The chief executive of the Post Office has been forced to repay some of his bonus after the group was accused of “misleading” an inquiry into the sub-postmaster computer scandal.
Nick Read and other senior staff received part of their bonus for supporting an inquiry led by Sir Wyn Williams into the Post Office’s faulty Horizon computer system, which resulted in 700 postal workers being wrongly convicted for stealing money.
However, Williams said he had not approved the bonus payment, even though the Post Office said it had received “confirmation” from him that the group “supported and enabled the inquiry to finish in line with expectations.” Williams said in a statement that this was “misleading and inaccurate”.
The Post Office said Read would return an unspecified part of the £455,000 that was awarded to him in bonuses in 2021-22. The board is still in discussions with other senior leadership beneficiaries over their bonuses.
“We have apologised to Sir Wyn Williams for the implication in Post Office’s annual report and accounts for 2021-22 that the remuneration sub-metric, and its achievement, were agreed with him and the inquiry,” the Post Office said.
The Department for Business and Trade, which oversees the state-owned Post Office, said: “The Post Office is right to apologise. The government is keen to hear what actions the Post Office board plans to take on the matter.”
Hundreds of sub-postmasters were wrongly prosecuted for theft between 2000 and 2013 as a consequence of faults in the Horizon computer system. In 2021, the Court of Appeal overturned 83 people’s criminal convictions, but the process of awarding compensation to those affected has been slow.
MPs labelled the scandal one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in recent legal history.
“I’m troubled by the suggestion that bonus payments were awarded to senior executives based on inaccuracies,” said Darren Jones, chair of the House of Commons’ business and trade committee. “This once again raises serious corporate governance questions at the Post Office, not least for the remuneration committee.”
Lawyers for the inquiry wrote to the Post Office in March over concerns about the executives’ performance clause, which stipulated that part of their bonuses would be paid for providing all “evidence and information” needed to enable the Horizon IT inquiry to “finish in line with expectations”.
Bonuses based on the clause were agreed in February 2022 and paid out in March 2022, according to the Post Office’s annual report, even though the inquiry was only in its first phase of hearings.
The Post Office’s lawyers responded to the inquiry’s legal team in a letter in April stating that the subclause had been erroneously marked as “achieved”.
Dan Neidle, former head of tax at law firm Clifford Chance and founder of think-tank Tax Policy Associates, said he “could not recall another instance of a CEO getting a bonus for something that hadn’t happened”.
The Post Office inquiry is now in its third phase, which involves taking evidence on the operation of the Horizon system. There are four remaining phases and the inquiry is unlikely to conclude until 2024.
