Post Office had 'no appetite for exoneration', chairman tells inquiry

A sacked Post Office chairman has claimed the government and the Post Office had 'no appetite for exoneration' of sub-postmasters wrongly prosecuted over shortfalls caused by the faulty Horizon IT system.

Henry Staunton told Tuesday's public inquiry his initial impression on becoming chairman of the organisation in December 2022 was that the Post Office and the government 'were dragging their feet in terms of making payments for remediation' to sub-postmasters and that 'there was no appetite at all for exoneration' of those who had been wrongly convicted.

Mr Staunton said when he first started in the role, he felt there were some in the government-owned business who 'didn't fully accept' the damning judgments of Mr Justice Fraser at the High Court in 2019 that glitches in the Horizon system could have caused the shortfalls in sub-postmasters' branch accounts and that the Post Office was wrong to pursue prosecutions.

He told the inquiry: 'They didn't fully accept it, that was my impression, that somehow the case hadn't been put well or whatever.

'There wasn't a feeling that this was absolutely wrong…It was a feeling across the piece with the team.'

Mr Staunton, who has accused the last government of delaying payouts to sub-postmasters until after the general election, suggested the redress schemes aimed at assessing cases and compensating wrongly prosecuted sub-postmasters were inadequate.

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He told the inquiry the 'three complex schemes for redress…were administered in a bureaucratic and unsympathetic way' and often took 'an adversarial approach'.

Mr Staunton cited a reluctance to pause sub-postmasters having to make repayments while their cases were being assessed, as it could cause more victims to come forward with claims.

He added: 'What surprised me was, we shouldn't not be doing something because it would generate claims.

'That is not the basis the remediation committee should be working on.'

But Mr Staunton was also challenged by inquiry counsel Julian Blake KC over what he personally did as chairman to push forward the redress of wronged sub-postmasters.

The hearing heard how, a month before he took on the role, Mr Staunton wrote to the then Secretary of State Grant Shapps over the 'critical situation regarding [chief executive] Nick [Read's] remuneration package' and asked for the boss's pay to be increased from £788,500 to £1,125,180, which he later conceded was a 'massive salary increase' in a business 'paid for by the public purse'.

Pressing the former chairman, Mr Blake said: 'It might strike people as odd - of all the matters affecting the Post Office and sub-postmasters - that the very first correspondence was about the chief executive's pay', to which Mr Staunton replied: 'Astonishing'.

But when an incredulous Mr Blake pointed out that it was him who sent the letters, Mr Staunton defended his actions, saying '…I was asked to sign it. A similar letter had gone by my predecessor. I signed it and…there was nothing factually wrong with it.'

But he did admit there were 'various issues of remuneration that arose' which became 'a ridiculously time-consuming part of the work'.

When Mr Blake highlighted there seemed to be a lot of time spent talking about the chief executive's pay rather than compensating victims, Mr Staunton admitted if he were a sub-postmaster he'd be 'horrified' to see the discussion of boosting Mr Read's pay.

Mr Staunton was sacked in January by the then business secretary Kemi Badenoch over concerns about his behaviour, which sparked a protracted public spat between the pair.

In April, the Mail exclusively revealed how an independent report into the claims concluded Mr Staunton used racial and sexist slurs against women.

The result of the probe, seen by this newspaper, disclosed how during a meeting to discuss job candidates Mr Staunton asked: 'She doesn't look coloured, where does she come from?'

But in a strongly worded witness statement to the inquiry, Mr Staunton denied using racist or misogynist comments - claiming colleagues had said 'there was not an ounce of racism in me'.

Mr Staunton told the inquiry his 'willingness to contradict the Post Office orthodoxy on the treatment of postmasters meant my card was marked'.

He insisted he was a 'champion of diversity', and colleagues had raised concerns with him about how the investigation into his comments was 'contrived, unfair and bizarre'.

More than 900 sub-postmasters were prosecuted between 1999 and 2015 after faulty Horizon accounting software made it look as though money was missing from their branch accounts.

Hundreds are still awaiting compensation despite the previous government announcing that those who have had convictions quashed are eligible for £600,000 payouts.