Nick Read has presided over a significant decline in trust towards the Post Office, a situation exacerbated not only by public outrage over the Horizon scandal but also by concerns from his own staff.
As the Chief Executive, Read is slated to appear before the public inquiry into the Post Office scandal over three days starting October 9, marking phase seven of the two-year investigation. His appearance comes shortly after the release of a letter from Post Office whistleblowers levelling serious allegations against his leadership. The letter’s final line, “Read cannot continue,” was penned in May prior to his resignation announcement last month.
Read assumed the role of CEO in September 2019, succeeding Paula Vennells just as the High Court group litigation order (GLO) case brought by subpostmasters was revealing that the Horizon IT system from Fujitsu was responsible for the accounting discrepancies wrongfully blamed on branch operators. His initial task was to modernize the Post Office; he began by reaching a settlement with the 555 claimants involved in the High Court case. He later implemented schemes aimed at providing financial compensation for victims, many of whom are still awaiting resolution on their claims years later. Read was thrust into the media spotlight earlier this year due to widespread public outrage following the ITV drama, “Mr Bates vs the Post Office.”
According to Computer Weekly, whistleblowers have accused the Post Office of a continuing cover-up in a letter addressed to the public inquiry chair Wyn Williams, inquiry barristers, Post Office chairman Nigel Railton, and various MPs. In the letter, they expressed: “To most of us, Read represents an inadequate, greedy, self-interested man, incapable of genuinely relating to the human aspects of the Post Office—the hardworking and honest subpostmasters and employees. We are deeply distressed and unhappy. Please assist us.”
The whistleblowers noted that the Post Office has “fallen from being Britain’s sixth most trusted brand to 135th,” asserting that this decline is “not merely attributed to the inquiry and the upheaval regarding Horizon, as Read would prefer us to think.” They claimed, prior to Read’s resignation, that “it is evident that we will never be able to change the culture at the Post Office under his leadership. Read has lost the trust of his own employees, subpostmasters, the public, and the UK as a whole.”
Throughout his tenure, Read has earned over £3 million, while numerous subpostmasters are still waiting for compensation for the harm they endured due to the Post Office scandal. He will have the opportunity to defend his record when he provides testimony at the inquiry this week.
This situation mirrors the exit of Vennells from the Post Office, which occurred shortly after it lost a significant High Court case against subpostmasters and squandered £100 million of taxpayer funds. This case revealed that subpostmasters had been wrongly accused and, in many instances, prosecuted for accounting discrepancies attributed to software errors. Vennells oversaw a cover-up of the scandal, which began to unravel following the subpostmasters’ High Court victory. Despite this, she left her position in 2019 with a substantial payout and was previously awarded a CBE for her services to the Post Office, an honor that has since been rescinded.
For more details, read the full whistleblower letter here.
The Post Office scandal was initially uncovered by Computer Weekly in 2009, sharing the experiences of seven subpostmasters affected by the Horizon accounting software, resulting in one of the most significant miscarriages of justice in British history (see below for a timeline of Computer Weekly articles on the scandal since 2009).
• Also read: What you need to know about the Horizon scandal
• Also watch: ITV’s documentary – Mr Bates vs The Post Office: The real story
• Also read: Post Office and Fujitsu malevolence and incompetence leads to a major taxpayer burden.