Post Office scandal: David Mills says government won’t accept end to Horizon software

The government will not accept faulty accounting software Horizon being phased out, a former Post Office chief executive has told an inquiry into the wrongful prosecution of deputy postmasters.

The investigation aims to find out who knew the contents of an erroneously generated accounting computer program when Economic losses to the post office branches across the UK, resulting in hundreds of sub-postmasters running the branches being convicted of theft and false accounting.

Due to Horizon’s error, many other deputy postmasters Lose your home, move out of your communityand became unwell due to huge debts and his reputation was ruined.

‘Losing £1m a day’

But former Post Office chief executive David Mills told the inquiry on Tuesday that the Post Office’s financial health in the early to mid-2000s was a focus for the company and the government that owns it.

When he took over the job in 2002, “Post Office Limited was insolvent. It was a crisis,” he said.

“It didn’t take long for me to realize we had a burning ship. It was losing £1 million every day it operated.”

Mills said it was impossible for Horizon to be phased out due to its financial situation, even though it was “not fit for purpose”.

“This will be a huge write-off for the government and a huge hit to the profits of a company that is already bankrupt.

“It is clear that Horizon will not be written off, nor will it be closed. No one in government or the wider environment will accept that,” he added.

‘Focus more on solvency than prosecution’

The issue of Horizon had been raised at the time, but there were shortcomings.

However, Mills said the Post Office was “certainly more focused on solvency than prosecution”.

“It took me at least six months to really understand what was going on… I had no briefing on it. I had no documents, no one told me what was going on. I had to try and discover everything. I did all these things myself,” he said.

“Even the building’s security team didn’t expect me to come. On the first day, I arrived at an empty open-plan office.”

By the time he quit in 2005, Mr Mills had received more than £2 million in salary and bonuses.

It would be another 10 years before prosecutions based on Horizon data were concluded, and another 14 years before the deputy postmaster’s victims received an apology.