Kemi Badenoch accuses Post Office chair she
sacked of seeking revenge
Business minister criticises Henry Staunton after he
claimed the government wanted to stall payouts to scandal victims
Eleni
Courea Political correspondent
Mon 19 Feb
2024 14.55 EST
Kemi
Badenoch has accused the Post Office chair she sacked of a “blatant attempt to
seek revenge” after he made explosive allegations about the government’s
handling of the Horizon scandal.
The
business secretary launched an extended attack on Henry Staunton in the Commons
on Monday, and claimed that he was under investigation for bullying when she
fired him.
The
extraordinary war of words began over the weekend after Staunton gave an
interview to the Sunday Times accusing the government of wanting to stall
compensation payments to victims of the Horizon scandal until after the general
election.
Badenoch
dismissed Staunton from his role last month. In his interview Staunton said
that Badenoch told him when she fired him: “Well, someone’s got to take the rap
for this.”
He also
claimed that soon after starting his role in December 2022, he was instructed
by a senior civil servant to delay compensation payouts so the Conservatives
could “limp into” the general election.
Badenoch
accused Staunton of a series of “completely false” accusations, telling MPs
there was no proof that Staunton had been told to delay payments and that such
an approach would be “mad”.
“There is
no evidence whatsoever that this is true,” she said. “We have no evidence
whatsoever that any official said this, and actually, if such a thing was said,
it is for Mr Staunton himself to bring the evidence.
“It is very
hard to refute a negative. People just making wild baseless accusations and
then demanding proof that they didn’t happen are mischief making in my view.
“There
would be no benefit whatsoever of us delaying compensation,” Badenoch added.
“This does not have any significant impact on revenues whatsoever. It would be
a mad thing to even suggest, and the compensation scheme which Mr Staunton
oversaw has actually been completed, and my understanding is 100% of payments
have been made, so clearly no instruction was given.
“I would
hope that most people reading the interview in yesterday’s Sunday Times would
see it for what it was: a blatant attempt to seek revenge following dismissal,”
she said.
Badenoch
also told the Commons that Staunton had been under investigation for bullying
when he was dismissed and that “concerns were brought” to her department that
he was refusing to cooperate.
She said:
“I dismissed him because there were serious concerns about his behaviour as
chair, including those raised from other directors on the board … I should also
inform the house that while he was in 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.”
On Monday
night, Staunton issued a stinging riposte to Badenoch, saying he had kept a
record of the alleged comment from a senior civil servant asking him to stall
compensation payments to Horizon victims. A spokesperson for Staunton said he
“recorded [it] 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”.
The
spokesperson said Staunton had never been made aware of any bullying
allegations against him and that they were “certainly not raised by the
secretary of state at any stage and certainly not during the conversation which
led to Mr Staunton’s dismissal. Such behaviour would in any case be totally out
of character.”
They 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 Mr Bates programme. We will leave it to others to come
to the conclusion as to why that was the case.”
The shadow
business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, earlier called for a full Cabinet Office
investigation and said ministers must ensure claims the government had sought
to stall Horizon compensation payments were “shown to be false in no uncertain
terms”.
He said:
“Yet we do now have two completely contrasting accounts, one from the chairman
of the Post Office, and one from the secretary of state, and only one of these
accounts can be the truth.”
James
Arbuthnot, the Tory peer who has been one of the leading campaigners on the
scandal, said that what Staunton alleged happened was “disgraceful” but that
ministers should now focus on delivering quick compensation.
“What I
think we need to concentrate on is holding the government’s feet to the fire,
making sure that compensation is paid quickly and effectively and generously,
and overturning these convictions as quickly and expeditiously as we can,” Lord
Arbuthnot said.
“Although
if true, it’s a disgraceful story, things have moved on. I’m not really
interested in a ‘Did he say this? Did she say that?’ battle. I’m interested in
getting the payments to the subpostmasters as quickly as possible.”
In his
Sunday Times interview, Staunton had said: “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.
“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.”
Badenoch
reacted furiously to the claims on Sunday, publishing a thread on X accusing
Staunton of having “given an interview full of lies about our conversation
during his dismissal”.
On Monday
evening, the Department for Business and Trade circulated its short “meeting
note” on the call in which Badenoch dismissed Staunton. The note said Badenoch
had “received a briefing on the governance issues at the Post Office and that
the complaints against HS [Henry Staunton] are so serious that the government
need to intervene”.
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