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BT chairman Adam Crozier received letters from several MPs about problems with the post office’s Horizon IT system when he ran Royal Mail, undermining his claim that he was “unaware” of the scandal.
Correspondence obtained by the Financial Times includes an email from current chancellor Jeremy Hunt in 2009 in which he expressed constituents’ concerns about the Horizon system and asked how widespread the problems were.
At the time, Crozier was managing director of the Royal Mail, which owned the post office. More than 900 Postal Service branch managers were convicted of incorrect data from the Horizon accounting software between 1999 and 2015, including more than 700 who were sued by the Postal Service itself.
Correspondence from Hunt and three other MPs addressed to Crozier challenges the BT leader’s claims that he was unaware of the problems that developed into what is now seen as the biggest miscarriage of justice in modern British history.
In a written statement to the Post Office inquiry in February, he said: “It is a matter of great regret to me that I was unaware of the tragic situation for the Post Office sub-postmasters and their families during my time at Royal Mail.”
Crozier added that he was “not aware of any widespread issues with Horizon’s functionality during my tenure” and that he did not recall any issues related to audits of branch accounts or actions against subpostmasters being brought to his attention.
While Hunt was Shadow Culture Secretary in October 2009, he wrote to Crozier: “Some of my constituents who work for the Post Office have brought to my attention that there have been problems with the Horizon IT system.”
He requested information about the nature of the problems encountered and “whether problems have been reported nationwide and what the current status is in resolving these difficulties.”
Correspondence obtained through a Freedom of Information request shows that Crozier told Hunt he would ask the Post’s then chief executive Alan Cook to “write to you as soon as possible”.
Three other MPs at the time – Lord Francis Maude, then shadow minister, David Drew and Lord Henry Bellingham – also wrote to Crozier in 2009 to raise concerns about the system, according to the FOI response.
The documents show that in a response to Drew, Cook stated that Crozier had asked the post office’s executive director to “investigate and respond” to the deputy’s concerns.
Bellingham said that during his time as MP for North West Norfolk he had handled three Horizon cases, each with the relevant minister and the CEOs of the Post Office and Royal Mail.
“It is inconceivable that they cannot remember this correspondence,” he said.
Maude said he had nothing further to add. Hunt and Drew both declined to comment.
Three Postal employees also contacted Crozier to alert him to issues related to Horizon, the documents show.
Crozier, one of Britain’s most prominent businessmen, has largely managed to evade public blame for the scandal that ruined lives for decades and sparked widespread outrage this year.
From 2003 to 2010 he headed the post office’s parent company. Today Crozier is chairman of FTSE 100 companies BT and Whitbread, owner of Premier Inn and research firm Kantar.
The Horizon system, developed by Fujitsu, was introduced in 1999. The accounting software used by branch managers had errors and defects that resulted in cash flow discrepancies that falsely made it appear as if money was being stolen.
In his oral evidence at the public inquiry into the scandal last month, Crozier pointed out that there was a strong separation between parent company Royal Mail and the post office, meaning that only limited information about problems with the IT system was passed to him.
The post office has its own board, he noted. The divisions were completely separated in 2012 ahead of Royal Mail’s privatization, leaving the post office in state ownership.
He told the inquiry that he did not recall anyone in the Post’s senior management, board or operations team alerting him to bugs, errors or deficiencies in Horizon.
A spokesman for Crozier said in a statement to the FT that the former Royal Mail boss had “already provided full evidence to the Postal investigation”.
They added: “The relevant correspondence, including some of these letters, was provided to Adam through the investigation and is consistent with his statements thereto.”
“Under the separate management of the Post Office, all correspondence and matters relating to the Post Office would have been automatically routed to the Post Office management team for processing,” the spokesperson said.
In his witness statement at the inquest, in which he said he had been shown correspondence from which he could see that a letter had been addressed to him from a sub-postmaster in 2008, Crozier said he “couldn’t remember any others.” “To have received letters from a sub-postmaster”. Postmaster on this subject”.
He added: “Every week I received hundreds of letters and therefore I was unable to read every letter and inevitably had to forward the correspondence to others immediately.”
“I trusted that [Post Office] “We joined the team fully expecting that my instructions would be followed and any investigation would be conducted fairly,” Crozier said.