Post Office inquiry: Execs and government ‘dragged their feet’ on compensation, ex-chair Henry Staunton says
The Post Office was a “mess” run by executives and government appointees who “dragged their feet” in efforts to compensate and exonerate sub-postmasters, the former chairman has told the public inquiry.
Henry Staunton, who was sacked after 14 months as chair by then business secretary Kemi Badenoch in January, also accused the organisation of having a “huge cultural problem” with a lack of ethnic and gender diversity – and of overseeing “vindictive” investigations into two sub-postmasters who served on the company board.
He also denied allegations that he made racist and misogynistic comments about Post Office colleagues, saying he had been “deeply stung” by an internal investigation he says was used as a pretext by Ms Badenoch to remove him.
A former chairman of WH Smith and director of ITV, Mr Staunton was appointed in December 2022 after being approached by headhunters who told him he would be “giving something back” if he took the job.
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He said he found a culture of chaos in senior management that immediately required more than the two days a week he had been told was required.
“The place was a mess that required more of my time,” he said. His view was that executives did not fully accept the findings of the High Court judgment that established the role of the Horizon computer system in hundreds of flawed prosecutions.
“My initial impression was that the Post Office and government were dragging their feet in terms of making payments for remediation – in the first place – and in the second place I thought that there was no appetite at all for exoneration,” he told the inquiry.
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Mr Staunton said that initially a “ridiculous” amount of his time was taken up with requests for a pay rise from chief executive Nick Read, who he previously told a Parliamentary inquiry was unhappy and threatening to resign.
In November 2022, before he was formally in post, he was asked to sign a letter to the secretary of state recommending an increase from the maximum of £788,500 to £1.125m, a “massive” increase that Mr Staunton said the minister was right to reject.
He said the environment among senior staff was characterised by “risk aversion and paralysis” and “a culture of fear and worry”, in part because executives feared being called to give evidence to the public inquiry.
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Nick Read. Pic: House of Commons/PA
Referring to a letter he received from an anonymous whistleblower, that alleged a “disgusting culture” at the Post Office, Mr Staunton agreed the organisation “had a huge problem with culture”.
“Ethnicity was very poorly represented. We did have a problem with ethnicity. We did have a problem with gender.”
He also recognised claims that Mr Read had referred to, of those with a “public school education”, and that there was a perception of “jobs for the boys”.
Mr Staunton was also highly critical of an internal investigation launched into two sub-postmasters who had been appointed to the board as non-executive directors, alleging it was held open for months as a means of intimidating them.
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The inquiry also heard details of Mr Staunton’s dismissal and was played a recording of the telephone call in which Ms Badenoch told him he was being removed because of “complaints that are so serious the government needs to intervene”.
Mr Staunton told the inquiry that her call came several hours after a journalist, understood to be Sky News’ Mark Kleinman, rang him to tell him he was likely to be fired.
He was not told on that call what the complaints were, but the previous month had learned his conduct was being examined as part of a Post Office investigation based initially on an 80-page complaint against Mr Read by the then chief people officer. In the complaint, Mr Staunton was mentioned only once and not by name.
Then Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch sacked Mr Staunton last year. Pic: James Manning/PA Wire
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The allegation against him was that he made inappropriate comments about gender and race at a meeting about candidates to chair the Post Office remuneration committee. In his witness statement to the inquiry, he said: “I deny those allegations completely and feel deeply stung by them.”
He told the inquiry that three former Post Office colleagues – one Jewish, one Muslim and one black – had provided letters of support in his defence to questions from the Institute of Chartered Accountants.
“All three directors have said they thought there was not an ounce of racism in me and indeed I was a champion of greater diversity of ethnicity and gender on the board,” he said.
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In his witness statement, he said details of the investigation and its findings against him, which have never been published, were leaked to the media by a government source who claimed they explained why he objected to being sacked by a minister who was “black and female.”
“I was deeply aggrieved at being made a fall guy for failings that I myself had been struggling to get the Post Office to address,” he said.
“This was a report into Nick Read, not about me, but because I had taken the side of the sub-postmasters it was weaponised against me.”
A financial wellbeing platform which counts the alcohol-free beer producer Lucky Saint among its clients has landed a £6m funding injection from a syndicate of well-known investors.
Sky News understands that Mintago, which was founded in 2019, will announce in the coming days that Guinness Ventures has jointly led the Series A round alongside Seed X Liechtenstein and Social Impact Enterprises.
Mintago, which also counts car rental firm Avis and Northumbrian Police among its customers, aims to help employees save and manage their money more effectively.
A number of the start-up’s current investors, Love Ventures and Truesight Ventures, are also understood to have reinvested as part of the fundraising.
The company, which counts Lucky Saint and Avis among its users, has finalised a Series A funding round
The company was set up by Chieu Cao and Daniel Conti, and claims to offer more salary sacrifice schemes than any other UK provider.
It also provides independent financial advice, a service for finding lost pension pots, retail discounts and GP services.
“We realised that organisations are crying out for the same help we provide their staff,” Mr Conti said.
“The benefits of providing that support impact everyone.
“When a company improves their salary sacrifice benefits engagement, they can save thousands in National Insurance Contributions, but their employees save too, easing the strain on their finances.”
The new capital will be used to develop additional products using artificial intelligence, according to the company.
“Mintago is enabling its customers to become truly people-centric organisations by giving them the tools to support their employees’ financial wellbeing,” Mathias Jaeggi, a partner at Seed X Liechtenstein, said.
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