Thousands of post office operators have complained they continue to suffer problems with the system at the heart of the Horizon IT scandal, with nearly all involving a financial shortfall.
As the final phase of the inquiry into the faulty computer system began on Monday, the results of a damning survey shows operators are still struggling with bugs in the system, that trust in the organisation is low and that they believe compensation should be higher.
Almost 98% of post office operators who participated in a survey as part of the inquiry into the IT scandal who continue to encounter “discrepancies” with the system have said the issue involved a financial shortfall.
Nearly 70% of the respondents to two anonymous surveys, which were sent to 16,000 post office operators before the start of the final phase of the live inquiry, said they had experienced an “unexplained discrepancy” on the Fujitsu-built IT system since January 2020.
The inquiry heard that Nick Read, the outgoing chief executive of the Post Office due to give evidence next week, allegedly wanted the two post office operators appointed to the company’s board removed, and blocked them from meetings on issues including pay and bonuses.
Saf Ismail was appointed to the Post Office board as a non-executive director in June 2021, along with the fellow post office operator Elliot Jacobs, in a move to repair relations and improve oversight as part of an attempt to overhaul the organisation and “right the wrongs of the past”.
Ismail, who the inquiry was told was currently being investigated by the Post Office – and has stepped back from the board – concerning matters not related to Horizon, was scathing in his testimony.
Ismail said that while the other non-executive directors on the board welcomed the new appointments, Post Office executives did not.
“The wider executive made it difficult [and there were] situations we didn’t feel welcomed by the wider executive,” he said. “I was told by an individual on the wider executive that ‘we don’t want to particularly deal with you and Mr Jacobs as we feel uncomfortable with what has been happening’”.
Ismail said that Jane Davies, the former Post Office HR director, told him that he wanted them off the board.
“She categorically said to me how the chief executive was not happy with postmasters being on the board,” he said. “We were too awkward, too challenging, and he wanted that to be reversed. There were times when I spoke to the previous [Post Office] chair [Henry Staunton] and Jane Davies and they particularly mentioned how the wider executive ensured myself and Mr Jacobs were blocked out of meetings that involved talking about bonuses and salaries. We were actively excluded from their meetings.”
The survey also found that post office operators from a minority ethnic background were more likely to have been threatened with suspension than those from a white background.
The report shows that eight post office operators said they had been suspended, or threatened with suspension, in the past three years after problems with discrepancies with the IT system.
In total, 80 of more than 1,000 respondents said that they had been threatened with suspension by the Post Office in the past.
However, the survey found that 12% of post office operators threatened with suspension were from an ethnic minority background, and 17% of those with an Asian/Asian British background.
There are more than 7,000 independent operators and an annual survey last year, which about 1,300 completed, found that 44% described their ethnic group as Asian, with 1% a mixed white and Asian background.
Last year, documents released to campaigners revealed that lawyers investigating post office operators over the Horizon bugs used a racist term to categorise Black workers.
The document, which was published between 2008 and 2011, included the term “negroid types”, along with “Chinese/Japanese types” and “dark skinned European types”.
The public inquiry is examining the scandal, in which the state-owned body hounded post office operators for more than a decade, alleging financial shortfalls in their branch accounts and criminally prosecuting hundreds of people.
It has since emerged that these financial discrepancies were caused by IT bugs within Horizon. While 98% said they had encountered shortfalls, 34% also said the IT system produced surpluses in their accounts.
When asked how these discrepancies were typically resolved, almost three-quarters of respondents said they had to use either their branch’s money or their own to resolve the misbalance.
The most common form of glitch in the system, for which Fujitsu has a £2.5bn lifetime contract, took the form of screen freezes or loss of connection.
“We are focused on supporting the inquiry to reach its independent conclusions,” a spokesperson for the Post Office said. “Hearing directly from former and current postmasters is an important part of this work. We are determined to learn lessons from the past and improve the organisation.”
