Former Post Office bosses Alan Cook and Adam Crozier to face Post Office Horizon IT inquiry
The Post Office Horizon IT inquiry has had a series of high profile witnesses so far this week. On Tuesday Alan Bates, the lead campaigner in the scandal accused ministers of being vindictive over his own compensation claim as he disclosed a catalogue of attempts to sabotage his two-decade fight.
On Wednesday Lord Arbuthnot set out how attempts by MPs to get an investigation going in the 2010s were thwarted by the Post Office. The former Conservative MP said James said concerns about reliability of faulty Horizon computer system were “brushed off”, and accused the company of running a “behind-the-scenes deception process”.
Sir Anthony Hooper, the former senior judge who chaired the mediation panel in the early 2010s to try to resolve claims between the justice for subpostmasters campaign and the Post Office also appeared on Wednesday, describing it as “the greatest scandal that I have ever seen”.
Yesterday the inquiry heard a range of corporate oversight failures, and former Post Office executive David Smith apologised for sending an email saying the conviction of a pregnant branch owner-operator who was subsequently jailed and then exonerated was “brilliant news”.
Former Post Office chair Sir Michael Hodgkinson also offered an apology yesterday, but his words came after a passage in which Sam Stein KC skewered him for his lack of curiosity in the way in which the company he chaired was prosecuting people. Asked “What did you do to investigate that the Post Office was properly prosecuting its own members?”, Hodgkinson could only reply “I didn’t do anything.”
And so to today. Alan Cook, the former managing director of Post Office who went on to chair the insurer Liverpool Victoria, will appear.
After that we will see the former chief executive of Royal Mail, Adam Crozier. Crozier was also once in charge of ITV, whose drama did so much to draw attention to the scandal earlier this year, but which notably omitted any reference to its former chief. Crozier, who headed Royal Mail when it owned the Post Office between 2003 and 2010, will provide detailed testimony about his actions for the first time.
Yesterday, retired judge Wyn Williams who is chairing the inquiry, asked to move the start time forward from 10am to 9.30am, as there is a lot to get through. The hearings are streamed on video, and I will bring you the key lines as the emerge.
Key events
Former Post Office managing director Alan Cook says he assumed the police and DPP were involved in prosecutions
Alan Cook said he had not previously encountered an organisation that could initiate prosecutions itself, and he describes it as “one of my regrets” that he didn’t “pick up on that earlier”.
He told the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry:
I had assumed that the police/DPP had been involved. I shouldn’t have presumed, but I did presume, sadly. And then “it had gone to court” was the expression they used. I had not encountered the notion of an organisation that could make that decision on its own. And I suppose I had too much assumed knowledge. And when you see the words that were written, I can see why that view still perpetuated in my mind, because it didn’t overtly say “We have taken the decision to prosecute.”
Chair Wyn Williams interjects, and says:
As I understand it, it follows from what you’re saying that when you became the managing director, no one within the company Post Office Ltd thought it necessary to tell you “And by the way, we prosecute people, in the sense that we don’t just investigate them, but we initiate and conduct the prosecution.”
Alan Cook says that is correct.
He is shown some minutes about court cases from a meeting he did not attend but would most likely have read at the time. The phrasing still did not, he says, strike him as meaning that Post Office Ltd was itself carrying out the prosecutions.
“I am not blaming others,” he said “It’s my misunderstanding, but I had just not encountered that type of situation.”
Alan Cook, who was the managing director of Post Office, has just told the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry that he was not aware until late in his tenure that the Post Office was the prosecuting authority in many of these cases.
I knew there were court cases. But I didn’t realise that Post Office, in about two-thirds of the cases, had initiated the prosecution as opposed to, you know, the DPP or the police or whatever.
At the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry, Alan Cook has said that he was not directly responsible for the group functions including HR and legal at Post Office that were done by the over-arching Royal Mail group.
“The people that were doing that work did not work for me,” he said, then clarified “I’m not saying I’m not responsible for the issues.”
He said the fact those functions belonged elsewhere made him “a little reluctant when I was being offered the job.”
As a reminder, Cook was managing director of the Post Office from 2006 to 2010. He goes on to explain:
Reliance was placed on Royal Mail Holdings governance as well as Post Office Ltd governance. For example, producing the annual results and having the accounts audited was a process that would have been run through an audit committee, and that audit committee was at the Royal Mail Holdings level. I fully accept I was on the board of Royal Mail, but I’m just saying that from a Post Office Ltd board’s perspective, they weren’t the accountable party that.
As Labour have made committing to nuclear weapons their theme for the day, I did just look up polling on support for the UK being a nuclear power.
When YouGov last surveyed adults on the issue in January, nationally 53% of people strongly supported or somewhat supported the UK retaining a nuclear deterrent, while 31% strongly or somewhat opposed it.
Worth noting that this is not the case in Scotland, where the national and regional breakdown of the data shows that in Scotland 41% of adults are against the UK having nuclear weapons, and 35% are for.
The Post Office Horizon IT inquiry has started for the day at Aldwych House in London. Alan Cook, the former managing director of Post Office, is up first. Junior counsel to the inquiry Sam Stevens is asking the questions. You can watch it here.
Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves has also reacted to the latest GDP figures. She said:
After 14 years of Conservative economic failure, Britain is worse off with low growth and high taxes. The Conservatives cannot fix the economy because they are the reason it is broken.
Growth in January was revised up from 0.2% to 0.3%, and in February the figure was 0.1%. That follows two quarters of slight contraction meaning that, effectively, regardless of whether GDP is slightly up or slightly down, the economy has been stagnating for months.
As my colleague Graeme Wearden notes, year-on-year, GDP fell 0.2% in February compared with the same month last year.
Labour: ‘our commitment to the nuclear deterrent is total’
Labour’s shadow armed forces minister, Luke Pollard, has been on the media round this morning, talking about Labour’s commitment to spending 2.5% of GDP on defence “when circumstances allow”.
He said “our commitment to the nuclear deterrent is total and our support for the armed forces is on the record.”
He went on to explain:
What we need to make sure is that we’re reflecting the changing international circumstances, growing threats to not only the UK but our allies as well.
And that’s why we’ve set out our ambition to get to 2.5% of GDP on defence spending, but also that defence spending should be focused primarily on UK companies creating and supporting jobs across the UK, rather than buying equipment on the international markets from international partners where the jobs clearly go abroad.
The intention to spend 2.5% of GDP on defence exceeds the 2% spending target for Nato allies, and matches what the current government has said it intends to do.
Asked about potential dissent within the party on Sky News to increased defence spending and an endorsement of continuing the UK’s nuclear capabilities, Pollard said:
There is strong support for the renewal of our nuclear deterrent. I think when you’re looking at the screen and see news bulletins, and you’re seeing Russian aggression against Ukraine, where we’re seeing daily cyber-attacks against the UK, where we’re seeing our allies being threatened internationally, that case for a robust and strong defence policy is set out very clearly in front of us.
Pollard also said it was difficult at the present time to set out plans in more detail. He said “I don’t get to see the information, the security briefings, the intelligence, that would be required for us to set out clearly which capabilities need to be invested.”
Keir Starmer will be in Barrow today, where the UK’s nuclear submarines are built. He said in an interview ahead of the trip:
The changed Labour party I lead knows that our nation’s defence must always come first. Labour’s commitment to our nuclear deterrent is total.
In the face of rising global threats and growing Russian aggression, the UK’s nuclear deterrent is the bedrock of Labour’s plan to keep Britain safe. It will ensure vital protection for the UK and our Nato allies in the years ahead, as well as supporting thousands of high paying jobs across the UK.
Hunt: GDP rise of 0.1% in February is ‘welcome sign economy is turning corner’
The chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, has responded to those latest GDP figures by saying:
These figures are a welcome sign that the economy is turning a corner, and we can build on this progress if we stick to our plan.
Last week our cuts to national insurance for 29 million working people came into effect across Britain, as part of our plan to reward work and grow the economy.
Others have been more lukewarm about the news. A spokesperson for the British Chambers of Commerce said “Today’s data confirms once again that the UK economy is stuck on a low-growth treadmill.”
UK GDP rose by 0.1% in February new data shows
Richard Partington
Richard Partington is the Guardian’s economics correspondent
Britain’s economy has taken a step closer to exiting recession after official figures showed growth continued in February despite a washout month for construction and retail after one of the wettest starts to a year on record.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said gross domestic product (GDP) rose by 0.1% in February, matching City economists’ forecasts and extending a recovery after growth in January was revised up from 0.2% to 0.3%.
Liz McKeown, an ONS director of economics statistics, said: “The economy grew slightly in February with widespread growth across manufacturing, particularly in the car sector. Services also grew a little with public transport and haulage, and telecommunications having strong months.
“Partially offsetting this there were notable falls across construction as the wet weather hampered many building projects.”
The UK met the technical definition of recession after contracting in the third and fourth quarters of last year. An end to the slump will require a continued expansion in March to meet a quarterly return to growth.
You can follow reaction to that news live with my colleague Graeme Wearden: UK GDP grows in February, suggesting economy is escaping recession – business live
Former Post Office bosses Alan Cook and Adam Crozier to face Post Office Horizon IT inquiry
The Post Office Horizon IT inquiry has had a series of high profile witnesses so far this week. On Tuesday Alan Bates, the lead campaigner in the scandal accused ministers of being vindictive over his own compensation claim as he disclosed a catalogue of attempts to sabotage his two-decade fight.
On Wednesday Lord Arbuthnot set out how attempts by MPs to get an investigation going in the 2010s were thwarted by the Post Office. The former Conservative MP said James said concerns about reliability of faulty Horizon computer system were “brushed off”, and accused the company of running a “behind-the-scenes deception process”.
Sir Anthony Hooper, the former senior judge who chaired the mediation panel in the early 2010s to try to resolve claims between the justice for subpostmasters campaign and the Post Office also appeared on Wednesday, describing it as “the greatest scandal that I have ever seen”.
Yesterday the inquiry heard a range of corporate oversight failures, and former Post Office executive David Smith apologised for sending an email saying the conviction of a pregnant branch owner-operator who was subsequently jailed and then exonerated was “brilliant news”.
Former Post Office chair Sir Michael Hodgkinson also offered an apology yesterday, but his words came after a passage in which Sam Stein KC skewered him for his lack of curiosity in the way in which the company he chaired was prosecuting people. Asked “What did you do to investigate that the Post Office was properly prosecuting its own members?”, Hodgkinson could only reply “I didn’t do anything.”
And so to today. Alan Cook, the former managing director of Post Office who went on to chair the insurer Liverpool Victoria, will appear.
After that we will see the former chief executive of Royal Mail, Adam Crozier. Crozier was also once in charge of ITV, whose drama did so much to draw attention to the scandal earlier this year, but which notably omitted any reference to its former chief. Crozier, who headed Royal Mail when it owned the Post Office between 2003 and 2010, will provide detailed testimony about his actions for the first time.
Yesterday, retired judge Wyn Williams who is chairing the inquiry, asked to move the start time forward from 10am to 9.30am, as there is a lot to get through. The hearings are streamed on video, and I will bring you the key lines as the emerge.
Welcome and opening summary …
Good morning. Rishi Sunak is expected to be out campaigning, foreign secretary David Cameron is in Brussels, GDP figures show continued economic stagnation, and Adam Crozier will be at the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry. More of all that in a moment, first, here are your headlines …
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The UK took another step on path to exit recession, but GDP rise is just 0.1%
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Tory candidate for London mayor Susan Hall has a Trumpian attitude to climate, says Sadiq Khan
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Keir Starmer is expected to promise to make the UK’s nuclear deterrent the “bedrock” of his security plan to keep Britain safe today
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The government needs a TikTok strategy to help combat misinformation directed at young people, MPs have said
There isn’t any business scheduled in any of the country’s legislatures today, however that doesn’t mean the diary is empty. Alan Cook and Adam Crozier are witnesses at the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry, and both were senior leaders at the Post Office and Royal Mail during the time the scandal was unfolding. There is likely to be especially keen interest in the appearance by Crozier, former ITV CEO, and a person who now acts as chairman of both Whitbread and BT Group. That is expected to start at 9.30am.
It is Martin Belam here with you today once more. I do try to read all your comments, and dip into them where I think I can be helpful, but if you want to get my attention the best way is to email me – martin.belam@theguardian.com – especially if you have spotted errors/typos/omissions.