Horizon IT inquiry: What we learned from the Post Office boss

It has become clear that, either by accident or design, Mr Read was not made aware of the scale of the challenge facing him at the Post Office.

Between 1999 and 2015, hundreds of sub-postmasters were wrongly prosecuted when faulty Horizon accounting software made it look as though money was missing from branches.

When Mr Read took the top job in September 2019, the organisation had just lost one High Court judgement to a group of those wrongfully prosecuted sub-postmasters and was about to lose another.

However, there was no reference to the ongoing legal challenges in his job description. The flawed IT system Horizon was not mentioned once.

In fact, the Post Office’s top lawyer reportedly told Mr Read not to “dig into” what had happened in the past.

He was even told there was no “huge PR risk”. He said the organisation was partly in denial, partly in paralysis.

Regarding the people who came before him, Mr Read told the inquiry that many of the Post Office’s former leaders “appear not to have been held to account”.