Former Lib Dem leader Vince Cable has labelled Post Office managers “thugs in suits” and claimed he would have got to grips with the Horizon IT scandal if MPs campaigning for branch owner-operators had bothered to have in-person meetings with him.
Speaking at Post Office Horizon scandal inquiry today (25), Cable, who was business secretary for an unusually long period between 2010 and 2015, said that he never learned who lead campaigner Sir Alan Bates was until just before he left office.
He recounted a story about challenging eight Post Office closures in his constituency, before he entered government, and being treated poorly by the organisation’s “middle management”.
Cable said, "Mr Bates has, I believe, described them as ‘thugs in suits’ and I recognise the description. And [the Post Office] dealt with us in an arrogant way when we campaigned against closures."
"In my first meeting with Paula Vennells [Post Office chief executive] I suggested this is what the Post Office should do. We perhaps should have been more modest and had postmasters on the board, which would have achieved some of our aims, which I think has now happened."
Cable also stated that the Horizon IT system was rarely ever raised with him.
He said, "Problems with Horizon barely came across my desk. When they did it was usually in a very uncontroversial way and not drawn to my attention as an issue I should focus on. The general reason is that the officials who were briefing me and ministers on the subject hadn’t seen it as a particular problem."
Cable admitted that he should have been more thoroughly briefed on the Horizon system at the time.
He said, "In hindsight, I should have been told at the outset what Horizon was. That competent people … were suggesting there was a risk factor and I should have been told about Mr Bates and the justice group. I never heard his name until I’d been in the job five years. I wasn’t briefed on them."
Cable recounted a story about challenging eight branch closures in his constituency, before he entered government, and being treated poorly by the organisation’s “middle management”.
In 2015, James Arbuthnot, who tirelessly campaigned on behalf of those wrongly prosecuted, criticised Cable for listening to the Post Office but not the group of MPs and the branch owner-operators affected by what has been described as the UK’s biggest ever miscarriage of justice.
Cable said at the inquiry, “What is strange about this whole episode is that none of these 140 MPs ever came to talk to me. All MPs realise that writing polite letters is not necessarily the way to get through to people in government. You have to talk to them face to face.”
Jason Beer, counsel for the inquiry, asked whether he was blaming the campaigning MPs for not making more effort to see him in person.
“I am not blaming them,” said Cable, who said he only began to “smell a rat” in March 2015, just before parliament was dissolved. “It is not a question of blame. Let’s just say it was unfortunate I never had any personal contact with the MPs about this matter.”
