The outgoing Post Office boss said his leaders were “partly in denial, partly in paralysis” over problems with the computer system behind the unjustified prosecution of hundreds of sub-postmasters during his arrival in 2019.
Nick Read said bosses were instead focused on the company's financial performance, adding he was not briefed on the “scale and enormity” of the Horizon IT scandal.
He told an inquiry that when a High Court judgment was handed down revealing serious bugs, errors and flaws in the Horizon system, there was “no urgent call or panic discussion” among senior leaders.
He agreed with one lawyer's suggestion that bosses were “living in a sort of dream world.”
He said it would be “impossible not to conclude that,” when asked by lead counsel for the investigation, Jason Beer KC.
Between 1999 and 2015, hundreds of subpostmasters were wrongly prosecuted when faulty Horizon accounting software made it appear money was missing from branches.
But in 2017, some 555 subpostmasters filed a lawsuit against the Post Office. In 2019 he agreed to pay them £58 million in compensation, but much of the money was spent on legal costs.
High Court judgment found Horizon IT software contained a large number of software defects and was not “very robust”
Mr Read told the inquiry that after the High Court judgment was handed down in 2019, he began working with Post Office lawyers, so there was “a greater awareness of my point of view” in relation to other members of the management team.
Mr Read, who leaves office next year, will give evidence for three days as part of the inquiry into the scandal.
He said he would step aside from his frontline duties next year to devote “full attention” to the final stage of the investigation, which began in 2022 and has heard testimony from numerous victims and leaders.
When he took office, Mr Read was tasked with turning around the loss-making Post Office at a time when the organization faced a crisis of confidence when the scale of the Horizon scandal was revealed.
