Ex-Post Office boss sought ‘non-emotive words’ for Horizon bugs, inquiry hears

The former Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells and other senior executives searched for “non-emotive” words to describe computer bugs found in the company’s Horizon IT system in an “absolutely Orwellian” use of language, a public inquiry has heard.

The inquiry is investigating why the Post Office hounded and prosecuted post office operators for more than a decade because of shortfalls in their branch accounts. It has since emerged that these discrepancies were due to IT problems in the Horizon computer system.

Susan Crichton, a former senior lawyer at the Post Office between 2010 and 2013, told the inquiry that an independent investigation by the forensic accountants Second Sight had identified bugs in Horizon by July 2013.

The inquiry was shown an email by Vennells, sent in July 2013 to Mark Davies, the Post Office’s then head of communications, in which Vennells said she had asked her “engineer/computer literate husband” to help find a “non-emotive word for computer bugs”.

Her email to Davies read: “My engineer/computer literate husband sent the following reply to the question: ‘What is a non-emotive word for computer bugs, glitches, defects that happen as a matter of course?’”

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