Post Office president Nick Read has truly claimed he was knowledgeable to not “dig into the details of the past” by its main lawyer when coming into the perform in 2019.
Giving proof on the long-running Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry, he claimed he was not alerted of the “scale and enormity” of the Horizon IT detraction previous to taking the main work.
Mr Read signed up with lengthy after the events which stimulated the Horizon detraction, the place larger than 900 subpostmasters have been prosecuted for taking, based mostly upon mistaken particulars from an IT system known as Horizon.
But when he ended up being president in 2019, lawsuits in between a staff of 555 subpostmasters and the Post Office was merely capping, by which the agency consented to pay ₤ 58 million in cost.
Mr Read claimed in a witness declaration reviewed on the question: “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 validated that it was the Post Office’s primary recommendation Ben Foat, that’s briefly removed from enterprise, that had truly knowledgeable him that.
Furthermore, Mr Read knowledgeable the question that he was oriented by aged individuals of the organisation earlier than coming into the perform.
He claimed: “Amongst those briefings, I don’t think the scale or enormity of the scandal was brought to life for me because I don’t think there was a realisation or recognition at that stage on what was needed to be done or what was likely to happen.”
He included that there was a “degree of denial” over the affect of the Post Office shedding the lawsuits introduced by the subpostmasters, which he claimed in his witness declaration had truly introduced “shock and surprise” to the administration group.
He composed: “My recollection is that it was only in 2020 when there seemed to be a groundswell of opinion that Post Office had serious questions to answer about its previous mistreatment of postmasters that the senior leadership and board started to understand the potential scale of the crisis.”
Furthermore, Mr Read clarified the standpoint of the organisation after the sentences of 1000’s of postmasters have been suppressed beforehand this 12 months.
“I don’t think I could say specifically that that is the case but there will be a view that not every quashed conviction will be innocent postmasters,” he knowledgeable the question.
“The majority of the organisation would agree that the action that has been taken is absolutely the right action and whether there are guilty postmasters that have been exonerated really is no longer an issue.”
The employer, that only recently revealed that he would definitely be tipping down as president following 12 months, claimed he felt it was “astonishing” that the Post Office itself was related to finishing up cost for wrongly-prosecuted postmasters.
“My personal view and one that I have expressed consistently … was that it seems astonishing to me that an organisation that has been involved in the prosecution of postmasters should be involved in redress,” he claimed.
Meanwhile, extra data arised in Mr Read’s witness declaration of the elimination of earlier chairman Henry Staunton from his message by the after that firm assistant, Kemi Badenoch, at first of the 12 months.
Mr Read claimed there have been a “wider set of issues relating to Henry’s behaviour and capacity as chair” which he thought added to the Government figuring out that “change was needed”.
This consisted of “unprofessional behaviour, such as falling asleep in board and shareholder meetings” due to him being “fatigued” and “not close enough to the issues on redress and the evidence emerging from the inquiry”.
“He would frequently report surprise at the amount of time he had to dedicate to the role, and the impression given was that he had signed up for a different job to the one he found himself in,” Mr Read composed.
Mr Staunton previously asserted that Mr Read displayed practices which made up “bullying”, insurance coverage claims which Mr Read shot down.
