Racist Post Office documents about Horizon victims used until 2013 – review

Post Office documents containing “utterly abhorrent” racist terms to describe wrongfully convicted subpostmasters were used internally and updated as recently as 2013, according to an internal investigation.

The delivery giant launched the probe last year after documents obtained by Horizon scandal campaigners found fraud investigators were asked to group suspects based on racial features.

Between 2000 and 2015, more than 700 subpostmasters were prosecuted based on information from Fujitsu’s faulty Horizon accounting system used in Post Offices.

Lawyers for the company also shared the documents amid investigation into Horizon as recently as 2019.

A document used by the company’s security team used identity codes, each of which with language to describe a person’s ethnic origin, for potential suspects.

One description used the outdated term “negroid types”.

Other archaic and offensive terms were used to describe individuals such as “Siamese” and “Malaya”, as well as “Chinese/Japanese types”.

Karen McEwan, group chief people at the Post Office, said: “The language used was utterly abhorrent, and I would like to reiterate Post Office’s condemnation of its usage.

“Since joining the business in September 2023, I have been actively supporting the ongoing efforts to change the culture of the organisation.

“We have a zero tolerance policy towards racism and any form of discrimination, and actively work to create an environment where every colleague feels valued and respected.”

The investigation found an email document using this language dating back to 2008.

The language was copied from documentation from 1987, with the review finding the identity coding was first used by UK police in the 1970s.

However, it added that an employee who worked in the security and investigations department at Royal Mail Group and the Post Office was “linked to the document in 2009 and 2019”. The Post Office was part of Royal Mail until 2012.

A document using offensive identity codes was most recently used internally and amended in 2013, the review said.

The company was led by Paula Vennells at the time, who has since handed back her CBE amid the fallout of the scandal.

The review found the identity code documents were most recently included as an attachment in an email in May 2019 for lawyers.

It stressed, however, that “certainly by 2019 the document’s appearance in email appears to be wholly historic”, with the file unopened.

Jeremy Scott-Joynt, a barrister at Outer Temple Chambers, who was external counsel to the Project May investigation, said he believed it was “unlikely” the use of the identity codes “put people with any specific ethnicity at a particular disadvantage”.

However, he added that the fact offensive language survived in documentation “might indicate a tendency to be blind to any ethnic partiality” during investigations linked to the Horizon scandal.

Juliet Lang, leadership and culture director at Post Office, said: “The report is an extremely hard read, and rightly so – the language used in the document was unacceptable and it is imperative that we understand how it came to be.

“Today’s Post Office is focused wholeheartedly on fostering a culture of respect and inclusion for all colleagues, and over the years we have made significant progress to strengthen our D&I (diversity and inclusion) processes, educate colleagues and ensure robust processes are in place.”

An inquiry into the Horizon scandal is ongoing.