The Horizon public inquiry has been told by the man who took the job, not the Post Office CEO job description that was advertised in 2019 that did n’t mention the landmark High Court decision against the organization and its implications for the role.
Candidates were not informed of the significant and challenging IT project required to replace the Post Office’s worried Horizon IT system.
Former subpostmasters led by Sir Alan Bates defeated the Post Office and its claim that the software used in branches could n’t have prevented unexplained account shortfalls that the Post Office branch operators were held accountable and punished for in a group litigation order ( GLO ) in the High Court in 2018/19.
Paula Vennells resigned in 2019 after the case was concluded in disgrace, but Nick Read claimed he had never been informed of the extent of the challenge the organization faced as a result of the court’s decision.
Outgoing CEO Read claimed that top Post Office officials were denial of the devastating High Court judgment against them at the time of the most recent Post Office Horizon scandal people inquiry hearing. 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 claimed that when he arrived, the professional teams and the Post Office board were only concerned with the business metrics more than fixing mistakes and dealing with subpostmasters. He claimed that Tim Parker, the Post Office’s chairman, had a “focus on preparing the Post Office for the future” in the majority of his first conversations.
” There was an element of denial”, he told the inquiry, adding that they” just did not believe they would lose the GLO”.
Parker had played down the impact of the court’s decision, according to Read, revealing that Parker had stated in his statement that” the litigation is not the big PR risk that the Post Office believes it to be.”
Read even revealed that he was instructed never to look very closely at the Post Office’s questionable practice of personally prosecuting subpostmasters and branch staff, which was in the spotlight after the GLO decision.
He stated in his witness statement that” Secret prosecutions were presented to me as a traditional issue that had ended before 2015 and that I had no need to go into the specifics of what had transpired at the Post Office in the past because this conduct had ended.” Read confirmed that Ben Foat, Post Office public counsel, gave him this advice. Using Horizon data as evidence, the Post Office improperly prosecuted hundreds of subpostmasters and their staff using these powers.  ,
The Post Office scandal, which was first exposed by Computer Weekly in 2009, revealed the accounts of seven subpostmasters and the issues they encountered as a result of Horizon accounting software, which caused the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British history ( see below list of Computer Weekly articles about the scandal since 2009 ).
• Even read: What you need to know about the Horizon scandal , •
• Even watch:  , ITV’s documentary – , Mr Bates vs The Post Office: The true story , •
• Even read:  , Post Office and Fujitsu malevolence and incompetence means big taxpayers ‘ bill , •
