POL00023620
POL00023620
DOCUMENT -— 24
DRAFT — IN STRICTEST CONFIDENCE AND SUBJECT TO LEGAL PRIVILEGE
GLO — HORIZON ISSUES TRIAL
CWU — CORE VERBAL BRIEF (LEE KELLY)
KEY SPEAKING POINTS
The judgment in the second trial of a Group Litigation brought against Post Office by a
number of mainly former postmasters was today handed down in the High Court
As you know, we take this judgment and the overall litigation extremely seriously and we’ve
been putting measures in place at all levels in the business which address the issues and
criticisms raised.
We know that the Judgment'’s criticisms may be unsettling for people. We have a
comprehensive programme of communications to ensure we are speaking with everyone in
the business and providing people with every opportunity to raise questions and concerns.
But we can be clear that we are confident that overall Horizon is robust, comparing well
with systems used by other retail and financial services companies every day. Both
independent experts for the claimants and the Post Office, on opposite sides of the litigation
confirm this. And the fact remains that Horizon is processing around 47 million transactions
a week, more than £60 billion worth a year and these are being successfully reconciled with
our clients such as the banks.
No system can ever be said to be perfect —. We are working hard to make continual
improvements.
The judgment underlines to us very strongly the importance of the way in which we help
people operate Post Offices. We’re taking/ we’ve taken firm action to improve that
support, alongside further investment in our technology
Overall, more than [100?] changes are being/ have been made in a comprehensive
programme improving Horizon, closely involving our postmasters. [expand detail when
known]
We’re building a better relationship with postmasters through our new field team and we’re
rolling out improvements to recruitment, training and operational support, as well as
changes which further reduce the risk of human errors in branches
I will keep you updated and also on the next steps in the litigation. We expect this to take
some time to be resolved as there are many legal matters still to be determined and the
individual claims themselves span a very lengthy period, with some dating back around two
decades. Currently there are Court hearings scheduled through to 2020
I will send you our media statement responding to the Judgment and also the
communications that have been issued to colleagues.