been asked to do and were getting on with it, so there were two very distinct camps within the organisation.”
He also told the inquiry that three people were currently under further investigation by the Post Office and external agencies, following allegations made by victims of the Horizon scandal.
Read also told the inquiry that a probe into three individuals mentioned in restorative justice meetings has been launched as part of Project Phoenix. He told the inquiry, “Three individuals are now under further investigation by both the Post Office and by external agencies after we heard about them during restorative justice meetings and clearly needed to investigate the allegations that had been made to us.”
Project Phoenix is investigating people named during human impact hearings, those who may have been involved in activity that resulted in prosecution of sub postmasters and those named in restorative justice meetings.
Read also stated that some people at Post Office may have held the view that “not every quashed conviction” was an “innocent” sub postmaster.
“I don’t think I could say specifically that that is the case but there will be a view that not every quashed conviction will be innocent postmasters. The majority of the organisation would agree that the action that has been taken is absolutely the right action and whether there are guilty postmasters that have been exonerated really is no longer an issue.”
Among Read's detractors is Sir Alan Bates who said he did not "achieve anything" during his tenure as CEO.
Also, former Post Office chairman Henry Staunton described Read as "unstable" on Oct 1 during the inquiry, while Read himself listened from the public gallery.
