Post Office “did have a problem with ethnicity and gender” with more “jobs for the boys” and few for women or ethnic minority executives, Post Office former chairman Henry Staunton told the public inquiry on Tuesday (1).
Staunton, who was sacked by the former business secretary Kemi Badenoch in January this year, told the public inquiry that Post Office is failing to get on top of varying problems, including lack of oversight of the costs of bringing in a new IT system, continued vilification of wrongly persecuted postmasters, and lack of desire to pay proper compensation for their incorrect prosecutions.
He told the inquiry that a whistleblower contacted him in June 2023 about the rollout of a new IT platform called NBIT, which was due to replace the disgraced Horizon system that introduced errors into postmasters’ accounts.
Among other claims like ballooning the cost of cost of NBIT from over £300m to over £800m, the whistleblower went on to claim that “the culture in the business is disgusting and this starts at the top with Nick (the chief executive) and the general executives. The email also claimed “sexism is rife”.
On being questioned over these claims made by the whistleblower, Staunton stated, "We had a huge cultural problem..you heard odd comments about jobs for the boys. I’d heard them and I understood why those comments were made.”
He added that the Post Office did “have a problem with ethnicity and gender”, adding, “The biggest cultural issue relates to how postmasters are viewed in this organisation”.
Staunton went to say that he had fought on behalf of the postmasters within the organisation and had been “horrified” when the Post Office continued to say that the majority of postmasters were “guilty as charged”.
He told the inquiry he had tried to make sure wrongly convicted postmasters were rightfully compensated for this ordeal but he had faced opposition from government civil servants.
Staunton also told the inquiry that people within the Post Office “didn’t fully accept” the rulings made by Justice Fraser, which found that the Horizon IT system had caused errors that led to wrongful prosecutions of postmasters.
Staunton, who joined the Post Office at the end of 2022, said, “They didn’t fully accept it [that] was my impression. That somehow the case hadn’t been put well. There wasn’t a feeling that this [the prosecutions of postmasters] was absolutely wrong.”
Staunton said that before the replacement for Horizon is rolled out, the Post Office must deal with staff involved in the wrongful prosecution of more than 700 sub-postmasters.
“This is not something that relates to the past – it is something that relates to the future. Before we implement [the new] Horizon we will be doing a path-clearing exercise. There are millions of pounds in dispute between postmasters and what is on their records and what is in the Post Office account,” he told the inquiry into the scandal.
Talking about the employees deemed high-risk given their alleged involvement in the Horizon scandal, a group of Post Office investigators who it is often claimed that they would never face disciplinary action over the Horizon IT scandal, Staunton stated that continued "involvement of the untouchables" will be a big problem.
Staunton said, “There are these people called the ‘untouchables’ in the investigations team, or reds or whatever, involved with all the issues in the past of finding postmasters guilty
“I am very afraid if [sub-postmasters] are investigated [after the new IT system is implemented] by the so-called untouchables we could have another debacle – not to the same extent – but we could have hundreds of sub-postmasters having to pay out monies. This is a big issue going forward, the involvement of the untouchables. It is not some sort of academic exercise. It is really fundamental to what we do next time.”
Staunton claimed in the inquiry that Read, who is expected to appear before the inquiry for three days next week, had used the phrase “untouchables” with him in a private conversation and in a meeting with all of the Post Office’s non-executive directors.
Staunton described the Post Office’s investigations department as “powerful” and “quite brutal” in the way they dealt with post office operators. He also said that he was shocked at the attitude of the remediation process designed to evaluate and compensate those prosecuted.
Staunton was sacked as Post Office chairman in January by Badenoch over accusations of using derogatory language and having a racist attitude.
