Post office investigators were set targets for recovering money from postmasters, Horizon inquiry hears

Sign up for the View from Westminster e mail for skilled evaluation straight to your inbox

Get our free View from Westminster e mail

A former Post Office investigator has revealed he was set a goal by the Post Office to get well money from subpostmasters accused of false accounting and theft.

Robert Daily, who was concerned within the legal investigation of two wrongly convicted subpostmasters who died earlier than their convictions were overturned, stated he had been given a private goal of recovering 40 per cent of money from those that were accused.

A doc proven on the inquiry revealed Mr Daily had exceeded his goal. But he claimed he wasn’t rewarded by the Post Office and wouldn’t have essentially have been marked down had he failed to satisfy this goal.

Documents confirmed to the inquiry afterward additionally revealed that “loss recovery” targets has risen to 65 per cent in 2013/14.

Post Office branded paperwork learn: “To ensure a robust approach to fraud loss recovery with a return rate of 65 per cent”.

Evidence given by Mr Daily appeared to counsel that the targets were linked to bonuses.

The counsel to the inquiry stated: “It appears here that the target for loss recovery has increased since the 2009 one-to-one meeting record we looked at and then you were over target at 40 per cent. And here the objective is 65 per cent.

Is that right, that the target was increased by the Post Office?”

Mr Daily stated: “I believe that target was increased after I was sent a document for my objectives for 2010.

“I can’t remember if it was 2013 to 2014 or 2011 to 2012, but it was in the figure of 65 per cent.”

One postmaster that Mr Daily helped examine, Peter Holmes, finally pleaded responsible to 4 counts of false accounting and was sentenced to a group order. He died from a mind tumour in October 2015 earlier than his conviction was posthumously quashed.

Mr Daily was requested a few interval in November 2009 when he was the only real investigator in Scotland. He instructed the inquiry he felt beneath strain to refer circumstances attributable to mounting backlogs, however that he didn’t assume it affected the standard of the staff’s work.

He additionally instructed how the Post Office’s authorized staff handed circumstances on to prosecuters in Scotland with out being certified in Scots legislation.

The inqury heard how Mr Daily believed he and different investigators were “not adequately supported” earlier than a solicitor agency was introduced in to advise in 2013.