- By Michael Race
- Business reporter, BBC News
The Business Secretary, Kemi Badenoch, has said claims by the former Post Office chair that he was told to delay compensation payments for sub-postmasters are “completely false”.
Henry Staunton said he was told to stall payouts to allow the government to “limp into the election”, apparently to help state finances.
But Ms Badenoch accused him of spreading “a series of falsehoods” and providing “made up anecdotes”.
Mr Staunton has stood by his comments.
“Mr Staunton is not in the habit of resorting to fabrication or invention and 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,” a statement released on his behalf said late on Monday.
The response came after Ms Badenoch made a statement to the House of Commons in which she said Mr Staunton’s claims were “a blatant attempt to seek revenge following dismissal”.
“There would be no benefit to us whatsoever of us delaying compensation,” she added. “This does not have any significant impact on revenues whatsoever – it would be a mad thing to even suggest.”
She said there was “no evidence whatsoever” that Mr Staunton was told by an official to stall payouts, later adding: “Actually if such a thing was said, it is for Mr Staunton himself to bring the evidence.”
In response, a statement for Mr Staunton said that he stood by the comment “which he recorded at the time in a file note which he emailed to himself and to colleagues and which is therefore traceable on the Post Office server”.
Mr Staunton himself added: “It was in the interests of the business as well as being fair for the postmasters that there was faster progress on exoneration and that compensation for wrongly convicted postmasters was more generous, but we didn’t see any real movement until after the Mister Bates programme [on ITV].
“We will leave it to others to come to the conclusion as to why that was the case.”
The Post Office told the BBC it would not be “appropriate for us to comment on confidential emails that allegedly may or may not have been sent”.
Between 1999 and 2015, hundreds of sub-postmasters and postmistresses were wrongly prosecuted after a faulty computer system called Horizon made it look like money was missing from their branches.
Some sub-postmasters wrongfully went to prison, many were financially ruined. Some have since died.
The government has promised to quash convictions and pay compensation, but concerns have been raised over the speed and complexity in victims securing financial redress, with just 33 claims fully settled.
Mr Staunton, who has been on boards of companies ranging from ITV to WH Smith, was appointed as chair of the Post Office in December 2022, but was dismissed by Ms Badenoch, who said last month that “new leadership” was needed to tackle the scandal.
“Early on, I was told by a fairly senior person to stall on spend 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,” he told the paper.
“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’.”
Mr Staunton also claimed that when he was sacked, Ms Badenoch had told him: “Someone’s got to take the rap.”
The government has denied the claims about delaying compensation and Ms Badenoch has hit back at Mr Staunton, calling his comments “disgraceful”.
On Monday, she told MPs the reason she dismissed Mr Staunton was “because there were…
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