The former chairman of the Post Office has revealed the company’s chief executive is being investigated over allegations raised in an 80-page dossier as he told of “chaos” in the boardroom.
Henry Staunton said that Nick Read, who has run the company since 2019, was facing a “myriad charge sheet” laid out in a whistleblowing complaint filed by an HR director.
Staunton told MPs on the business select committee that Kemi Badenoch’s claim that he was the subject of a formal investigation into bullying was misleading, as the complaint concerned “politically incorrect comments attributed to me which I strenuously deny”.
In evidence, he revealed it was Read who was the primary subject of an investigation, launched on the back of claims made by an outgoing HR director with whom he had fallen out.
He claimed he had been the target of a “smear campaign” led by the business secretary, as he fought back against her claim he had told “lies”. Staunton, who was sacked as chairman in January, said he had “spoken up on matters of genuine public concern”, but had been fired and had his reputation publicly attacked.
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The exchange, during a five-hour session, led one MP, Jonathan Gullis, to reply: “That’s blown my mind.” He added: “For postmasters across the country this is looking like a complete shambles.”
In response to the claims, a business department source said: “Henry Staunton has been nothing but a distraction against our work to get justice and compensation to the postmasters. Now he tries to deflect the focus on to Nick Read. He and Read were being investigated. But while Read co-operated, Staunton tried to block his investigation.” No 10 confirmed that it continued to have confidence in Read.
Read had considered resigning at least four times, Staunton claimed, both because of the investigation and because he was unhappy with his pay packet, which last year was £573,000 including bonuses.
Staunton admitted he had lobbied Badenoch’s predecessor as business secretary, Grant Shapps, for a pay rise for Read, but had been met with a “strong message” of “Don’t waste a postage stamp coming to me,” he said.
The committee also heard further evidence that postmasters were being forced to fight for years to win the redress they are owed because of excessive bureaucracy and because their stories “are not believed”.
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The revelations led to calls for the company to be de-mutualised or even, from the leading campaigner Alan Bates, “sold to Amazon for £1”.
Staunton told MPs: “The secretary of state, senior civil servants and Post Office officials are asking us to believe that everything was going swimmingly all along when it damn well wasn’t.
“We all know that things were moving far too slowly … the reason everyone has latched on to what I said in The Sunday Times was that finally someone was being honest about how deep-seated the problems were and why nothing was being done.
“I will at least have achieved something if the disinfectant of sunlight means that the government now lives up to its promises. What the public wants to know is why everything was so slow and why everything remains so slow. I’ve spoken up on matters of genuine public concern, and I have been fired and am now subject to a smear campaign.”
The former chairman’s central claim in an interview with The Sunday Times, that he was told to delay compensation to help Tory election chances, came under severe strain. Two senior civil servants disputed the account, adding to denials from Badenoch and Sarah Munby, the permanent secretary who was accused of giving the order.
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Carl Creswell, the civil servant responsible for the Post Office, said he had “absolutely not” been told to go slow and said “you would have thought someone would have mentioned it to me”, given that he helps control the budget.
Staunton had said his contemporaneous note of the conversation with Munby, which took place in January 2023, would substantiate his claim, but when it was published last week it focused on the Post Office’s operational budget, which is separate. He had inferred from his conversation with Munby that she could have been referring to Horizon compensation when she said “now was not the time for dealing with long-term issues”, he told MPs.
Civil servants and the senior Post Office independent director spoke about wider concerns over Staunton’s management of the board, adding that his behaviour became “erratic” once the misconduct investigation into him was revealed to him in November last year.
Creswell claimed he was “explicitly” told that Post Office board members would resign if Staunton were not sacked, and said that civil servants from UK Government Investments had accused Staunton of nodding off in meetings and failing to have a “grasp on his brief”.
He added that the investigation into Staunton’s behaviour was “still ongoing”, and that he had been accused of “trying to stop the whistleblowing investigation”. Staunton denied this and said he was co-operating with the barrister leading the inquiry. He was also accused of trying to subvert the business department to prevent a Whitehall insider being appointed as the new senior independent director.
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Gullis said after the hearing: “What is sad is that whilst Post Office current and former executives fight one another, the real victims, the subpostmasters and postmistresses, continue their long overdue wait for justice and financial redress.”
Liam Byrne, the committee’s chairman, indicated he will seek “legally binding deadlines for redress” by amending the upcoming bill in parliament, designed to overturn hundreds of convictions based on Horizon evidence.
Bates, the postmaster at the centre of the ITV drama into the scandal, said he “can’t see any end” to the scandal as he revealed his own compensation claim is no further forward.
He was asked if he felt redress for postmasters was getting “faster and fairer”. “Speaking personally of my claim I can say no it isn’t,” he said. “It’s still sat there. We’ve refused [the offer] and that’s it.”
In an email to postmasters, sent on Tuesday night, responding to Staunton’s allegations, Ben Tidswell, the Post Office’s senior independent director, said: “To my knowledge Nick Read has never tendered his resignation and he continues to accept leadership responsibility for the challenges that we are all working on each day.
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“Post Office has received a complaint against a number of people within the organisation — Nick is one of those employees — and I am sure you will all agree that Post Office should investigate every complaint with due process. Nick accepts this and has co-operated fully with the investigation.”
