According to Daniel Thomas and Tom Espiner, Business reporters
EPAThe Post Office has apologized after releasing the names and addresses of 555 postmasters it pursued during the Horizon scandal.
The company confirmed that personal data had been shared in a document on its website and said it had referred it to the Information Commissioner’s Office’s data watchdog.
One former sub-postmaster said the breach had caused “upset, anxiety and anger”, adding that the data breach was “holding people back from trying to heal”.
In response, CEO Nick Read apologized, saying the leak was a “truly terrible mistake”.
It comes as witnesses continue to testify in an inquiry into the scandal, which saw hundreds of sub-postmasters prosecuted for theft between 1999 and 2015 when incorrect information from Horizon accounting software caused money to go missing from their branches.
Other subpostmasters who were not prosecuted were pursued by the Post Office over alleged account losses.
There was a data breach on Wednesday first reported by the Daily Mail and it led to an angry reaction from former subpostmasters.
Former Sub-Postmaster Christopher Head tweeted the text of the letter he wrote to Mr Read and Postmaster General Nigel Railton.
He wrote: “As you can imagine this has caused a great deal of upset, anxiety and anger among those whose data is now in the public domain.”
Many sub-postmasters who “did not share details with their own families” and others who were “extremely traumatized by this whole scandal even today” were affected by the breach, Mr Head wrote.
He later told the BBC that many sub-postmasters suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and were “trying their best to move on”.
“The problem is that we get new scandals within scandals and new revelations almost daily or weekly, which prevents people from trying to heal,” he added.
Responding to Mr Head’s letter, Mr Read said: “This is a truly terrible mistake for which I can only apologize at this stage.”
He added that the Post Office is “expeditingly reviewing the appropriate follow-up actions to be taken” for those people affected by the breach and how to fix the organisation’s processes.
‘Inability’
One former sub-postmaster told the Daily Mail she was “hot”. Wendy Buffrey said the action could “destroy lives” as criminals could now target junior postmasters who had received compensation.
Ron Warmington, a forensic investigator whose firm Second Sight was brought in to examine the Horizon system in 2013, told the Mail it was an “extraordinary breach” of confidentiality and “another example of Post Office incompetence”.
The leaked document contained the names of 555 former subpostmasters who sued the post office in 2017.
In 2019, the firm agreed to pay them £58 million in compensation, but much of the money went to legal fees.
The Post Office said in a statement that the document had been removed from its website.
It reads: “As a matter of urgency, we are investigating how the disclosure occurred. In accordance with our regulatory requirements, we are in the process of reporting the incident to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
An ICO spokesman said: “The Post Office Limited has brought the incident to our attention and we are assessing the information provided.”
Organizations must notify the watchdog of a data breach within 72 hours of becoming aware of it if it poses a “risk to people’s rights and freedoms”.
More than 900 sub-postmasters have been prosecuted for theft over incorrect information from Horizon in what has been called the UK’s most widespread miscarriage of justice.
Many sub-postmasters went to prison for false accounting and theft, and many were financially ruined.