Post Office has corporate amnesia, says victim’s widow

THE widow of a wrongly prosecuted Post Office manager has claimed that witnesses to the public inquiry into the Horizon scandal are suffering from “corporate amnesia” when questioned by lawyers.

Marion Holmes told The Telegraph that watching evidence from other former Post Office investigators at the hearings had “given her more insight” into the stress her late husband was under leading up to his conviction.

She also said she would like to see Robert Daily, a former Post Office investigator who was involved with her late husband’s case, apologise to victims and their families when he gives evidence to the inquiry today, although she added that she was “not holding out hope”.

Peter Holmes, a former police officer, had been the manager of a Post Office branch in Jesmond, Newcastle, for 13 years when he was accused of stealing £46,000 and sacked from his job.

In 2010, the father-of-three pleaded guilty to four counts of false accounting to avoid prison. He was acquitted of theft by direction of the judge.

Mr Holmes was sentenced to a community order with a three-month curfew between 7pm and 7am. Five years after his conviction he died from a brain tumour in October 2015, aged 74, without ever having his conviction overturned and his widow had to wait until April 2021 before his name was finally cleared at the Court of Appeal.

Mrs Holmes, 78, said: “So far, a lot of the witnesses seem to acquire corporate amnesia whenever they are asked a question which could force them to admit they did something wrong.

“Hopefully, Mr Daily will begin by apologising but I am not holding out hope. The investigators and all those involved need to accept the effect they have had on other people’s lives.”

Mr Daily is not the first former Post Office investigator to appear at the inquiry as it investigates the scandal in which more than 900 sub-postmasters were wrongfully prosecuted.

Last December, the inquiry heard from former investigator Gary Thomas, whose witness statement described how investigators were motivated by “bonus objectives” based on the amount of funds recovered.

And earlier this month, investigator Stephen Bradshaw, who is still employed by the Post Office, denied calling a former sub-postmistress a “b***h” and hounding her with “intimidating telephone calls”.

Like many other witnesses at the inquiry, both were unable to remember every detail they were asked about.