The Post Office has denied taking a ‘laissez faire’ approach to disclosure to the public inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal despite allowing external lawyers to decide what terms were searched for.

In a one-off evidence session today, the inquiry heard from senior figures at the organisation about the reasons for the disclosure failings which caused delays earlier this year.

The inquiry heard that the Post Office gave ‘broad general authority’ to its external advisers Herbert Smith Freehills and Peters & Peters about how the disclosure exercise was undertaken.

Jason Beer KC, counsel to the inquiry, said that the Post Office took a ‘hands off’ approach, delegating work to an external provider in exactly the same way that the reliance on contractor Fujitsu to design and implement an IT system partly caused the underlying scandal.

Beer said: ‘Although [disclosure] was spoken about in terms of being an important and high priority, a rather laissez faire attitude was taken in terms of the responsibility of the external advisers.’

Diane Wills, inquiry director for Post Office Limited, said that characterisation was not fair, and that the organisation had been entitled to rely on experienced lawyers.

‘We would expect them to be bringing to our attention any issues about which we needed to be addressed,’ Wills told the inquiry. ‘There would always be a certain level of expertise we would expect to rely on our external advisers for in terms of the best way to construct search terms to deliver the best results.’

In July, the inquiry had to be postponed after it was revealed that thousands of potentially relevant documents had not been disclosed. The Post Office also apologised after a document using racial terms for suspects was only made public through a freedom of information request rather than through disclosure.

Beer said there had been an ‘unattractive squabble between highly paid city advisers’ about who was to blame. He asked Wills whether the Post Office had maintained ‘intrusive’ supervision and oversight, and she agreed this had not happened.

Wills confirmed that a ‘disclosure specialist lawyer’ is being appointed from new advisers who will be partly paid through a bonus based on their performance.

Meanwhile, Fintan Canavan, a DAC Beachcroft partner seconded to the inquiry director role before Wills, told the inquiry that the Post Office had originally estimated the proceedings would take no longer than four months.

Immediately on his appointment in 2021, he said, the budget provision had to be increased and in-house team grown, as previously the legal process ‘was not fully understood’. He added that disclosure issues were raised regularly at board level and each new incident ‘greeted with dismay and taken very seriously’.

The hearing continues this afternoon, featuring evidence from Herbert Smith Freehills partner Gregg Rowan.

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