Post Office Inquiry: Outgoing CEO Nick Read says he was told 'not to dig into past'
The outgoing boss of the Post Office has told the Horizon IT inquiry he was informed not to "dig into the details of the past" by its leading lawyer when he first took on the job.
Nick Read made the remarks as he gave evidence at the final phase of the inquiry on Wednesday, the first of his three days of giving evidence.
He said he was not made aware of the "scale and enormity" of the scandal before taking the top job.
Mr Read - who is stepping down from his role as chief executive in March 2025 - joined long after the events which sparked the Horizon scandal, whereby more than 900 sub-postmasters 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 sub-postmasters and the Post Office was just coming to a head, and 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.
Mr Read also denied referring to a group of Post Office investigators as "untouchables" - staff who were shielded from the effects of the inquiry.
"That is not an expression that is used in the organisation," he said.
Elsewhere, Mr Read shed light on the opinion of the Post Office, after the convictions of hundreds of postmasters were quashed earlier this year.
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He said: "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.
"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."
He added it was "astonishing" that the Post Office itself was involved in administering compensation for wrongly-prosecuted postmasters.
Mr Read was brought in to replace former CEO Paula Vennells in 2019 and "right the wrongs of the past".
But he has come under heavy criticism throughout the inquiry and has taken several months to prepare for his appearance.
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He says he wants to prove that "nothing like this can ever happen again".
However, it's likely that he will also be forced to defend his own behaviour, including his repeated requests for a pay rise.
There have also been allegations of bullying at the company in the years after Sir Alan Bates led the postmasters to a 2019 High Court victory.
Plus, the supposed replacement for the Horizon system, the New Branch IT system (NBIT), has succumbed to delays and bugs.
It was originally planned for release in March 2025, but it is likely to be delayed until mid-2026.
Additionally, its projected cost has increased from £180 million to £1.1 billion.
Among Mr Read's detractors is Sir Alan Bates who said he did not "achieve anything" during his tenure as CEO.
Also, former Post Office chairman Henry Staunton described Mr Read as "unstable" on October 1 during the inquiry, while Mr Read himself listened from the public gallery.
Between 1999 and 2015, over 700 Post Office sub-postmasters were convicted of theft or false accounting and thousands more were forced to make up shortfalls due to a problem with Fujitsu's Horizon software.
Four suicides were blamed on the scandal.
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