He said it would be “impossible not to conclude that”, when asked by the inquiry’s lead counsel Jason Beer KC.
Between 1999 and 2015, hundreds of sub-postmasters were wrongly prosecuted when faulty Horizon accounting software made it look as though money was missing from branches.
But in 2017, some 555 sub-postmasters took legal action against the Post Office. In 2019, it agreed to pay them £58m in compensation, but much of the money went on legal fees.
One High Court judgement found the Horizon IT software contained a large number of software defects and was not “remotely robust”. A second – the Horizon Issues Judgement – found serious bugs in the system.
Mr Read told the inquiry that after the High Court judgement was handed down, he started working with Post Office lawyers so there was “more of a realisation from my perspective” as to the scale of the issue compared with the other members of the leadership team.
Mr Read, who will step down from his role next year, stepped back from front-line duties last year to give his “entire attention” to the final stage of the inquiry, which first started in 2022 and has heard evidence from scores of victims and executives.
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