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

IT company Fujistu said in July this year that there “have been and there continue to be bugs, errors and defects in the Horizon system”.

In an email exchange between Fujistu CEO for Europe, Paul Patterson, and Post Office chief executive Nick Read, it was revealed that Fujistu have refused to provide expert witness statements in an ongoing criminal investigation against a Post Office branch.

Mr Patterson wrote to Mr Read: “As the Post Office is well aware, there have been and there continue to be bugs, errors and defects in the Horizon system. Further FSL [Fujistu] currently has, and previously had, access to branch transaction records.

“Your letter of 30 May 24 also acknowledges the existence of other matters (beyond the Horizon system) which could have operated to create innocent discrepancies.

“In simple terms, the Post Office is requesting that FSL give expert opinion evidence to be used in criminal proceedings against postmasters and Post Office workers… I consider the request to be entirely inappropriate, particularly in the light of the evidence being uncovered at the inquiry.”

Mr Read told the inquiry that he was trying to get Fujitsu to “cooperate with law enforcement agencies”.

“Our expectation where there is organised crime, fraud, issues of that nature, they would be very small in number and my expectation was that Fujistu would engage with law enforcement in those cases,” Mr Read explained.

Chair of the Horizon IT inquiry Sir Wyn Jenkins has said he is “bemused” by debate about the reliability of the data provided by the current Horizon systems used by the Post Office.

Refering the prior court judgement, he told the inquiry: “One of the conclusions that Mr Justice Fraser reached was that the version of Horizon that was actually in use at the time of the trial was reasonably fit for purpose... We are having a great deal of debate about the current version of Horizon, which doesn’t seem to fit with Justice Fraser’s findings.”

“The general tenor of what he was finding was as I have indicated. I have said that I regard what he said as sacrosanct,” he added.

Mr Read has told the inquiry that the Post Office had been dealing with a number of shortfalls in postmasters’ accounts which they couldn’t explain. Mr Read assured the inquiry that the Post Office would not prosecute postmasters over the apparently missing money, with questions raised about the ongoing reliability of the data they were receiving from the IT system.

The City of London Police carried out an investigation into a Post Office branch in May 2024, an email to chief executive Nick Read has revealed.

An email sent by IT company Fujistu to Nick Read on 17th May 2024, and read to the Horizon IT inquiry, revealed that Fujistu had “serious concerns” about potential prosecutions by the Post Office of postmasters.

Fujistu said they would “not support the Post Office to act against postmasters”, adding: “We will not provide support for any enforcement actions, taken by the Post Office against postmasters, whether civil or criminal, for alleged shortfalls, fraud or false accounting.”

However they added that Fujistu had recently become aware of a “recent investigation by the City of London Police into a Post Office branch”. They clarified that they would cooperate with the police in this case.

But they said that the Post Office still viewed itself as a “victim” in this case. “For the investigations team to act in this manner seems to disregard the serious criticisms raised in multiple judicial findings and indeed, exhibits a lack of respect to the ongoing inquiry”, the email said.

Mr Read said the overall tone of the letter was “incendiary and provocative”. He said it was not the case that the Post Office was pursuing postmasters for shortfalls.

Postmasters reported that they were still paying off shortfalls from Horizon system errors in late 2024, the inquiry has heard.

Chief executive Nick Read was presented with a recent survey of postmasters, which found that some postmasters reported they were still dipping into their own funds to match shortfalls.

Sir Wyn Williams said the survey represented hundreds of postmasters who are still paying their own money to fix unexplained shortfalls.

The survey had a low take up from postmasters, only 14 per cent of sub-postmasters responded, something that Mr Read suggested might be because the sub-postmasters don’t trust the Post Office.

74 per cent of the respondents to the survey, which had around 1,000 replies, said they were spending their own money to fix shortfalls.

Mr Read told the inquiry: “We have more to do to try and win the trust and confidence of postmasters.”

He was asked by lawyers at the inquiry: “How is it possible that in late 2024 the same issues with shortfalls are occurring with postmasters paying them off themselves?”

Mr Read responded: “I just don’t know why the postmasters feel the need to do that. We have been absolutely explicit when weve investigated shortfalls, when it cannot be established how and why that shortfall has occurred, we are not imposing upon postmasters to pay it themselves through their own money. Maybe we are not getting that message clearly through. But there is no enforcement by the Post Office in that situation at all.”

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.