by Former Post Office chairman Kemi Badenoch has accused the Post Office’s former chairman of “changing his story” over his handling of the Horizon scandal.
In a letter to the Commons business and trade committee, which has been seen by this newspaper, the Business Secretary said “it should be noted” that the executive appeared to have dropped a claim she told him: “Well, someone has to take the rap for. this.”
Henry Staunton is due to appear before the committee on Tuesday as he becomes increasingly bitter about his sacking and his time as chairman of the Post Office.
Mrs Badenoch also questioned why he “never” raised concerns with her about the company’s “toxic” culture, which he described in a newspaper interview last weekend.
Mrs Badenoch’s fresh intervention comes after the Cabinet minister and officials denied Mr Staunton’s claims in the Sunday Times last weekend that a senior civil servant had told him to delay the payment of junior postmasters before the next general election because due to cost concerns. .
In the same interview, he claimed that when he was sacked last month, Mrs Badenoch told him “someone has to take the rap” for the scandal.
In a letter to Liam Byrne, the Labor MP who chairs the business committee, Mrs Badenoch, said: “Sunshine is the best disinfectant. It is important to me that sub-postmasters trust that the government is doing everything possible to provide them with satisfaction and compensation.
“These efforts are underpinned by the allegations made by the former Chairman of the Post Office, Henry Staunton, in his interview with the Sunday Times.”
She added: “It should be noted that Mr Staunton has changed his story since the interview: he now claims that it was the characterization of our conversation that led him to believe he had to ‘take the rap’ rather than any particular statement that I did. .”
The letter followed a civil service note of the phone call in which Mrs Badenoch dismissed Mr Staunton on January 27 which was published last Monday. He said the Business Secretary had been briefed on “the governance issues at the Post Office” and that the complaints against Mr Staunton were “so serious” that government intervention was needed.
The words “someone must take the rap” were not in the document. However, Mr Staunton said he stood by his “characterization of the conversation”.
Mrs Badenoch seems to suggest that the apparent discrepancy about Mr Staunton’s account raises fresh questions.
She added: “Mr Staunton said in his interview that the Post Office was plagued by a ‘toxic’ culture. He never raised this with me or my officers during his tenure. If he had such concerns, it was his duty to raise them and as Chairman, act on them. “
Plagued by a ‘toxic’ culture
Last weekend Mr Staunton told The Sunday Times that the Post Office was still a “mess”, plagued by a “toxic” culture where company executives continued to mistrust postmasters. He claimed that sub-postmasters were suspected of “digging into the [till] a lot of drawers”, despite the revelation of the scandal.
More than 4,000 people have been told they will be entitled to compensation as a result of the Horizon scandal.
Errors in the Horizon software, made by Fujitsu, the Japanese technology company, caused deficiencies to be recorded that did not exist.
In total, more than 900 sub-postmasters were prosecuted after they blamed the deficiencies. Some people spent time in prison as a result.
Mrs Badenoch claimed in the House of Commons that Mr Staunton’s account of being told to slow the rate of compensation payments was “full of lies”. She said he was fired after whistleblowers raised concerns that he was not doing enough to ensure people received their compensation quickly enough.
A spokesman for Mr Staunton insisted he “has not changed his account of what the Secretary of State told him when she called him to summarily dismiss him. Rather, the account she gave to the House of Commons last Monday is different in several important ways from the reading taken by the civil servants on the call, especially in terms of raising new allegations that she did not mention. the time”.
The spokesman suggested that the “pervasive and deeply embedded toxic culture in the Post Office organization” only “started to emerge from December 2023 onwards”, particularly after the suspension of its communications director in January after claiming that some sub-masters stole jobs “outright” . Mr Staunton took up these issues “with the board and the chief executive who he ordered to act immediately to rectify the situation”. The spokesman said he had made it clear to Mrs Badenoch that what was needed was “extensive work to ensure that the culture of the Post Office is reformed”.
