HORIZON IT VICTIMS ARE TIRED OF APOLOGIES, SAYS FORMER POST OFFICE CHAIRMAN
The former chair of the Post Office has declined to say sorry for failings that led to the Horizon IT scandal as he suggested people had got “sick and tired” of previous apologies for them.
Tim Parker, who held the position from 2015 to 2022, told the Horizon IT inquiry he had been “toying with making an opening statement” saying he was “deeply deeply sorry” for what had happened.
However, the businessman – who was previously chief executive of Clarks Shoes, Kenwood and Kwik-Fit – said he had been advised against doing so.
More than 900 sub-postmasters were wrongfully prosecuted as a result of bug-ridden Fujitsu software which inaccurately recorded financial shortfalls in their branch accounts.
Over the course of the public inquiry, multiple Post Office executives, lawyers and board members have apologised for their parts in the scandal – or, more generally, for what its victims have endured.
Yet when asked by a lawyer representing several sub-postmasters about letters of apology he wrote after a judgement against the Post Office in the High Court, Mr Parker said there was “no real way to say sorry in a convincing way”.
Addressing the inquiry, he said: “It is quite interesting because today I was toying with making an opening statement – stand up and say ‘I’m deeply deeply sorry’, as many people have done.
“And there ensued a discussion with people: should I do this? Because, you know, I would like to say sorry.
“And the response I got was that, ‘well, you could do this, but actually, you know, people have kind of got tired of that and it all rings a bit hollow’.”
Mr Parker went on to say that he was advised he was probably “just going to annoy people” more than giving them a sense of his “real desire” to apologise. He added: “I’m afraid in these circumstances it’s very hard to … prove that you’re sorry.”
Multiple apologies
Paula Vennells, the former Post Office chief executive, apologised multiple times when she gave evidence over three days in May.
“I would just like to say – and I’m grateful for the opportunity to do this in person – how sorry I am for all that sub-postmasters and their families and others have suffered as a result of all of the matters that the Inquiry has been looking into for so long,” she said.
Last month, Fujitsu engineer Gareth Jenkins said he was “truly sorry” former sub-postmistress Seema Misra was wrongfully convicted – after his evidence as an expert witness helped the Post Office imprison her while she was pregnant in 2010.
Speaking to The Telegraph after that hearing, Mrs Misra rejected his apology, saying: “It’s just becoming a ritual with these witnesses, they all come up and they have to apologise.”
Report hidden?
During hours of questioning on Wednesday, Mr Parker, 69, denied deliberately hiding a key report he commissioned into the Horizon IT system from members of the Post Office board.
The 2016 document – written by Jonathan Swift, a former Treasury lawyer – raised concerns about the software. However, Mr Parker said he had been acting on legal advice from Post Office lawyers not to share the report.
He also told the inquiry he had a sense of “unease” when it was suggested that the Post Office should apply to recuse the judge in the High Court trial involving Alan Bates and more than 500 other sub-postmasters.
Data breach
Nick Read, the Post Office’s current chief executive, attended Mr Parker’s hearing in person.
Asked about a data breach in which the addresses of sub-postmasters involved in Mr Bates’s case were published online last month, Mr Read reiterated that the Post Office was “deeply sorry” for the “mistake we made” and said it was looking into why the incident occurred.
When asked by The Telegraph whether this was just a hollow apology, Mr Read said: “There’s nothing hollow about it and I said so at the time, I was deeply frustrated that it had occurred and it was totally unacceptable.
“Clearly, we will make sure that we will do everything we can to ensure the right controls are in place to ensure that sort of thing doesn’t happen again.”
2024-07-03T20:10:11Z dg43tfdfdgfd