Keir Starmer has denied he was aware of Crown Prosecution Service prosecutions against post office operators caught up in the Horizon IT scandal when he headed the agency.
The Labour leader’s comments came as calls grew for the former Post Office boss Paula Vennells to hand back £3m in bonuses earned during her period in charge.
Starmer, who was director of public prosecutions between 2008 and 2013, addressed questions about what he knew about up to 38 prosecutions of post office operators initiated by the CPS.
“No, I wasn’t aware of any of them. I think there was a small number within a 20-year window, that’s all I know,” he said.
“I don’t even now – I think the CPS are helping with inquiries – how many of those may or may not have involved Horizon.”
While the Post Office itself prosecuted hundreds of post office operators based on the faulty Horizon IT system, it has emerged from official reviews that 10 cases taken by the CPS resulted in convictions. Three occurred while Starmer was DPP.
“They didn’t go to his desk,” a Labour spokesperson said.
Separately, pressure continue to mount on Vennells, 64, a day after she announced she would hand back the CBE awarded to her when she headed the Post Office, with Rishi Sunak’s spokesperson signalling he took a dim view of those holding on to bonuses.
“In general terms it would be wrong for businesses or individuals to profit from this miscarriage of justice,” he said.
Kevin Hollinrake, minister for postal services, also conceded in parliament that many would see Vennells serving as a Cabinet Office director during 2019 to 2020 as a “mistake”.
His comments followed a question from Liberal Democrat Daisy Cooper, who said: “Paula Vennells has quite rightly handed back her CBE, but many subpostmasters are asking why she was given it in the first place, and also why she was given a role as director of the Cabinet Office?”
Hollinrake responded: “It clearly was prior to my time in government, but she raises some interesting points, I don’t know the answer to her question. I think with hindsight many people would see that as a mistake, but very happy to take that away.”
After Hollinrake’s comments, the Lib Dems also called on the deputy prime minister, Oliver Dowden, to “come clean” over his failure to sack Vennells. Dowden was Cabinet Office minister in 2019 when a high court judgment was handed down in which a group of 555 post office operators won a group action brought against the Post Office.
The high court ruled that Horizon contained a number of “bugs, errors and defects”, and there was a “material risk” that shortfalls in post office branch accounts were caused by the system.
A Conservative former minister also claimed that while he was in government, Vennells refused to meet him without her lawyer present.
George Freeman, a former business minister, told MPs: “I was never minister for the Post Office, but I remember as a minister in the department being asked to cover for an absent minister, and when refusing to just read out the speech but ask for a proper day of briefings from officials, and asked to meet Paula Vennells, I was told she would refuse to meet me without her lawyer.”
