A Tory peer and long-standing advocate for victims of the Post Office scandal has said he raised the issue with the Labour government 15 years ago but received a response that made clear “the government wanted nothing to do with them”.
Lord Arbuthnot said he was left frustrated at the reply to his 2009 letter to then-business secretary Lord Mandelson, which asked for subpostmasters’ complaints over the faulty Horizon IT system to be investigated.
He said the former Labour government avoided responsibility over the scandal, after receiving a letter from junior minister Pat McFadden which suggested the concerns were instead a matter for the Post Office.
Lord Arbuthnot told the inquiry on Wednesday: “It was clear that the government was saying it was nothing to do with them.”
In the 2009 letter shown to the inquiry, Lord Arbuthnot wrote: “There does appear to be a significant number of postmasters and postmistresses accused of fraud who claim that the Horizon system is responsible, including at least two in my constituency.
“Given the level of impact this has on the personal lives of these postmasters and postmistresses and their families, often involving bankruptcy and significant financial hardship, I should be most grateful if you would let me have your comments on what can be done to investigate the matter.”
Lord Arbuthnot told the inquiry: “I had wanted what had seemed to me to be something that was potentially an injustice to be sorted out and since the government owned the Post Office I assumed that the government would be in the position to sort it out. But they were saying, ‘No, not me, guv’.
“I was frustrated and annoyed. It was clear that the government was saying it was nothing to do with them and I didn’t see at that stage where I could take it.”
Lord Arbuthnot compared the situation to the owner of a dangerous dog refusing to take responsibility for their pet.
He said: “What this ‘arm’s length’ arrangement essentially means is that the government is refusing to take the responsibilities that go with ownership and I don’t think it’s right to do that for various reasons.
“You cannot say that the dangerous dog has an arms-length relationship with you if the dangerous dog behaves badly. The whole process of arms-length control is a dangerous one, it seems to me.”
The Tory peer also criticised the behaviour of the Post Office, claiming that it had intimidated sub-postmasters by telling them they were the only people being affected by shortfalls in the Horizon IT system.
“There was something at the back of my mind which continued to trouble me which was the number of these people who were being told ‘you are the only person this is happening to’,” the Tory peer said.
“That struck me as profoundly wrong because at first it was obviously disprovable, they were not the only people it was happening to. Second it was isolating those sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses so they could not get support from others in the same position.
“And third it had an element of intimidation about it. All of which set the Post Office and its way of operating with its sub-postmasters in a bad light.”
Lord Arbuthnot said he was “not satisfied” with the “brush off” he received from former Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells to his letter raising concerns about complaints from subpostmasters about the Horizon system.
In his witness statement to the inquiry, the Tory peer said that Ms Vennells had written an “unsigned letter” of 9th January 2012, which said there was no evidence to support those allegations and she was confident that the system was robust and fit for purpose.
He wrote: “At this stage I did not know the truth of the matter but it was clear that a detailed investigation was needed. I thought it was conceivable but unlikely that all of these allegations were wrong — there were too many for it to be a coincidence, and by this time I had come across three in my own constituency (from my vague memory I later came across a fourth).
He added: “The subpostmasters I had met seemed to me to be transparently honest. I do not remember anyone suggesting to me that the introduction of a new computerised accounting system had uncovered previously hidden fraudsters…I was therefore not satisfied with the brush off I was getting by way of reply to my letters.”
Lord Arbuthnot’s testimony follows explosive allegations made by Alan Bates, former subpostmaster and head of the Justice For Subpostmasters Alliance, who said the Post Office is an “atrocious organisation” which was run by “thugs in suits” and was willing to do “anything and everything” to hide Horizon IT failures.
The inquiry continues.
