Former Post Office Communications Director Reveals Internal Cover-Up of Sub-Postmaster Prosecutions
The inquiry into faulty Horizon software, and the subsequent prosecution of 700 sub-postmasters for theft and false accounting, is currently underway to investigate the implementation and failure of the Fujitsu-created software. This has been a long-standing issue, with many sub-postmasters facing wrongful convictions, large debts, and loss of livelihoods due to the incorrectly generated shortfalls in their Post Office branches.
The recent airing of the ITV drama “Mr Bates v The Post Office” has brought renewed attention to this issue. However, it was an email presented to the inquiry on Tuesday that shed new light on the situation. In the email, former Post Office Group Communications and Corporate Affairs Director Mark Davies claimed to be “at the heart of a corporate cover-up” regarding the faulty Horizon software and related prosecutions.
“It’s fascinating to be part of a conspiracy. To be at the heart of a corporate cover-up,” Mr. Davies wrote in the email addressed to Post Office communications staff, a member of the legal team, and another director.
The email, sent in January 2015, was at a time when the Post Office was actively prosecuting sub-postmasters using data from Horizon. It wasn’t until 2019 that the Post Office issued an apology to sub-postmasters as a result of their successful High Court challenge against Horizon and the related prosecutions.
Despite knowing that the branch accounts could be remotely accessed and altered by Fujitsu or the Post Office IT helpdesk, Mr. Davies claimed that this remote access was only used once. When asked about one of his employees’ comments that the idea of remote access was “totally loony” and a “conspiracy theory”, Mr. Davies stated that he thought it was only used once.
In his appearance at the inquiry, Mr. Davies also admitted that his emails consistently blamed journalists for raising questions about the failings of Horizon. In fact, barrister Julian Blake pointed out that Mr. Davies’ emails were consistently “blaming the journalists”. Mr. Davies acknowledged this characterization, stating that “with the benefit of hindsight, [some of the emails] look ludicrous.”
The investigation into Horizon flaws, conducted by forensic accountants Second Sight at the request of the Post Office, had identified bugs in the software. However, Mr. Davies and his team viewed the authors of the report as lacking independence. In an email to the Post Office’s then-chief executive Paula Vennells, Mr. Davies claimed that Second Sight was “colluding” with sub-postmasters.
Various emails presented to Mr. Davies during his appearance on Tuesday described journalists and Second Sight as “attackers”. One email even referred to media reports as “sloppy”. It was clear from these emails that Mr. Davies and his team were actively trying to shift the blame away from the Post Office onto others.
This article was reported by Evan Dale.
