Post Office in turmoil as top lawyer Ben Foat steps back

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Foat has taken a leave of absence on full pay from his role
It comes as investigation into miscarriage of justice enters final phase
Post Office prosecuted hundreds of innocent post-masters and post-mistresses

The Post Office has plunged into more turmoil after the lawyer leading its response to the Horizon IT inquiry stepped back.

Ben Foat has taken a leave of absence on full pay from his role as the group's general counsel – the top in-house legal role at the taxpayer-owned organisation.

It comes as the independent investigation into the biggest miscarriage of justice in British legal history is about to enter its final phase.

The scandal saw the Post Office prosecute hundreds of innocent post-masters and post-mistresses following the introduction of the faulty Horizon computer system.

More than 700 of them were wrongly prosecuted and jailed for theft, false accounting and other offences between 1999 and 2015 in cases brought by the Post Office using flawed data.

Many more were bankrupted and suffered terrible stress and public shame based on evidence from the supposedly 'secure' £1 billion Horizon software system.

Thousands of victims are still awaiting compensation.

News that Foat has stepped back is the latest spin of the revolving door in the Post Office boardroom.

The Mail on Sunday revealed last week that chief executive Nick Read will keep his full salary despite his deputy being drafted to do his day job while he prepares for the last stage of the Horizon inquiry, which is due to begin in September.

The £60,000 Read is set to receive over seven weeks is slightly more than the £54,000 bonus he was forced to hand back for his previous work on the Horizon inquiry amid a public outcry.

Read has also faced calls to quit over a letter in which he said the Post Office would stand by the prosecution of more than half of the sub-postmasters convicted in the Horizon scandal.

MPs on the business and trade committee expressed a lack of confidence in his leadership, accusing him of giving misleading evidence.

Read also came under fire from the Post Office's former human resources director for being 'obsessed' about his pay, which last year totalled £573,000.

He also denied a claim made by former Post Office chairman Henry Staunton that he had threatened to resign unless he was paid more than £1 million. Staunton was sacked by former business secretary Kemi Badenoch in January.

He was dismissed after claiming the Government had stalled compensation payouts to sub-postmasters until after the airing of the hit ITV drama Mr Bates Vs The Post Office starring Toby Jones that month.

More upheaval followed last month when finance director Alisdair Cameron retired with an estimated £1.2 million pay-off after being off sick since last year amid a reported clash with Read.

Foat, 45, was forced to apologise to the public inquiry last year after a document surfaced which used racist terms about wrongly convicted sub postmasters, referring to some of them as 'Negroid types'.

The document was circulated among Post Office staff as recently as 2019.

It was a guide for fraud investigators, who were asked to group suspects based on racial features from the colonial era of the 1800s which refers to people of African descent.

Foat also came under fire from inquiry chairman Sir Wyn Williams for the Post Office's late disclosure of evidence, including the controversial racial profiling document.

'It is clear to me that the evidence he (Foat) has provided to me both in writing and orally is largely dependent upon his understanding of information provided to him by others,' Williams said.

Foat was due to give further evidence last month.

The session was cancelled at the last minute after an inquiry team member fell ill.

Foat is now due to appear at the inquiry in the autumn.

The Post Office confirmed that Foat is 'temporarily away from the business'.

'We cannot comment on individual employment matters,' a spokesman added.

He is being replaced by legal director Sarah Gray who will take up Foat's day-to-day duties on an interim basis.

John Dillon, former legal director at lottery operator Camelot, has been appointed as interim general counsel for the Horizon probe, the Post Office added.

Read, meanwhile, is being replaced on an interim basis by Owen Woodley, the Post Office's deputy chief executive.