Post Office boss admits money from Horizon victims may have gone into executive pay

Money wrongfully taken from victims of the Horizon scandal may have gone into the pay of Post Office executives, MPs have been told.

Nick Read, chief executive of the Post Office, said the company has still “not got to the bottom of” what happened to the cash paid by sub-postmasters and mistresses in a bid to cover the false financial black holes created by the Horizon software.

He said it has been investigated two or three times by external auditors, but it is something “we have struggled to uncover” due to various issues, including a low quality of data.

As it happened:
MPs quiz Fujitsu – after admission of ‘bugs and errors’

However, he admitted it is a possibility the money taken from branch managers could have been part of “hefty numeration packages for executives”.

“It’s possible, absolutely it’s possible,” he said.

Mr Read said the information has been provided to the statutory inquiry into the Horizon scandal, which will look into the question of where the money went.

He appeared before MPs on the business committee alongside Paul Patterson, director of Europe’s Fujitsu Services Limited.

It follows renewed outrage over the issue after the airing of ITV drama Mr Bates Vs the Post Office, which documented the postmasters’ 20-year fight for justice.

Between 1999 and 2015, more than 700 Post Office branch managers were handed criminal convictions for theft and false accounting after discrepancies in Fujitsu’s Horizon system made it appear as though money was missing at their stores.

Some went to jail, many were financially ruined and the scandal has been linked to at least four suicides.

Firm ‘involved from start’ has compensation ‘obligation’

Mr Patterson told MPs he was sorry on behalf of his company – as he accepted it would have to pay into the redress scheme.

“Fujitsu would like to apologise for our part in this appalling miscarriage of justice,” Mr Patterson said.

“We were involved from the very start.

“We did have bugs and errors in the system and we did help the Post Office in their prosecutions of the sub-postmasters and for that we are truly sorry.”

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He said the company gave evidence which was used to send innocent people to prison, and while he did not know exactly when bosses first knew of issues related to Horizon, it had bugs at a “very early stage”.

He went on to say that the company has a “moral obligation” to contribute to the compensation scheme for those whose lives were ruined by the scandal.

He said that he has spoken to the company’s bosses in Japan and it expects to have a conversation with the government about how much it should pay.

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The government has set aside £1 billion for Horizon victims and previously indicated it will pursue Fujitsu for the costs if the inquiry finds it is to blame.

Mr Patterson, who has been in his current role since 2019, said he did not know why the tech firm didn’t act when it knew there were glitches in the system.

“On a personal level I wish I did and following my employment in 2019, I’ve looked back on those situations for the company and from the evidence I’ve seen, I just don’t know.”

MPs ‘shocked’ by evidence

MPs at times appeared frustrated at the lack of answers from the two executives about who knew what and when.

Mr Read was unable to say when the Post Office knew that remote access to the Horizon software was possible.

The assertion that remote access to the Horizon terminals was impossible was central to the Post Office’s position that there had been no miscarriages of justice in the years it was prosecuting its staff.

It was only in 2017, during High Court proceedings brought by a group of more than 500 sub-postmasters, that bosses admitted it was possible – paving the way for convictions to be quashed.

Business and Trade Committee chairman Liam Byrne said he had been “fairly shocked” by the evidence.

‘The whole thing is madness’

The committee also heard from Alan Bates and other campaigners, who were played by well-known actors in the ITV drama about the scandal

They expressed frustration with the pace of the compensation scheme, saying it was “bogged down” by red tape and bureaucracy.

Mr Bates said his own process, for what he called “financial redress”, had been beset by delays.

“I think it was 53 days before they asked three very simple questions,” he explained. “It’s madness, the whole thing is madness.

“And there’s no transparency behind it, which is even more frustrating. We do not know what’s happening to these cases once they disappear in there.”

Wrongfully convicted former sub-postmistress Jo Hamilton said it was “almost like you’re being retried … it just goes on and on and on”.