Former minister felt she was fighting department over Post Office controversy

The government department responsible for the Post Office “lost objectivity” as it managed enquiries from MPs about allegations made against the Horizon computer system, according to a former business minister.

During the latest Post Office scandal public inquiry hearing, Conservative peer Lucy Neville-Rolfe was questioned about her time as a minister when she oversaw the Post Office in 2015/16. Like ministers appearing before the inquiry earlier this week, she reeled off examples of her questions about the Horizon scandal not being answered by the civil servants that were supposed to be supporting her.

The department formerly known as Shareholder Executive (ShEx), now UK Government Investments (UKGI), “lost its objectivity” in regard to the unfolding Post Office Horizon scandal, she told the inquiry.

During her time as minister in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), she was contacted by MPs raising concerns about problems being experienced by constituents who were subpostmasters – most notably former MPs James Arbuthnot, North East Hampshire; Kevan Jones, North Durham; and Andrew Bridgen, North West Leicestershire. The three MPs were early campaigners on behalf of subpostmasters.

Neville-Rolfe described an environment where the Post Office and ShEx civil servants were talking behind her back, and one where the department had “a foot in the Post Office camp”. She said that when she asked questions, rather than civil servants investigate claims, they would receive information directly from Post Office.

Her evidence mirrors that of former coalition government ministers Ed Davey and Jo Swinson, and adds weight to Sir Alan Bates’ blame of government officials for large parts of the Horizon scandal.   

Neville-Rolfe said that she gave civil servants lots of openings for them to provide information, but said all they did was take advice from the Post Office because they felt it could give the answers. “That is not what you do. As a good civil servant, you look at different sources,” she said.

In her witness statement, she said that she did not have any concerns early on about the information and advice ShEx provided, but that her “faith in the objectivity and impartiality of advice began to wane”.

She wrote in her statement: “They [ShEx] continually repeated the same mantra, and in the later stages it felt like I was having to fight them. They seemed closed to the possibility that all was not as it seemed, and seemed to be doing what they could to ignore my steers or reverse my direction of travel.”

She said that during her time as minister, she began to lose confidence in ShEx’s advice and requested senior official support from outside the department, but this was not provided.

The inquiry heard from Neville-Rolfe that ShEx would “try to deflect” the minister, and accused ShEx of having a “foot in Post Office camp”, with ShEx officials and Post Office executives talking behind her back.

She added that she is now aware, although she wasn’t at the time, that Post Office communications head Mark Davies and his team regularly worked together with ShEx to “produce briefings sent to me and other ministers, which … could have had implications for objectivity”. 

Like former coalition government minister Jo Swinson, Neville-Rolfe also raised as a possible contributing factor the issue that many ShEx civil servants came from commercial backgrounds rather than the traditional pool of talent for civil servants.

Swinson told the inquiry earlier this week: “I think while there is a need to have relevant commercial experience when you are dealing with companies, that mindset of public service is an incredibly important part of what needs to be present in all civil servants, even when dealing with commercial matters.”

The Post Office scandal was first exposed by Computer Weekly in 2009, revealing the stories of seven subpostmasters and the problems they suffered due to accounting software. It is one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British history (see below for timeline of Computer Weekly articles about the scandal, since 2009).

• Also read: What you need to know about the Horizon scandal
• Also watch: ITV’s documentary – Mr Bates vs The Post Office: The real story