Post Office was urged by external lawyers to ‘suppress’ key document, inquiry hears

The Post Office was urged by its external law firm to “try and suppress” disclosure of a key document for “as long as possible” as branch owner-operators tried to mount legal action against the state-owned postal company, a public inquiry has heard.

Rodric Williams, a senior in-house lawyer at the Post Office, giving evidence to the inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal was asked about an email sent to him in which it was suggested that his employer should withhold disclosing its investigation guidelines as they could harm its defence to a lawsuit brought by post office operators.

The inquiry is looking into how hundreds of these individuals were pursued and prosecuted for more than a decade by the Post Office over alleged financial shortfalls in their branch accounts, which it has since emerged were caused by bugs in the organisation’s Horizon IT system.

The inquiry was told on Thursday that Williams, who is the head of legal (dispute resolution and brand) at the Post Office, was sent an email in 2016 by its external law firm Womble Bond Dickinson (WBD) at the very early stages of the high court lawsuit that paved the way to the convicted post office operators ultimately being exonerated.

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