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Witness Name: Christopher Leach
Statement No.: WITN09630100
Dated: 19 September 2024
POST OFFICE HORIZON IT INQUIRY
FIRST WITNESS STATEMENT OF
CHRISTOPHER MICHAEL LEACH
I, Christopher Michael Leach, will say as follows:
INTRODUCTION
1. I make this statement in response to a request for evidence dated 11 May 2023 made by
the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry (the "Inquiry") pursuant to Rule 9 of the Inquiry Rule
2006 (the "Rule 9 Request").
2. 1am submitting this statement with the aim of providing the inquiry with information which
is a combination of facts I know to be true, some hearsay evidence and other information
which are my honestly held belief. I believe that a significant amount of the content
which I cannot fully evidence within this statement could be corroborated with both full
and open disclosure from the Post Office (POL) and also through the inquiry seeking
information from the correct locations and data sources.
PROFESSIONAL BACKGROUND
3. I currently hold the role of Head of Branch Technology Product Management. My remit
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is now covering all Branch Technology excluding NBIT (which is the replacement
platform for the Horizon.) I also temporarily held the role of Interim Head of Horizon
Testing and QA which was ultimately to cover for around a 6 month period ending late
2023 after an individual left from the Horizon Leadership team. I have been employed by
Post Office since 19th July 2021. Previous to joining Post Office I have held roles in
Product Management and Innovation within companies such as Capita, NEC and
Northgate Public Services and was also a Police Officer for around 10 years. I have
significant experience within Platform replacement having been client facing lead within a
previous organization during a high profile and politically sensitive platform replacement
for several Police Forces
ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES
My role is not what I would typically call a Head of Product Management role — in that I
control no budget, do not have direct management responsibility over other Product
areas and my primary focus is, and always has been, to try and help the organization
evolve into a more Product focused business and primarily to act as a gatekeeper to
ensure that new development and Branch technology based changes are both beneficial
to Postmasters, the network and do not circumvent necessary and sensible governance.
. One of my primary responsibility’s centers around the HSA or Horizon Solution Authority
— later rebranded in 2024 to BTSA (Branch Technology Solution Authority) which I chair.
This is a governance forum where any Branch Technology affecting changes should
come through for approval. It has representation from all major stakeholder areas such
as Postmaster Engagement, Security, Support, Product, Commercial, NBIT (Future
platform) Architecture and others. There is a clear emphasis on the findings of the
Horizon Issues Judgement in this forum and I would describe it as acting like a
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‘conscience’ for the business. There are terms of reference, and all sessions are
recorded, and minutes provided after decisions have been made.
In honest reflection I would say that I have not achieved what I had hoped in the time
that I have been part of POL. It is a highly complex and overly complicated organization
with many overlaps in people's responsibilities. 1 would also say that although I have
introduced some more modern, efficient and beneficial ways of working, I am often
unable to make them mandatory practice and as such there is still significant
improvement needed across POL which is very slow to evolve.
From a testing perspective my role was to lead the Horizon Testing and QA function,
seek out and where possible make improvements and provide greater confidence that
our Postmasters are receiving quality changes within the technical limitations that we
have. I have always encouraged the team to never be made to feel bad for finding bug
errors or defects as can sometimes happen and the team have been responsible for
significantly evolving the regression testing used in Horizon but also historical issues that
have been present within the system for a significant period of time. As previously
mentioned, this interim responsibility ended at the latter part of 2023.
My initial observations upon joining POL were that it was an extremely fractured
organization with a huge number of detached business areas that often operated in
isolation from one another. I was shocked upon seeing the lack of modern business
practice ranging from pushing business change with minimal or no requirements,
numerous examples of multiple people doing the same job, significant inefficiencies
using computer systems which were both poorly implemented and deemed ‘too costly’ to
replace and the lack in many parts of the business of giving any consideration to our
postmasters. I found this extremely concerning, but also was cognizant of the fact that
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POL was an organization which was in a period of evolution due to the Horizon scandal.
9. It was my opinion that commercial factors seemed to be far more important than other
factors and there seemed to be virtual no understanding that Postmaster centric changes
would in fact often by proxy, reap commercial benefit. Most of all, there felt like there
was an overarching culture of being extremely reluctant to change and failure to properly
acknowledge cultural issues.
10. Despite the significant and worrying issues within POL, this made me personally very
invested in being part of the solution and helping to address the issues, not least as I
was recruited to be part of genuinely fixing the issues which were highlighted as part of
the Horizon Issues Judgement. I distinctly recall the occasion that I made the decision to
commit my longer term future to POL when I asked why a process was so long winded,
inefficient and illogical and was told by numerous people ‘Welcome to Post Office.’ This
was perhaps the third or fourth time I had asked why we do something in what appeared
to be in a nonsensical process and had received the same answer from different people.
I found that my desire to change things for the better within POL made me into a
‘marmite’ character within the business where I either received real support or extreme
challenge.
HORIZON REMEDIATION AND THE NBIT TEAM
11.It quickly became clear that the HSI workspace where I operated (Horizon Systems
Improvement) was recognized for its importance within the HSI team, but from the wider
business was often regarded as a hindrance, unnecessary and an unwelcome challenge
to the status quo. It felt like the processes that were introduced to ensure that
requirements were used, suitable governance was utilized, and the right questions being
asked ultimately ‘slowed down’ the business and as a result there were regular and clear
12.
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attempts to circumvent processes set up by the HSI team. Some of these occurred
when senior management wanted a piece of work being done and allowed work to be
covertly prioritized by Fujitsu. I saw numerous examples of this.
There appeared to be a commonly held belief within the organization, reinforced by
senior management such as NBIT Director Gareth Clark, Head of Networks Nick Beal
and CDIO Zdravko Mladenov, that the replacement Platform was ‘just around the corner’
and often suggestions to fix and positively change the existing Horizon platform was
deemed a waste of time and effort. I became concerned when making numerous
inquiries about the accuracies of these claims and was being told by individuals within
the SPM Programme (that was responsible for the NBIT platform) that it was ordered by
Gareth Clark, Nick Beal and Zdravko Mladenov that they were to categorically state that
NBIT would be live in 2025 despite it being fully understood that this was in no way
possible or realistic.
I began to suspect that the new platform (NBIT), was not ‘in a good way’ and that the
management of and build quality of this platform was questionable when I made 14
different attempts to see a Roadmap for the platform, documented strategy and any
visibility of its user interface. There was clear evidence of ‘in-fighting’ and it became
apparent that anyone that did not agree with Gareth Clark would be quickly removed
from the Programme — an occurrence which I have witnessed on a number of occasions.
I remember that I made several attempts to build bridges with individuals within the NBIT
team and was regularly met with blockers and a refusal to collaborate. A couple of
examples of these behaviors include when I had tried to set up regular calls with
individuals within the NBIT assurance space to ensure that they were not making the
15.
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same mistakes again as were identified in the Horizon Platform. I started out having
some very useful and fruitful calls with Thomas Tedman who worked in this space for
NBIT. He quickly started to grasp some of what was learnt from Horizon - that could be
evolved and fixed properly in NBIT but he was soon ordered by Friederike Vetter, who
worked for Gareth Clark to not have any further involvement with the Horizon
remediation team. Mr Tedman would be able to corroborate this.
We continued to speak despite this as our mutual concern was so great that NBIT was
again making huge and significant mistakes in its design, distinct lack of postmaster
engagement, culture of secrecy and my honestly held belief was that this was in many
ways even worse than the individuals responsible for the issues in Horizon as the NBIT
leadership also had the findings of a Horizon Issues Judgement and the Horizon team to
use as a ‘sense check’ to ensure they were doing things in a better way. It was my belief
that they actively ignored recommendations and offers to assist by the Horizon team. I
also was deeply concerned that NBIT was clearly stated as being a ‘like for like’
replacement of Horizon and the opportunity to truly innovate and produce an altogether
improved platform was being missed.
Another example occurred when I raised concerns stating that we should be sharing
roadmaps, committed scope and information with our postmasters, never mind our
internal stakeholders but was told this was not in my remit. I also raised concerns that
an over reliance on contractors added to an apparent strategy of withholding visibility of
NBIT and prevented opportunity to allow for input or help from permanent staff members.
I believed this created a ‘perfect storm’ scenario for the following reasons: -
16.1. Significant overreliance on contractors — causing both significant financial
strain, and a lack of ‘skin in the game’ whereby it was often not in the personal
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interests of some contractors to conclude their work in a timely manner.
16.2. We had significant risk around retaining knowledge as very few permanent
staff members were involved and as contractors left, they took experience with
them.
16.3. The principle of simply recreating Horizon in a newer tech stack was flawed
and missed the massive opportunities available to us to evolve as a business and
improve things for our postmasters. It also ignored the opportunity to innovate.
NBIT Leadership, Culture and Accountability
17. There are many examples of these behaviors which were driven by the three individuals
leading the NBIT platform build, but one other that sticks in my mind from a testing
perspective was relating to the fact that the Horizon Test and NBIT test teams were
situated in the same building along the same corridor. When I took over the team, I told
the team to extend every bit of assistance and collaboration to the NBIT team to break
down some ‘walls’ which had been built up between the two areas of the business.
18.A driver in this was that I am a big believer in collaborating but also from a more practical
perspective I was concerned that one day the Horizon Test team would be expected to
take on the NBIT platform and would need to be empowered with as much knowledge as
possible before that time. They also could provide a lot of value to the inexperienced
NBIT testing team who were (I believe) completely contractor based and would often
come to the Horizon test team to ask for guidance on Branch processes.
19. Ultimately, I ordered the team to adopt a clear open-door policy. This was unfortunately
not reciprocated as the NBIT door was quite literally locked by order of Gareth Clark and
Horizon team members were barred from entering. I had heard this from numerous
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sources including staff from Accenture and I was around that time approached by one of
my test managers Sarah Birch who was quite upset as she informed me that Gareth
Clark when challenged about this attitude and order of a locked door, had accused the
Horizon team of ‘stealing items’ from the NBIT team. This was both a ridiculous and
unfounded accusation and in my opinion was symptomatic of the hyper aggressive
attitude Gareth Clark took to any attempts to look at NBIT in anything other than an
extremely controlled manner.
20. Two Accenture Test Leads named Andy McCallister and Dan Perrin both confirmed to
me that they had been ordered by the NBIT Director - at that time Gareth Clark, to have
zero involvement with anyone from Horizon.
21.These are just some of the examples of the culture of secrecy around NBIT, which I have
absolute belief was driven by the fact that I felt that the platform was clearly being poorly
managed and misrepresented in its governance and reporting of its spend, progress,
bugs and defects and build quality to board. This led me to make some decisions
regarding speaking to senior executives which I will refer to later in my statement.
Remediation of the Horizon Solution and the NBIT Platform
22.1n addition to this it was also my opinion Horizon has been critically underfunded for
some time and therefore budget which has been provided as part of the Horizon
remediation has been looked at very critically. This was exacerbated by what I would
describe as extremely bullish behavior from Gareth Clark and Nick Beal especially who
would argue that Horizon was about to be replaced by NBIT in 2025.
23.1 felt anger at this attitude because I received a lot of hearsay evidence saying that
neither they nor Zdravko Mladenov believed this. As a result, decisions around Horizon
24.
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funding were in my opinion completely flawed as the assumption was that it was only
ever going to be of any benefit until 2025.
My first experience with this was within the forums which took place called HDRF -which
was the Horizon Design Review Forum chaired by Jeff Smyth. The purpose of this
forum was to view analysis work done by the HSI team on problems and issues that had
been identified and then discuss options. Consequences were examined and the
options were either to do something about the issue now as part of Horizon remediation,
to defer the problem to the ‘BAU’ business function, to wait for the NBIT platform or to do
nothing.
I found this forum to be problematic because there ultimately was no ‘BAU’ function
within the business so decisions pushed this way ultimately seemed to mean ‘we will
perhaps get round to it at some point in the future — funding permitting’. I also found the
critical nature of NBIT senior management who would often object to any Horizon
remediation was often done with a little too much vigor. It felt as if they were competing
for the budget. The main individuals who made these representations to not do work on
Horizon were Gareth Clark and Nick Beal. It is also my belief that both individuals were
very much aware of the issues and concerns that many people within the NBIT space
shared concerning the state of the platform and how many problems it had. The NBIT
senior management would regularly make proclamations about NBIT going live across
the estate in 2025. I was very much aware that this was not believed in the slightest
behind ‘closed doors.’ I have seen emails and notes to this effect even going back to
early 2022 so they should be both disclosable and findable for the inquiry.
The HDRF forum took an initial list of issues that were identified — a significant proportion
of which could cause potential detriment to Postmasters and from memory only about
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30% were approved to fix within Horizon. A significant amount was pushed to NBIT for
them to address and others to ‘BAU’. Asmall number were deemed to not be issues at
all or something that we were commercially or contractually required to do.
27. Ultimately a list was created from HDRF and this was what was decided to be ‘in scope’
for Horizon remediation.
28.Around this time, I also recall bringing up the issue of usability on Horizon and suggested
that making some user interface changes on Horizon in parallel with NBIT would not only
improve the user experience for postmasters now, but also reduce risk in the retraining
of a new system as the systems would be more similar.
29.1 distinctly recall having this conversation with then NBIT Head of Product Brian Hogg,
who was another contractor who has since left the business. I was quite disturbed when
he made the comment (and had done so to others) that ‘we did not want to make it so
Postmasters don’t want to change to NBIT’ or words to that effect. This made it very
clear that what would benefit postmasters was far from a priority to the NBIT leadership.
30.1 was also later involved along with Horizon Programme Manager Wayne Little and
Horizon Chief Architect Sally Rush in an exercise working through all the items for
remediation which essentially revisited the HDRF decisions in the summer of 2022.
This involved the three of us working together to explain in ‘layman's terms’ what each
potential change meant, whether it could feasibly cause detriment, financial or otherwise
to a postmaster and to ultimately report back to the senior management to make
decisions on this.
31. Solicitors from Norton Rose Fulbright (NRF) were used to give us clear criteria to
32.
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benchmark our work on. This included clarification on what constitutes financial
detriment for example, so we had a steer on how to prioritize items. I distinctly recall
having some rather long and challenging calls with NRF whereby I questioned the
difference between potential financial discrepancy and actual financial discrepancy, and
also about what I called the chain of causation where it was my belief that other issues
not covered via their own definition of financial discrepancy could in fact ultimately result
in financial discrepancy after a plausible series of events.
Ultimately, we followed the definition to the letter under the instruction of Dan Zinner,
who at that time was heading up this piece of work. I do not recall exactly what role Dan
Zinner had in the organization at that time as I had previously believed he had left, but he
was what I would describe as extremely aggressive in challenging NRF definitions, and it
felt like he was working to reduce the scope of the work that would need to be done. I
also recall stating on a call with him and the rest of the team that it was my belief we
should be making all the changes we have identified. This was categorically and
robustly rejected by Dan Zinner. I made a note of this at the time and can provide it to
the inquiry if required.
Ultimately Sally Rush, Wayne Little and I provided a list to a senior team including Dan
Zinner, Tracy Marshall, Chrysanthy Pispinis and Tim McInnes with recommended
changes based on the criteria given to us by NRF — including risk of financial detriment
and an opinion on if the Postmaster could have realistically identified the loss — amongst
other criteria.
It was clear to me that the suggested scope of work was not popular within the senior
management and then a further exercise was undertaken by Tracy Marshall
(representing Retail) and Chrysanthy Pispinis (representing Commercial) whereby the
35.
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list of suggested remediation items was significantly reduced. It felt extremely clear to
me that Tracy Marshall was leading this piece of work.
The findings of this scoping exercise were also discussed on a call on Friday 2nd
September 2022 where then Horizon IT Director Simon Oldnall and I were in a room in
the Chesterfield Post Office building and Sally Rush joined from a meeting in London.
Also present remotely were Tim McInnes, Chrysanthy Pispinis, Tracy Marshall and Jo
Welch. I remember clearly that Tim stated on this call that we are ‘not doing what we
should, but what we can afford.’ I made a note of this at the time and believe from
conversation that Sally Rush and Simon Oldnall also did. I do not recall this appearing in
the meeting notes made afterwards.
As part of my role, I became a little more involved with dealing directly with Fujitsu in
March 2023 and that was primarily speaking with Jon Dowell (Horizon Programme
Manager) and Dan Walton (Delivery Executive). This was to talk about our priorities
which had a rough 4-tiered approach as decreed by Jeff Smyth. These were: -
36.4. Horizon Remediation work
36.5. Belfast fortification — including audit sans
36.6. BAU — any other Horizon work
36.7. NBIT related
I found that Fujitsu were not at all used to or comfortable with the questions I was asking
concerning their own lists of work, what staff they were using on different pieces of work
and breakdown of costs. Some of the amounts which were quoted were what I would
call staggering figures, and it was extremely challenging to get visibility on any
breakdown or ‘science’ behind the quotes. I raised this concern to our commercial team
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and was told that the contracts in place between Post Office and Fujitsu were very
restrictive and did not allow Post Office to get as much visibility as I would have liked.
38.1 also distinctly recall speaking to both Dan and Jon whilst frustrated at the costs and
timescales that were being quoted. It was explained to me that the Post Office account
for Fujitsu was one which had limited numbers of people, many of which with any real
knowledge of the system moving into retirement and it was not a popular account for
Fujitsu staff to move into due to the old technology being used. I stated that talking
openly with them, I felt that Post Office was being treated as a pure ‘cash cow’ by Fujitsu
and that if it was me sat on the ‘Fujitsu side’ then I would fully expect an instruction for
work quotes to be extremely high with minimal work in return as it is not in Fujitsu long
term interest to be particularly helpful where there is so little accountability due to lack of
visibility or rationale needing to be shown concerning quotes. I recall Dan shrugging his
shoulders and he and Jon did not confirm my suspicions, but neither did they dispute
them. Sally Rush was also present on this call.
Raising concerns about Horizon Remediation and the NBIT Platform
39.1 have attended the Horizon Inquiry in person on a few occasions and it was during one
of these occasions that I sat next to Al Cameron, Chief Finance Officer for Post Office.
During this time, I took opportunity to speak to him about some of my concerns about:
39.1. Lack of funding towards remediating Horizon
39.2. Mismanagement and perceived dishonesty from NBIT management around
progress, scope and issues
40.1 also thought that it may be an opportunity to try and speak about what I perceived as a
lack of innovation, concerns about training strategy for NBIT and opportunities around
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introducing a concept I had drafted called the Postmaster Covenant which I believed
would go a good way towards fixing cultural issues within the business. Ultimately, I
wanted to present issues to him but also solutions.
4
-For reference — the Postmaster Covenant which I also sent and later discussed with Nick
Read on a 1-2-1 call on 23rd June 2023 was summarized below: My proposal for the
Postmaster Covenant was to gain representation from the NFSP along with any other
Postmasters who wished to sign the agreement assuring that POL will make all
endeavors to adhere to the conditions listed below. POL will act expeditiously in our
communications with Postmasters should it be assumed that POL be unable to fulfill any
of the conditions.
41.1. Our new platform will NOT go live without having at least the same
functionality to support branch profitability as is within the end-of-life Horizon
platform. POL will endeavor to deliver greater, richer functionality supporting
branch profitability within the new platform within the first 6 months of go-live than
will exist within the sunset version of Horizon.
41.2. POL will look to support Postmasters through online assistance via shared
screen (recorded remote assistance) to help postmasters who struggle with the
new platform. (15 of 16 postmasters I spoke to told me that they were very
concerned about learning a new system and I was concerned about the current
NBIT approach to training.)
41.3. POL will provide timelines and scope to Postmasters around exactly what will
be delivered within the new platform and when via a remote access live roadmap.
This will form the baseline for the understanding of postmasters around the new
platform and also have an ideas portal where ALL postmasters will be able to help
shape their future platform, the products offered, strategic direction and truly feel
that they have a voice.
43.
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42.My thought process was that the content within this ‘covenant’ would address my major
concerns for the NBIT platform and that by pushing this to Al Cameron and Nick Read
that their endorsement (or not) would indicate their level of awareness, understanding
and knowledge around the problems NBIT were clearly facing. The ideal situation for me
would be that this would be presented as a means to get NBIT back on track and
enhance trust in Post Office by being transparent about the current status, scope and
timescales of the new platform.
I met with Al Cameron at his office on 31st May 2023. It was just a one-to-one meeting.
The first thing I established was if he was happy having a very open and honest
conversation which could include sensitive content. He agreed. He asked what my
concerns were and I firstly stated that I believed that the funding provided around
Horizon remediation was insufficient and that was should be fully remediating the
platform for three primary reasons, namely that it was entirely the correct thing to do for
the postmasters, that the cost to fully remediate Horizon based on the criteria taken to
HDRF was roughly equal the cost of two months of the NBIT Programme and that NBIT
was extremely likely in my opinion to be significantly late from the information I had seen
and heard.
.I also pointed out that hundreds of postmasters retire or leave each year and every year
we delay fixing issues for them was another huge set of postmasters we were ‘writing
off.
Al then stated that he fully supported any decisions made by Tim Mcinnes relating to
funding granted to the remediation of Horizon. He also asked what concerns I had about
the NBIT Programme.
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46.1 stated that I had been told by several people on the NBIT Programme that the ‘reality’
of the state of the platform was far worse than what was reported. There was talk about
hiding bugs and issues and relaxing security requirements to ensure that delivery dates
were met. I knew that Zdravko Mladenov and Gareth Clark had both gone against
robust security opposition to going live with a NBIT release. I had been informed this by
Dean Bessell who was the acting CISO. I also knew that this was likely bonus related as
Gareth had actually said so on meetings and I had been told by individuals who did not
want to be identified who were there in person. As such this is hearsay. I stated I was
extremely concerned about what I understood to be the training strategy which ultimately
meant there was a plan to remotely train postmasters and if they didn’t do it or pass, then
they simply would not have access to the system. This shocked me and I stated that I
fundamentally did not agree with this strategy.
47.1 stated that the lack of innovation was concerning as the opportunity was there to do so
much more with a new platform build and outlined a high level plan around how Post
Office could begin to emulate successful organizations such as Swiss Post. I said I was
deeply concerned about the proportion of contractors on the NBIT Programme and the
dangers that could create. I also asked him if he was aware that there was technology
that would be used within NBIT that exists currently within Horizon and the perception of
a fully new technical build was not entirely correct. I had been informed of this by Chief
Architect Sally Rush who was adamant about this. He stated that he did not believe this
was the case. I asked what a solicitor within the inquiry would say if he stated his belief
that NBIT was an entirely new technical solution and did not use any parts of the existing
Horizon platform and if this was later shown to be incorrect. He did not respond.
48. I also asked if there were plans for an e-forensic assessment to perform due diligence
on NBIT if NBIT data was to ever be used in future to support prosecutions. He did not
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know. Al Cameron did not speak much concerning NBIT but did say that NBIT was the
only option for Post Office and without it he indicated that Post Office would cease to
exist. I distinctly recall him using the term ‘NBIT or bust.’ I stated I did not agree with
this and there were other options available to us. The conversation became fairly heated
when I stated that I felt that many people in the senior leadership of the Post Office were
sharing this sentiment more because of the fact they did not want to admit to making a
£250 million mistake and it was much easier to say it was the only option. I stated that I
felt that he and others were ‘doubling down’ on a bad decision. I likened it to the Horizon
scenario where senior leadership had apparently taken a view of ‘we have spent too
much to stop now.’
49. He stated that he supported the training strategy to which I replied that with all due
respect he would not be here in Post Office to have to face the consequences of that
decision. I disagreed saying that I (and others) felt that other options were available
such as an evolution of the current platform — considering the level of problem diagnosis
we now had or indeed a procurement of a solution akin to ones used by Swiss Post or
other commercial off the shelf platforms.
50. The conversation then moved again to current Horizon remediation, and it was again
stressed to me that we were to keep the conversation from ever leaving the room. He
stated that ‘We have a problem with Simon Oldnall’ and he asked for my opinion and the
job Simon was doing. I understood this to be a request for information or support to
undermine Simon Oldnall who I knew was regularly making reservations and appeals for
greater emphasis and funding towards remediating Horizon. He was also raising what I
felt were entirely legitimate concerns about NBIT circumventing governance and some of
the decisions being made.
51.
52.
53.
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I stated that Simon Oldnall was in my opinion a person of great integrity and was one of
the few senior managers in my opinion who was acting for the benefit of the Postmasters
first and foremost. I said it was my opinion that the organization needed people like
Simon to address what I believed to be a toxic culture. It was extremely clear to me that
this was not what Al Cameron wanted me to say, and it also became clear that he then
wanted to conclude our meeting expeditiously at that point.
I also stated to him that whilst we were both speaking freely that I felt that he and a
number of others had adopted a stance of both ‘seeing no evil and hearing no evil’
relating to NBIT issues and mismanagement and again mentioned that he was ‘doubling
down on a bad bet’. These were the exact words that I used, and I explained that I felt
that many individuals would not or could not acknowledge the wrongdoing,
mismanagement and spend on NBIT without admitting that they were wrong. Our
meeting then concluded.
I also had a one-to-one with Nick Read which was done remotely on 23rd June 2023 and
was arranged after I messaged him wanting to speak about the same concerns which I
outlined to Al Cameron.
Ultimately my driving factor in doing this was to have a clear conscience about what I felt
was almost criminal misspending of public money and an enormous, wasted opportunity.
I had seen a clear culture of not wishing to ‘upset the apple cart’ within the Post Office
and did not and will not be part of that culture. At this stage I had also heard internal
sources within the SPM Programme that there was some very unusual activity around
spend and some of the contractors who were being employed who were ‘friends of
friends’ - particularly ex-McKinsey colleagues of Zdravko and also from individuals within
the business effectively building empires within their business areas by seconding
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people onto the Programme and then backfilling the roles with permanent staff so that
they could effectively increase their remit.
55. I said to Nick Read that I believed that he and the board were being misinformed by the
NBIT management - specifically Zdravko Mladenov and Gareth Clark- concerning the
realities of what was happening within the Programme and the state, spend and scope of
the platform. I received this information from many people within the NBIT team who
asked me to remain anonymous. I had been informed that security related requirements
were being relaxed and that scope was continuously being reduced and that contributory
factors to this included the Accenture spend and also individuals being able to receive
personal bonuses based on NBIT delivery related objectives. Again, I relayed all this to
Nick Read.
56.1 asked him if he was aware that the ‘Go-Live’ NBIT platform had been confirmed to have
significantly less functionality, product offerings and capability than Horizon due to the
refusal of the NBIT management to commit to adding in capability which was being
worked on within Horizon. He said he was not. I asked how that would look when the
decision directly contradicts the number one priority of the Post Office of improving
branch profitability or the number two priority of rebuilding trust. Or the number three
priority of transforming technology - presumably for the better. Nick asked me what I!
would do if I was in his situation and the exact words I used were ‘I'd be pissed off and
hold people accountable’ I was speaking about my belief that he was being misinformed
about the state of the NBIT platform, and that I would perform a ‘deep dive’ into my
options as the conversation with him suggested that he did not feel that he was being
presented with different realistic options.
57.After our meeting concluded I spent some weeks waiting for actions to take place as
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Nick had assured me that he will be acting upon this information. At that time, I was
hopeful of perhaps POL ‘turning things around.’
58. It was not long after this that I became aware of investigations that took place into Gareth
Clark and Zdravko Mladenov and I provided content to internal investigators. I also was
aware of a number of other individuals who had been approached - mostly as they had
told me personally on a one to one basis. By this time - my rather vocal opposition to
some of the activities taking place had led me to be approached by some people within
POL who I think saw me as a like-minded justifiably concerned individual. Others clearly
were not happy about my being open with my opinion.
59. Gareth Clark left the business very suddenly whilst this investigation was nearing its
conclusion and a number of other people within the NBIT space also left although I
remained confused by the lack of control over the target operating model under Zdravko
which consistently allowed individuals who were permanent staff members to leave and
then contract at POL. One individual who moved from permanent to contractor was Ben
Cooke who was a Director in the digital space. I found this very unusual as my
understanding was that he had been deemed responsible for some significant security
breaches allowing access of sensitive content overseas. Ben Cooke left not long
afterwards.
60. In August 2023 we had a new Chief Transformation Officer named Chris Brocklesby join
the business. My understanding was that he was and remains a contractor and reports
directly to Nick Read. Zdravko Mladenov then reported to Chris and my belief at the time
was that he was going to make an assessment with the assistance of Accenture on the
state of the NBIT platform with a view to whether or not to continue. I was perhaps
overly suspicious of this activity as Accenture were responsible for the NBIT build and as
such it felt a lot like they would be ‘marking their own homework’ and I was aware that
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62.
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Chris Brocklesby had been a partner in Accenture in the past.
-Regardless of this, the Programme continued despite what became more and more
vocal opposition from both within the NBIT team and within other areas of the business
which became even more confusing to me when I had heard that a provider called
Escher, who had been a bidder on a procurement exercise I had been involved with
nearly 2 years before, had approached POL and said they could fully replace Horizon
and also remove the need to further extend the supplier relationship with Fujitsu for
under £30 million.
I was well aware that the costs of finishing NBIT as well as extending with Fujitsu due to
the new expected go live date of 2028 was likely to be over £1 billion. I simply could not
understand the decision making around the continuation of NBIT - especially considering
the fact that at that stage they had significant credibility issues around their reporting,
had significantly overspent, and their build quality was by all accounts regarded as very
poor. They also had very serious defects which they were not particularly transparent
with the wider business around.
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