Post Office Inquiry - live: Three people under investigation over Horizon IT scandal, says CEO Nick Read

Nick Read has told the inquiry that the Post Office should not have been part of the decision making process for giving compensation payments to wronged postmasters.

He said: “Redress should be done independently and I’ve been consistent with that view for 3-4 years now.”

He continued: “I do think that the confidence of the process and the independence of the process would have been enhanced if the Post Office had not [been a part of this].”

He added that the Treasury had a desire for the Post Office “to experience some of the discomfort caused” by the scandal. “You can understand why that might be the case, but I think it was missing the point entirely,” he said of the compensation scheme.

The inquiry has returned after the lunch break. Lawyers have gone to a disclosure note from Peters and Peters solicitors from 24 August 2022.

The note shows the findings of a review into whether the Post Office security team were incentivised to crack down on postmasters they viewed as guilty.

The Peters and Peters review found no evidence that there was a bonus or incentivisation scheme linked to the number of prosecutions.

Former prosecutor Gary Thomas had said in an email shown to the inquiry this morning that the security team had been incentivised to prosecute sub-postmasters.

Nick Read will return to give evidence at 2pm. The chief executive of the Post Office is scheduled to give evidence at the Horizon IT inquiry for the next three days.

He told lawyers this morning that he was told not to “dig into the details of the past” when he took the role as CEO in 2019.

Giving evidence at the long-running Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry, he said he was not made aware of the “scale and enormity” of the Horizon IT scandal before taking the top job.

Mr Read joined long after the events which sparked the Horizon scandal, whereby more than 900 subpostmasters were prosecuted for stealing, based on incorrect information from an IT system known as Horizon.

But when he became chief executive in 2019, litigation between a group of 555 subpostmasters and the Post Office was just coming to a head, in which the company agreed to pay £58 million in compensation.

Mr Read said in a witness statement discussed at the inquiry: “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 Post Office in the past as this conduct had ended.”

He confirmed that it was the Post Office‘s general counsel Ben Foat, who is temporarily away from the business, who had told him that.

Chief executive Nick Read raised concerns in February 2024 that a number of people working on Post Office remediation for wronged postmasters had conflicts of interest.

The Horizon IT inquiry was shown an email from Mr Read in which he raised concerns about why there were 35 ‘red marked’ people in the remediation unit.

Personnel were marked as red if they had occupied roles previously that had brought them into conflict or potential conflict with the work that they were undertaking.

The inquiry is now taking a break for lunch and will be back at 2pm.

Chief executive Nick Read has told the Horizon IT inquiry that three individuals are under further investigation both by the Post Office and “external agencies” over allegations from former subpostmasters.

Mr Read said that the Post Office investigated a number of allegations made by postmasters during restorative justice hearings.

Mr Read explained: “There are 47 particular case studies. We have distilled those down to six individuals. Three of whom have no case to answer - we haven’t found corroborating evidence for the allegations.

“Three individuals are now under further investigation both by the Post Office and by external agencies.”

Mr Read did not go into further detail about which agencies these were or what the allegations made against these individuals are.

Nick Read has denied describing a group of Post Office investigators as “untouchables”.

Former chairman Henry Staunton had told the inquiry both in person and as part of written evidence that Mr Read had used the term twice - once in a private meeting and once in a more public meeting.

Mr Staunton’s claim was backed up by the testimony of Mr Ishmail and Mr Jacobs, who both testified that Mr Read had described these Post Office personnel as “untouchables”.

However when these claims were put to Mr Read he said each time that these testimonies were “incorrect”.

He added: “That is not an expression that is used in the organisation, that is not an expression that is familiar to the organisation.”

Mr Staunton had claimed that the Post Office still employed more than 40 investigators involved in the wrongful prosecution of sub-postmasters.

He said they were referred to internally as the “untouchables” because of their continued power.

Nick Read has denied that “all Post Office management think postmasters are crooks”.

Speaking at the Horizon IT inquiry, Mr Read was presented with a number of concerns raised previously by sub-postmasters.

He told lawyers: “I certainly don’t think all management are of that opinion, in fact I absolutely don’t think that at all.”

He told the inquiry this morning: “There will be a view that not every quashed conviction will be innocent postmasters. I think that the majority of the organistion would agree that the action that has been taken is absolutely the right action, whether there are guilty postmaters that will be exonerated is really no longer an issue.”

The inquiry lawyers are now examining an email sent by former Post Office prosecutor Gary Thomas to Nick Read.

Mr Thomas claimed in his email that there were “targets for prosecutions and financial recovery targets” for those in the Post Office investigations team.

In his email, Mr Thomas said:“We even had a proceeds of crime unit within Post Office Ltd that ensured some of these individuals lost their homes and families.”

He continued:“My yearly objectives that were bonus worthy at the time were based on numbers of successful prosecutions and recovery amounts of money to the business.

“I had some instances of these postmasters committing suicide, which now sits somewhat on my conscious because of my employer. How do you think I deal with this and now actually sleep at night now knowing my actions that were backed and supported by my employer has affected the said postmasters but also the individuals you employed to conduct this role.

“Can I ask the question and enquiry why we have all been completely cast aside and left with not so much as a letter of communication or an apology whatsover?”

Mr Read has said he has “no recollection” of the correspondence from Mr Thomas.

Mr Read said there was a “lack of curiorisity” to find out if Mr Thomas’s claims were correct shown in the email exchanges.

Nick Read has said that postmasters were “left behind in the pursuit of profit” as the Post Office struggled financially.

Mr Read told the Horizon IT inquiry that there was a “drive for network transformation and commercial sustainability” from 2016-2019.

He added: “In that drive, I believed that postmasters had been left behind.”

He referenced “the move from fixed fees for postmasters to variable payments” as one of the ways that postmasters were left behind.

Mr Read said: “It was my intention to refocus the organisation around...the relationship with the postmaster and its local communities. That was slightly at odds with where the [government] officials were, which was to ensure that we didn’t continue to spend money on the Post Office.

“I think there was an attitude to ringfence and ensure that the Post Office was a standalone business, without thinking through the implications of that for the postmasters,” he added.

Mr Read said that by 2020 “there was a growing need and desire by those who had been impacted by the scandal to get to the truth.”

Mr Read said that closure would not be achieved for the Post Office victims if the inquiry merely looked forward to assess how the scandal could not happen again. Permanent secretary at the Cabinet Office, Alex Chisholm, had suggested a shorter inquiry, Mr Read said.

Nick Read has told the inquiry that when he joined the Post Office in 2019 the issue of postmasters’ prosecutions was in the past. He was told: “Nothing like this is happening [now] or could happen - we need to look forward”.

The prosecutions ended in 2015, but a significant judgement was handed down to the Post Office in 2019 by Justice Fraser. The judgement detailed how the Post Office needed to change, and how it should offer compensation to wronged postmasters.

Mr Read added: “I don’t think the scale and enormity of the scandal was brought to life before me because there wasn’t a realisation in the business of what needed to be done.”

Mr Read said when he joined in 2019 the Post Office legal team had just started work to understand the implications of losing in the courts to the sub-postmasters.

Mr Read, reflecting on the beginning of his role, said: “There were a multitude of different priorities that were required in the first 4-6 weeks.

“I was told that I did not need to dig into the details of what had happened at the Post Office in the past.”