Post chief ‘must now face justice over IT scandal’
Ex-postmaster lost marriage and home
A FORMER sub-postmaster who lost his marriage, home and business after being wrongly accused of stealing £17,500 yesterday demanded Post Office executives face justice.
Chris Dawson, 48, wept as he told the inquiry into the Post Office’s flawed IT system that he was left unable to provide for his children after being accused of theft and suspended.
He said he was eventually declared insolvent, left struggling with depression and only able to make ends meet by working washing dishes as his reputation was in tatters after the false accusations.
However, the £17,500 was never missing from the premises he ran at Pitlochry, Perthshire, and the supposed shortfall had been caused by a glitch in the Horizon IT system. Yesterday Mr Dawson told retired High Court judge Sir Wyn Williams, who is leading the inquiry, he wants to see ex-chief executive Paula Vennells, who ran the Post Office from 2012 to 2019, and other senior executives face justice over the scandal.
He said: ‘I want to see Paula Vennells among other senior officials face the full weight of the law in a similar manner to that which was so eagerly dealt out.’ More than 700 sub-postmasters were prosecuted between 2000 and 2014 on the basis of supposed shortfalls detected by Horizon in what has been described as the UK’s most widespread miscarriage of justice.
Mr Dawson – now self-employed providing care for vulnerable elderly people – did not face prosecution but was interrogated by ‘bully boy’ Post Office investigators.
The father of two daughters, aged eight and 11 at the time, was one of four former and current sub-postmasters to give evidence to the inquiry in Glasgow yesterday.
He broke down in tears as he said: ‘A father should be able to provide for his kids and for a long period I wasn’t able to do that.’
Mr Dawson, who resigned from the Post Office in 2010, added: ‘I was still living in Pitlochry and a lot of people had an assumption of guilt. It was a very dark time.’