Rishi Sunak refuses to repeat claim ex-Post Office boss was ‘lying’ about compensation delays
Rishi Sunak has refused to repeat Kemi Badenoch’s claim that the former Post Office boss was lying when he said he was told to delay compensation to Horizon scandal victims.
Sir Keir Starmer asked the prime minister if he is prepared to personally repeat the allegation made by his business secretary regarding Henry Staunton.
Mr Staunton, who was sacked last month, has claimed he was told to stall pay-outs to sub-postmasters due to financial concerns ahead of the general election – something Ms Badenoch has strongly denied.
Mr Sunak did not answer the Labour leader’s question directly, simply saying Mr Staunton was fired because of “serious concerns” about his conduct.
He added: “We have taken up steps to ensure victims of the Horizon scandal receive compensation as swiftly as possible… that remains our priority.”
Sir Keir, speaking at PMQs, pressed him on Ms Badenoch’s statement on Monday that Mr Staunton was “at no point told to delay compensation payments by either an official or a minister from any government department; at no point was it suggested that a delay would be a benefit to the Treasury.”
Asked if he will investigate if that statement is correct, the prime minister repeated that Mr Staunton was asked to step down “after serious concerns were raised”.
The exchange comes after an unearthed memo from Mr Staunton which raises questions about Ms Badenoch’s claims.
It has emerged that Mr Staunton wrote a note on 5 January last year which said that Sarah Munby, the then permanent secretary at the business department, had warned him during a meeting that day not to “rip off the band aid” in terms of government finances in the run up to the election.
Henry Staunton
Politics Live:
Defence secretary to update MPs on failed missile launch
According to the note, seen by Sky News, Mr Staunton said that the Post Office board had identified a financial shortfall of £160m as of September 2022 and that “there was a likelihood of a significant reduction in post offices” if more government funding was not made available.
He wrote: “Sarah was sympathetic to all of the above. She understood the ‘huge commercial challenge’ and the ‘seriousness’ of the financial position. She described ‘all the options as unattractive’. However, ‘politicians do not necessarily like to confront reality’. This particularly applied when there was no obvious ‘route to profitability’.
“She said we needed to know that in the run-up to the election there was no appetite to ‘rip off the band aid’. ‘Now was not the time for dealing with long-term issues.’ We needed a plan to ‘hobble’ up to the election.”
Kemi Badenoch
Labour MP Liam Byrne, who is chair of parliament’s Business Committee, said the note is “a go slow order, without a doubt”. He said his committee will attempt to “flush out the truth” on Tuesday, when Mr Staunton will appear before MPs.
The note has sparked demands from the Lib Dems for Mr Sunak’s ethics adviser to investigate whether Ms Badenoch misled parliament with her accusation that Mr Staunton was lying.
Labour said there needs to be a cabinet office investigation to establish the veracity of Mr Staunton’s claims.
Click to subscribe to the Sky News Daily wherever you get your podcasts
Row over disputed memo
Earlier, a government source was dismissive of the memo and suggested Mr Staunton was either “confused or deliberately mixing up” long-standing issues around Post Office finances with the payouts to wrongfully convicted sub-postmasters.
They added: “Even if we trust the veracity of a memo he wrote himself, and there’s not much to suggest we can, given the false accusations he made about the Secretary of State in his original interview, it’s time for Henry Staunton to admit his interview on Sunday was a misrepresentation of his conversations with ministers and officials and to apologise to the government and the postmasters.”
Read More:
Who is Henry Staunton?
The story behind the victims
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Did the government delay Post Office compensation?
Was ousted boss asked to delay compensation payments?
In his original interview with the Sunday Times, Mr Staunton claimed that he was ordered by a senior civil servant to stall spending on compensation for Horizon victims to allow the government to “limp into the election”.
He said it “was not an anti-postmaster thing, it was just straight financials”.
He also claimed that when he was sacked he was told someone had to “take the rap” for the Horizon scandal, which came under renewed public scrutiny following the ITV drama series Mr Bates Vs The Post Office.
Mr Staunton has stood by his claims in the face of government denials, insisting that there was “no real movement” on the payouts until the airing of the ITV drama.
Pic: Reuters
On Monday, Ms Badenoch said the claims are “completely false” and accused Mr Staunton of seeking “revenge” after he was sacked.
She also claimed he was being investigated over bullying allegations before he was dismissed from his short-lived post – something he has denied.
He has said he decided to go public “out of a desire to ensure that the public were fully aware of the facts surrounding the multiple failures that have led to postmasters in this country being badly let down”.
The Horizon scandal saw hundreds of sub-postmasters prosecuted because of discrepancies in the Fujitsu-developed IT system between 1999 and 2015, in what has been called the biggest miscarriage of justice in UK history.
Developing nations can use crypto to bypass financial constraints, hedge inflation and attract investment. Emerging economies are discovering crypto’s power.
Yvette Cooper has defended the arrest of more than 500 people for holding signs supporting Palestine Action.
The home secretary said protesters over the weekend may have been objecting to Palestine Action being proscribed as a terror group because they “don’t know the full nature of this organisation”.
Ms Cooper said that could be due to reporting restrictions on court hearings “while serious prosecutions are underway”.
Politics latest: Reform mayor says she does not feel safe
A total of 532 people were arrested on suspicion of supporting a proscribed organisation contrary to Section 13 of the Terrorism Act 2000.
Around half of them (259) were aged 60 and above – including almost 100 people who were in their 70s.
The Met Police said it was the largest number of arrests it had made related to a single operation in at least the past decade.
A woman is dragged away by police officers after attending the Palestine Action protest in Parliament Square. Pic: PA
Ms Cooper added: “Proscription is not about protest around Palestine or Gaza, where we had tens of thousands of people protesting lawfully just this weekend about some of the horrendous events that we’ve seen in the Middle East.”
She said members of Palestine Action have carried out violent attacks, causing injuries and involving weapons and smoke bombs, “causing panic among innocent people” and major criminal damage against national security infrastructure.
The home secretary added there had been “clear security assessments and advice” before Palestine Action was proscribed as a terror organisation in July.
Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori said: “Yvette Cooper and No 10’s claim that Palestine Action is a violent organisation is false and defamatory.
“Spraying red paint on war planes is not terrorism. Disrupting Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems by trespassing on their sites in Britain is not terrorism.”
Former government lawyer Tim Crosland, now spokesman for Defend Our Juries, which organised the weekend’s protest, told Sky News: “Yvette Cooper is so politically invested she’s going to continue to defend the arrests of people simply protesting.
“There will be more people at the next action, the police will be so aggrieved that they’re having to arrest people holding placards protesting against the atrocities in Gaza while they’re having budget cuts.”
Read more:
Al Jazeera condemns ‘assassinations’ of its journalists in Gaza
Desperation grows in Gaza as protests swell in Israel
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Will volume of arrests at protests overwhelm police?
Sir Keir Starmer’s spokesman said Palestine Action was proscribed based on “strong security advice” following assessments from a “wide range” of experts across government, the police and security services.
“Those assessments were very clear, this is not a non-violent organisation,” he said.
He added Palestine Action had committed “three separate acts of terrorism” but could not go into more detail as further evidence had been provided in a closed court setting due to “ongoing national security reasons”.
The view above Parliament Square. Pic: PA
Human rights group Amnesty International said it was “deeply concerned” about the arrests this weekend.
Its UK chief executive, Sacha Deshmukh, said: “The protesters in Parliament Square were not inciting violence and it is entirely disproportionate to the point of absurdity to be treating them as terrorists.
“Instead of criminalising peaceful demonstrators, the government should be focusing on taking immediate and unequivocal action to put a stop to Israel’s genocide and ending any risk of UK complicity in it.”
A hostile environment era deportation policy for criminals is being expanded by the Labour government as it continues its migration crackdown.
The government wants to go further in extraditing foreign offenders before they have a chance to appeal by including more countries in the existing scheme.
Offenders that have a human right appeal rejected will get offshored, and further appeals will then get heard from abroad.
It follows the government announcing on Saturday that it wants to deport criminals as soon as they are sentenced.
The “deport now, appeal later” policy was first introduced when Baroness Theresa May was home secretary in 2014 as part of the Conservative government’s hostile environment policy to try and reduce migration.
It saw hundreds of people returned to a handful of countries like Kenya and Jamaica under Section 94B of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, added in via amendment.
In 2017, a Supreme Court effectively stopped the policy from being used after it was challenged on the grounds that appealing from abroad was not compliant with human rights.
However, in 2023, then home secretary Suella Braverman announced she was restarting the policy after providing more facilities abroad for people to lodge their appeals.
Now, the current government says it is expanding the partnership from eight countries to 23.
Previously, offenders were being returned to Finland, Nigeria, Estonia, Albania, Belize, Mauritius, Tanzania and Kosovo for remote hearings.
Angola, Australia, Botswana, Brunei, Bulgaria, Canada, Guyana, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Latvia, Lebanon, Malaysia, Uganda and Zambia are the countries being added – with the government wanting to include more.
Read more:
Govt vows to deport foreign criminals immediately
First migrants detained under returns deal with France
Theresa May’s hostile environment policy proved controversial. Pic: PA
The Home Office claims this is the “the government’s latest tool in its comprehensive approach to scaling up our ability to remove foreign criminals”, touting 5,200 removals of foreign offenders since July 2024 – an increase of 14% compared with the year before.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said: “Those who commit crimes in our country cannot be allowed to manipulate the system, which is why we are restoring control and sending a clear message that our laws must be respected and will be enforced.”
Foreign Secretary David Lammy said: “We are leading diplomatic efforts to increase the number of countries where foreign criminals can be swiftly returned, and if they want to appeal, they can do so safely from their home country.
“Under this scheme, we’re investing in international partnerships that uphold our security and make our streets safer.”
Both ministers opposed the hostile environment policy when in opposition.
👉 Click here to listen to Electoral Dysfunction on your podcast app 👈
In 2015, Sir Keir Starmer had questioned whether such a policy was workable – saying in-person appeals were the norm for 200 years and had been a “highly effective way of resolving differences”.
He also raised concerns about the impact on children if parents were deported and then returned after a successful appeal.
In today’s announcement, the prime minister’s administration said it wanted to prevent people from “gaming the system” and clamp down on people staying in the UK for “months or years” while appeals are heard.
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Sports2 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike