David Smith has suggested he is partly to blame for the Horizon scandal – telling the inquiry it was “very sad” that he did not flag the risk of conducting prosecutions “in-house”.
In his witness statement, the former Post Office managing director wrote of how the “the practice of prosecuting those who have demonstrably been shown to have stolen” from the Post Office were “already well-established long before” his arrival.
Mr Smith added: “I cannot recall thinking that any risk or compliance issues arose from POL [Post Office Ltd] undertaking this role, but with the benefit of hindsight, and in light of the wrongful prosecutions, I can see the inherent risks in the prosecutions taking place ‘in house’ and not by an independent enforcement authority.”
When asked about why he didn’t identify those risks at the time, Mr Smith said: “Well, with hindsight it’s obviously very sad because, had we identified those risks, we might have been able to put in place better control mechanisms, better inspection mechanisms of governance and we didn’t.”
Counsel to the inquiry Sam Stevens asked: “And to what extent did you accept responsibility for not identifying that risk?”
Mr Smith said: “I certainly think I am a part of it. As I said the structures were there before I came.
“They were certainly not changed while I was there and along with the rest of the executive team, we did review the risk registers, we didn’t flag this as a potential new risk to think about.
“But ultimately I managed that process.”
