Former Royal Mail executive tells inquiry she was assured accounting software was reliable

The Canadian businesswoman who headed Britain’s Royal Mail for nearly a decade has told a public inquiry that she was misled by company executives about the scale of a technology glitch that led to hundreds of wrongful convictions.

Moya Greene, a former CEO of Canada Post, served as chief executive of Royal Mail Group from 2010 to 2018. She was hired to privatize the government-owned entity, which happened in 2012. At that time, the company also split into two divisions; the Royal Mail delivery service, which was privatized and which Ms. Greene continued to head, and the Post Office, which was run by Paula Vennells and remains a publicly owned company that operates a network of branches that offer postal, financial and government services.

On Friday, Ms. Greene told the public inquiry that from 2010 until the business separated, she was given repeated assurances that the Post Office’s accounting software, called Horizon, was reliable. She added that she had no idea executives at the Post Office had been aggressively pursuing branch managers, known as sub-postmasters, for theft even though concerns had been raised about problems with Horizon.

“I do think that we were misled,” Ms. Greene said during questioning by the inquiry’s lawyer Sam Stevens. “I think that it was grossly understated, the gravity of the situation, and it has had calamitous results for people.”

Between 1999 and 2015, around 900 sub-postmasters were prosecuted by the Post Office for theft, fraud or false accounting and many went to jail over issues that a court later determined were caused by glitches in Horizon.

The inquiry, which began in 2021, has heard from sub-postmasters who said their lives have been ruined by the prosecutions. At least four suicides have been blamed on the scandal and thousands of sub-postmasters went bankrupt after being forced by the Post Office to make up shortfalls in their branch balances.

Ms. Greene, 70, told the inquiry that when she joined Royal Mail Group the Post Office operated largely as a separate entity. She became concerned about the prosecutions in 2011 after receiving a letter from an MP who said he was aware of 34 sub-postmasters who had been wrongly accused of fraud because of faults with Horizon.

Ms. Greene said she approached Ms. Vennells in 2011 and 2012 and suggested she conduct a thorough review. Ms. Vennells, who served as the Post Office’s chief executive until 2019, reassured her that Horizon had been reviewed multiple times and that the software was not at fault.

Mr. Stevens asked Ms. Greene why she didn’t conduct her own review as she was group CEO at the time. “That’s a good question,” she replied. She added that she accepted the reassurances and had other issues to deal with in preparation for the privatization.

During the hearing, Edward Henry, a lawyer representing a group of sub-postmasters, cited several reports from 2011 and 2012 that raised questions about Horizon. “I mean, it ought to have been staring you in the face and you ought to have got a grip on it,” he told Ms. Greene.

“I can understand why you would take that point of view,” Ms. Greene responded. However, she said the company’s legal team said at the time that there were only a handful of prosecutions and Royal Mail’s outside auditors insisted that they had tested Horizon and found it reliable.

The hearing also heard how Ms. Greene initially supported Ms. Vennells after the inquiry began and she faced fierce criticism over the scandal.

“Stand tall,” Ms. Greene told Ms. Vennells in a text message sent in May, 2022. “I know you are a good person and would never, never accuse anyone in the wrong.”

In another text message, Ms. Greene wrote; “Dear Paula, what a terrible time. Just tell the truth. I know you’re a good person, and friends will be hard to find now, what has happened is a terrible, horrible thing.”

However, Ms. Greene turned on her former colleague in January, 2024, just as a television drama, called Mr. Bates vs The Post Office, was causing a public outcry over how sub-postmasters had been treated. The inquiry had also heard more revelations about how Post Office lawyers went after sub-postmasters even though issues had been raised in court about Horizon.

“I think you knew,” Ms. Greene said in a text to Ms. Vennells referring to the software glitches. She added: “I have supported you all these years, to my own detriment. I can’t support you now after what I have learned.”

On Friday, Ms. Greene defended her about-face, saying that in 2022 she thought Ms. Vennells was being unfairly vilified by the press. She said her view changed as the inquiry heard more testimony.

“I think she knew on the basis of the evidence that has emerged in this inquiry, that there were faults in the system,” she told Mr. Stevens. “I think that Post Office executives, including Mrs. Vennells, continued to slavishly adhere to the position that was not tenable on the basis of the evidence presented here, that there were no faults” with Horizon.