Post Office chief executive Nick Read has admitted that the money wrongfully taken from victims of the Horizon scandal may have gone into the pockets of Post Office bosses, after claiming the organisation has still “not got to the bottom of” what happened to the cash.
The scandal was first reported by Decision Marketing in 2013, following an investigation by Computer Weekly. And, despite a BBC Panaroma report in 2015, it has taken the ITV drama Mr Bates v The Post Office to trigger nationwide uproar.
The Post Office finally admitted that there had been defects in its internal accounting software following a probe by independent investigators Second Sight in late 2012.
However, it has taken years to get justice for the hundreds of Post Office branch managers. Between 1999 and 2015, more than 700 branch managers were handed criminal convictions after discrepancies in Fujitsu’s Horizon system made it appear as though money was missing at their stores.
But one of the biggest questions remains where the money went.
Being quizzed by MPs, Read said the issue has been probed two or three times by external auditors, but low quality of data has hindered the investigations.
Even so, he admitted “it’s possible, absolutely it’s possible” that the money taken from branch managers could have been part of “hefty numeration packages for executives”.
Read took over at the Post Office in September 2019, after the scandal emerged, and last year handed back around £54,000 in bonus payments for his work on the inquiry.
He is facing questions from MPs alongside Fujitsu Services Europe director Paul Patterson.
Patterson, who has worked at Fujitsu since 2010 and in his current role since 2019, told MPs he was sorry on behalf of his company, which developed the faulty IT software. “Fujitsu would like to apologise for our part in this appalling miscarriage of justice,” he said.
He added: “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.”
Patterson told MPs the company gave evidence which was used to send innocent people to prison during the Horizon scandal. He said he did not know exactly when bosses first knew of issues related to the Horizon IT software, but that it had bugs at a “very early stage”.
He added that Fujitsu has a “moral obligation” to contribute to the compensation scheme for those affected by the scandal – many of whom lost their homes and were financially ruined.
Patterson said he did not know why the company had not acted act when it knew there were glitches in the system. “I don’t know, I really don’t know,” he claimed.
Speaking to the committee by video link, Alan Bates blamed red tape and bureaucracy on delays for managers accessing compensation.
“I think it was 53 days before they asked three very simple questions. 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.”
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