The City grandees who let the Post Office fight to the bitter end

The quashing in April 2021 of 39 UK sub-postmasters’ convictions marked the final blow to the Post Office after a decades-long David and Goliath struggle for justice.

The Post Office had agreed the convictions should be overturned, but for most of the sub-postmasters it tried to reject arguments that they should never have been prosecuted in the first place.

Long after the High Court had ruled evidence from its Horizon accounting software was fatally flawed, the state-owned business would, for 35 of the 39, only concede that they did not get a fair trial.

The resistance by the Post Office even at that late stage raised questions about the board tasked with overseeing the company as scrutiny mounted over how it treated people on the front line of serving its customers.

The Post Office’s directors had glittering public and private sector credentials, but allowed the company to fight on and on.

An independent inquiry into the scandal this week appointed experts to probe corporate governance and culture at the Post Office.

Over many years of prosecutions based on flawed Horizon accounting data, the Post Office’s board of directors included top business figures and government representatives.

The governance probe will look at who knew what and when.

“Why didn’t the board stop this . . . at an earlier stage? Why weren’t they asking the right questions?” said Roger Barker at the Institute of Directors.

“Or was there some hidden factor which got in the way of that process?” he added.

Peter Swabey, policy and research director at the Chartered Governance Institute, said the board had been “too trusting” of management and had “failed” to ask tough questions of the right people.

More than 700 sub-postmasters were wrongly prosecuted by the Post Office between 2000 and 2015, a period that included the split of the business from Royal Mail in 2012 before the latter was privatised. Many more were pursued by the Post Office over cash “shortfalls” that appeared in Horizon but avoided prosecution.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called the episode “one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in our nation’s history” as he announced legislation this week to exonerate sub-postmasters en-masse following an ITV drama on the scandal.

“Did [the board] ask themselves the right questions and really pursue them, given the sheer implausibility of the notion that several hundred sub-postmasters were committing fraud?” said one Whitehall official.

Additional reporting by Rafe Uddin

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Who were the senior Post Office board members at key moments in the scandal?

2019–2021: Two landmark court cases

A pivotal ruling by the High Court in 2019 finally forced the Post Office to accept that the Horizon accounting system developed by Japan’s Fujitsu had bugs that meant evidence from it was unreliable.

The judge said the Post Office’s insistence that shortfalls in sub-postmasters accounts reflected theft rather than computer error had been “the 21st century equivalent of maintaining that the earth is flat”.

The Post Office paid £58mn to settle the civil case launched in 2017 by 555 former sub-postmasters who it had wrongly pursued.

But while it subsequently agreed convictions that relied on Horizon data should be overturned, the Post Office in all but a few cases denied that its egregious failings meant it had been wrong to bring the prosecutions.

For most of the 39 sub-postmasters whose convictions were quashed by the Court of Appeal in April 2021, the Post Office conceded only that they did not receive a fair trial.

Richard Moorhead, law professor and member of the board advising on compensation for sub-postmasters, has argued the tactic was designed to limit the fall out.

The Court of Appeal rejected the Post Office’s position.

“The failures of investigation and disclosure were . . . so egregious as to make the prosecution of any of the ‘Horizon cases’ an affront to the conscience of the court,” it ruled.

The Post Office said: “In 2019, the current management settled the long-running Horizon litigation and made a sincere apology. Since then, Post Office has actively supported efforts to compensate postmasters fairly and quickly, and determined in its wish to help right the wrongs of the past.”

Tim Parker

Post Office chair 2015-2022

Parker led the board as it continued to aggressively fight legal claims by sub-postmasters alleging wrongdoing. Parker, labelled the “Prince of Darkness” by trade unions after job cuts during his corporate and private equity career, was an adviser to Boris Johnson when he was mayor of London. He was chair of HM Courts and Tribunals Service from 2018-2022. 

Nick Read

Post Office chief executive 2019-present

Read took office in 2019, taking over day-to-day running of the Post Office as legal pressure over the Horizon scandal mounted. He has apologised for what happened to sub-postmasters and called it “unacceptable”. In 2023 Read, former boss of retailer Nisa, handed back part of his bonus that was linked to the inquiry over the miscarriage of justice.

Tom Cooper

Post Office board 2018-2023

Cooper, former Deutsche Bank global M&A chair, was a non-executive board member representing the government. He apologised to MPs last year for his part in an error relating to bonus payments to executives for assisting the inquiry into the Horizon scandal.  

Ken McCall

Post Office board 2016-22

McCall was senior independent director on the Post Office board. He previously headed DHL Express in the UK and was deputy CEO at Paris-listed Europcar Mobility Group. He spent six years on the board of retailer Superdry. 

Carla Stent

Post Office board 2016-23

Stent was a non-executive director for seven years and served as chair of the board’s audit, risk and compliance committee. After executive roles at Thomas Cook, Barclays and Virgin Group she sat on several company boards, including chairing commodities broker Marex Spectron and Savernake Capital. She is on the board of Evelyn Partners, accountants to prime minister Rishi Sunak.

Zarin Patel

Post Office board 2019-2023

Patel joined the board as the Post Office settled a legal claim by 555 former sub-postmasters following which there was renewed focus on the safety of the criminal convictions. She is a chartered accountant and senior independent director of retailer Pets at Home. She sits on the boards of Anglian Water Services, recruiter Hays, and the National Trust and is a member of HM Treasury’s audit and risk committee. She was previously CFO of the BBC.

2012–2015: Second Sight reports

The litigation between sub-postmasters and the Post Office that led to the 2019 settlement was far from the first chance for board members and the government to abandon the Post Office’s aggressive defence of the Horizon IT system.  

Between 2012 and 2015 forensic accountants Second Sight, appointed by the Post Office after pressure from MPs and sub-postmasters, investigated concerns over glitches in the Horizon system that may have been producing “shortfalls” in sub-postmasters’ accounts. 

Its final report raised concerns that “in some circumstances Horizon can be systemically flawed from a user’s perspective”. Second Sight also said it had been unable to complete its investigation, pointing to legal challenges by the Post Office and its refusal to provide some documents. 

The Post Office in this period insisted that the system was effective overall despite there being some faults.

Alice Perkins

Post Office chair 2011-2015

Perkins led the board as concerns mounted about the Horizon system and the prosecutions carried out by the Post Office. She is a former senior civil servant and is the wife of former foreign secretary Jack Straw.

Paula Vennells

Post Office chief executive 2012-2019

Vennells defended the Horizon system as evidence mounted of miscarriages of justice against sub-postmasters. She told MPs in 2020 that Fujitsu had assured the Post Office board that Horizon was “not perfect” but was “fundamentally sound”.

In 2019 Vennells joined the UK Cabinet Office board and received a CBE, which she has now offered to relinquish. She resigned from the boards of supermarket WM Morrison and retailer Dunelm in 2021 after a court quashed the convictions of 39 sub-postmasters. She said she was “truly sorry for the devastation caused” by Horizon.

Richard Callard

Post Office board 2014-2018

Callard replaced Susannah Storey as the government’s representative on the board in 2014 and remained until 2018 as the scandal continued to unfold. He worked for the Shareholder Executive in the government business department and is an executive director of its successor body UK Government Investments.

Susannah Storey

Post Office board 2012-2014

Storey worked as the government’s non-executive representative on the Post Office board. She has held a series of senior civil service roles and is now permanent secretary at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

Tim Franklin

Post Office board 2012-2019

Franklin was on the board for seven years as former sub-postmasters launched a lawsuit against the Post Office. Currently on the board of The Very Group, he has also been a non-executive at HM Land Registry. He chaired PCF Group but left in 2022 less than a year before it announced plans to cancel its Aim market listing after failing to raise capital. 

2009: Horizon scandal becomes public

An earlier generation of executives and officials also had chances to reconsider the Post Office’s insistence that Horizon was not deeply flawed. 

In 2009 the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance was formed at a meeting of 30 victims, some of whom had been told no other sub-postmasters had experienced similar problems with the Horizon system. That year, Computer Weekly published the first media report on the problems caused by Horizon, the Post Office’s defensive response and the impact on sub-postmasters’ lives.  

Adam Crozier

Royal Mail chief executive 2003-2010

Crozier chairs BT and previously led the Football Association and ITV. During his time leading Royal Mail, the Post Office was a subsidiary. Crozier was in charge when Computer Weekly first reported on the Horizon scandal in 2009. He said this week he had no involvement in the Horizon issue but feels “deeply sorry for those whose lives were ruined”.

Allan Leighton

Royal Mail chair 2002-2009

Leighton led the Royal Mail board before it split from the Post Office and while sub-postmasters were prosecuted and pressured to make payments to cover “shortfalls” that had shown up in Horizon. He departed two months before the first media report on the Horizon scandal. He was previously CEO of Asda and boss of Walmart Europe. He is now on the board of the Co-op Group. Leighton said the Horizon scandal was a “tragedy” and that he would support the inquiry.

Sir Donald Brydon

Post Office chair 2009-2011; Royal Mail chair until 2015

The former Barclays banker replaced Allan Leighton as chair just as the Horizon scandal was becoming public. He later chaired the London Stock Exchange Group and was commissioned by ministers to review the audit profession after a governance scandal at Carillion in 2018. He chaired FTSE 100 business and accounting software company Sage Group from 2012-2021. 

Alan Cook

Post Office managing director 2006-2010

Cook denied problems with Horizon during his tenure. He was criticised in 2021 by Kevin Hollinrake, now postal affairs minister, for his oversight of the business throughout the scandal. Cook has expressed “deep sympathy for those . . . wrongly prosecuted”. He served on Sainsbury’s board and chaired insurer LV during its failed attempt to be taken over by private equity group Bain Capital.