‘A blatant attempt to seek revenge’ – how Badenoch hit back at claims made by ex-Post Office chair
In her opening statement Kemi Badenoch said that Henry Staunton’s claims in his Sunday Times article were “completely false”. In particular, she addressed three of his specific claims, relating to briefings the media, why he was sacked, and claims compensation was delayed.
Mr Staunton alleges that I refused to apologise to him after he learned of his dismissal from Sky News. That was not the case.
In the call he referenced I made it abundantly clear that I disapproved of the media briefing any aspect of this story and out of respect for Henry Staunton’s reputation I went to great pains to make my concerns about his conduct private.
In fact in my interviews with the press I repeatedly said that I refused to carry out HR in public. That is why it is so disappointing that he’s chosen to spread a series of falsehoods, provide made up anecdotes to journalists and leak discussions held in confidence.
All of this merely confirms in my mind that I made the correct decision in dismissing him.
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She said Staunton was not sacked because, as he claimed she told him, someone had to take the rap for the Horizon scandal. She said:
Mr Staunton claimed I told him that someone’s got to take the rap for the Verizon scandal, and that was the reason for his dismissal. That was not the reason at all.
I dismissed him because there were serious concerns about his behaviour as chair, including those raised from other directors on the board. My department found significant governance issues, for example, with the recruitment of a new senior independent director to the Post Office board. A public appointment process was under way, but Mr Staunton apparently wanted to bypass it, appointing someone from within the existing board without due process.
He failed to properly consult the Post Office board on the proposal. He failed to hold the required nominations committee. Most importantly, he failed to consult the government as a shareholder which the company was required to do.
I know that honourable members will agree with me is such a cavalier approach to governance was the last thing we needed in the Post Office given its historic failings.
In his Sunday Times interview Staunton address this claim, arguing that he was backing the candidate favoured by the board, when the government wanted its own candidate to get the job. (See 4.07pm.)
I should also inform the house that, while he was post, a formal investigation was launched into allegations made regarding Mr Staunton’s conduct. This included serious matters such as bullying.
Concerns were brought to my department’s attention about Mr Staunton’s willingness to cooperate with that investigation.
So it is right that the British public knew the facts behind this case, and what was said in the phone call where I dismissed Mr Staunton.
Today I am depositing a copy of that readout in both libraries of the house so the honourable members and the public can see the truth. Personal information relating to other post office employees in those minutes have been redacted.
Mr Staunton claimed that when he was first appointed as chair of the Post Office he was told by senior civil servants to stall on paying compensation. There is no evidence whatsoever that this is true.
In fact, on becoming Post Office chair, Mr Staunton received a letter from the BEIS [Deparment of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy] permanent secretary, Sarah Munby, on 9 December 2022. It welcomed him to his role, making it crystal clear that successfully reaching settlements with victims of the Post Office scandal should be one of his highest priorities …
The reality is that my department has done everything it can to speed up compensation payments for victims. We’ve already made payments totaling £160m across all three compensation schemes. That includes our announcement last autumn of the optional £600,000 pound fixed-sum award for those who’ve been wrongfully convicted. It is the strongest refutation of those who would claim that we only acted after the ITV drama.
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She said that all 2,417 post office operators who claimed through the original Horizon shortfall scheme have now had offers of compensation. In total, around £1bn has been committed to ensure wronged post office operators can be compensated, she said.
In short we are putting our money where our mouth is and our shoulders to the wheel and ensuring that justice is done. It is not fair on the victims of this scandal, which has already ruined so many lives and livelihoods, to claim, as Mr Staunton has done, that this has been dragged out a second longer than it ought to be.
For Henry Staunton to suggest otherwise, for whatever personal motives, is a disgrace and it risks damaging confidence in the compensation schemes which ministers and civil servants are working so hard to deliver.
I would hope the most people reading the interview in yesterday, Sunday, Sunday Times, we’ll see it for what it was a blatant attempt to seek revenge following dismissal.
I must say I regret the way in which these events have unfolded. We did everything we could to manage this dismissal in a dignified way for Mr Staunton and others. However, I will not hesitate to defend myself, and more importantly, my officials, who cannot respond directly to these baseless attacks.
Key events
Badenoch says, until the day he was fired, Henry Staunton never complained to her about interference by UKGI (UK Government Investments) in the work of his board.
Badenoch says UKGI and the Post Office have both denied the claim that UKGI was behind the move by the Post Office’s board to send a letter to the justice deparment suggesting that some of the post office operators who claim to be innocent may in fact be guilty. (See 4.27pm.)
Paul Scully, a former postal services minister, says he found it hard to believe that an official would want to delay compensation payments. When he was in the department, officials wanted compensation to be paid quickly, he says.
Badenoch agrees. She says that Henry Staunton did not mention this to her when they spoke. She suggests he has made it up.
Badenoch is responding to Reynolds.
She says she can deny that the government asked the Post Office to stall compensation payments. There is no evidence to show this was said, she says. She says it is hard to prove a negative. But she says there would have been no reason to do this anyway. It would not have affected revenues.
She says the department publishes information regularly on what compensation payments have been made.
She says she will not publish all her department’s correspondence with the Post Office. She says the inquiry has been set up to investigate this.
But she suggests correspondence might be published relating to the claims made by Staunton.
Jonathan Reynolds, the shadow business secretary, says there are now two completely conflicting accounts of how Henry Staunton was sacked. He says parliament is the correct place for the truth to be established.
There should be no cover up, he says. And he says if what Badenoch is saying is true, she should welcome that.
Badenoch says Post Office chair was sacked after bullying allegations and his Horizon claims ‘completely false’
Kemi Badenoch is making her statement about the Henry Staunton claims.
She says they are “completely false”.
She says that he was dismissed after serious allegations were made against him, including bullying, and because concerns were brought to her about his willingness to cooperate with the investigation into those claims.
And she says she is publishing a transcript of the readout of the conversation she had in which she sacked him.
She says his interview was “a blatant attempt to seek revenge following dismissal”.
She says she sought to handle this in a dignified way. But she will not hesitate to defend herself, and her officials who cannot speak up for themselves, she says.
Jonathan Reynolds, the shadow business secretary, has urged Kemi Badenoch to publish all correspondence between her department and the Post Office, and all correspondence between her department and the Treasury on this topic, in order to establish the truth behind the allegations made by Henry Staunton. (See 4.07pm.)
The accusations this weekend that elements in Government sought to obfuscate justice for the subpostmasters have rightly caused major concern.
The Government must do everything in their power to prove to subpostmasters that this was not the case pic.twitter.com/QtypiP3yfx
— Jonathan Reynolds (@jreynoldsMP) February 19, 2024
Ahead of Wednesday’s vote on the SNP motion calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, Momentum, the leftwing Labour group, has launched an online tool enabling people to email Labour MPs about the issue. “With the government continuing to give cover to Israel, it’s vital that every Labour MP votes for an immediate end to the bloodshed when given a choice on Wednesday,” Hilary Schan, Momentum’s co-chair, said.
What Henry Staunton told Sunday Times about Post Office, government and Horizon scandal
Kemi Badenoch, the business and trade secretary, will deliver a statement shortly about the claims made by Henry Staunton, the former Post Office chair, in an interview with the Sunday Times published yesterday. The main claim has been covered extensively here already, but Staunton made a series of specific claims. Here is the full list.
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Staunton claimed that a senior official from the business departments asked him to stall compensation payments to victims of the Post Office Horizon scandal until after the general election. He told the Sunday Times:
Early on, I was told by a fairly senior person to stall on spending on compensation and on the replacement of Horizon, and to limp, in quotation marks – I did a file note on it – limp into the election.
It was not an anti-postmaster thing, it was just straight financials. I didn’t ask, because I said, ‘I’m having no part of it – I’m not here to limp into the election, it’s not the right thing to do by postmasters.’ The word ‘limp’ gives you a snapshot of where they were.
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He claimed that, when she called to sack him, Badenoch told him: “Well, someone’s got to take the rap for this [the Horizon scandal].”
Staunton said UK Government Investments (UKGI), the body staffed by former investment bankers that manages taxpayers’ stakes in assets such as the Post Office, appeared to oppose blanket exoneration. Last month — after [the ITV’s drama about the scandal was aired] – Nick Read, chief executive of the Post Office, wrote to the justice secretary, Alex Chalk, with a legal opinion from the Post Office’s solicitors at Peters & Peters attached. The message said that in more than 300 cases, non-Horizon evidence supported sub-postmasters’ convictions. “Basically, it was trying to undermine the exoneration argument,” Staunton said. “It was, ‘Most people haven’t come forward because they are guilty as charged’ – ie think very carefully about exoneration. I said to Nick [Read], ‘This is not right – this goes to the heart of how we as an organisation feel. You’ve sent that letter as if that’s our view, and that is not my view, and it is not the view of at least half of the board … If this got out, we’d be crucified, and rightly so’.”
According to Staunton, Read said he sent the letter at UKGI’s behest …
“It was terrible, terrible governance,” [Staunton said.] “I picked it up with the UKGI director, who didn’t deny it but didn’t really want to talk about it. And I thought it was not my job to work out what the politics is behind all this.”
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Staunton said that ‘a big part” of the reason why he was sacked was because he opposed a bid by the government to put a Whitehall insider on the board. Staunton wanted the vacancy to be filled by Andrew Darfoor, who was the choice of the Post Office board.
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He said that Read often described the Post Office investigators, who prosecuted the post office operatives, as “the untouchables” because the organisation felt it could not get rid of them.
Labour claims Jeremy Hunt’s failure to answer urgent question about state of economy an ‘insult’ to voters
Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, told MPs that Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, should be responding to the urgent question, not Bin Afolami. His failure to turn up was “an insult to all those people who go to work every day and experience the reality of 14 years of conservative economic failure”, she said.
She went on:
Will the minister explain why the economy is now smaller than when the current prime minister entered 10 Downing Street? Does the minister accept the misery that this government has caused homeowners with their kamikaze budget, leaving a typical family renewing their mortgage paying an additional £240 pounds every single month?
She also pointed out that the UK Statistics Authority has told reprimanded Laura Trott, the chief secretary to the Treasury, for making misleading claims about tax cuts.