Breaking Badenoch
Hi
A week is now becoming a very long time in this story. The last newsletter led on sacked Post Office chair Henry Staunton and his extraordinary interview with Oliver Shah in the Sunday Times.
Staunton accused the government of asking him to slow down compensation payments, and said the Post Office had a “dire” and “toxic” culture, and was a “mess” of an organisation, especially “in terms of how the postmasters are perceived.”
Staunton said the Post Office CEO Nick Read referred to the 40 Post Office investigators as “untouchables” and alleged that (at the behest of UKGI), Read had written to Kevin Hollinrake, the Business minister, claiming the reason so few Postmasters had had their convictions quashed was because many of them were “guilty as charged”.
Kemi At ‘Em
Monday brought us Kemi Badenoch’s response in the House of Commons. And boy did she come out swinging, accusing Staunton of “making up” a series of “baseless attacks”, which were “completely false.”
On the issues of slowing compensation payments she said: “The shadow Minister asked whether I would categorically state that no instruction was given to delay payments. Yes, I can. We have no evidence whatever that any official said that.”
She also made the point: “There would be no benefit whatever to our delaying the compensation, which has no significant impact on revenues. It would be a mad thing even to suggest.”
Badenoch denied anyone at UKGI or the Post Office told Read to write his “guilty as charged” letter to Hollinrake, but implicitly confirmed it existed, leaving us all to wonder what he could possibly have to gain from writing it.
The Business Secretary also said of Staunton: “a formal investigation was launched into allegations made regarding his conduct, including serious matters such as bullying. Concerns were brought to my Department’s attention about Mr Staunton’s willingness to co-operate with that investigation.”
You can watch the debate, which began with Badenoch’s statement at 4.18pm on 19 Feb (this link should take you to the start), or you can read the transcript in Hansard here.
Staunton and on and on and on
Not long after Badenoch sat down, Staunton’s spokesperson offered his response, which I have only been able to find on twitter. Given many secret emailers find twitter a bit of a pain in the neck, I have posted Staunton’s statement up in full on postofficescandal.uk here.
That evening Staunton (pictured) found his note of the conversation during which he was allegedly told by a government official to do the go slow, and the Times published excerpts from it on Wednesday. This was immediate followed by a letter from the government official in question (Sarah Munby), rubbishing what Staunton said AND the publication of a (redacted) “formal note” of the contentious meeting between Staunton and Munby.
Henry Staunton is giving evidence to the Business Select Committee at 1pm next Tuesday.. Fireworks will no doubt ensue. That same morning the committee will hear evidence from various Subpostmasters, lawyers, government and Post Office officials (full list here).
Yesterday I had a useful conversation with the new-ish chair of the committee, Liam Byrne MP, whilst I was standing in the pouring rain at Battle station in East Sussex desperately trying to find a phone signal.
Mr Byrne told me his committee has the power to request (and be given) documents of which may be of relevance to Staunton’s claims AND the compensation debacle.
If any secret emailer wants to see something specific raised and possibly made public by the committee, let me know. I’ll compile the responses and pass them on.
Postmaster board members “ignored and unwanted”
The same day Badenoch and Staunton were slugging it out on twitter and in the Commons (we’re still only on Monday, remember), the Times published excerpts from a memo written by Elliot Jacobs, one of the Subpostmasters appointed to the Post Office board with great fanfare in 2021 by Nick Read.
Jacobs wrote “the culture” that Subpostmasters “are ‘guilty’ and ‘on the take’ is embedded in this company”. He complained that he and Saf Ismail, his fellow Subpostmaster board member, “continue to be ignored and seen by many as an annoyance”.
Project Zebra
A zebra, yesterday (photo: Yathin S Krishnappa)
On Tuesday, the BBC’s Andy Verity pushed out another excellent report. Ploughing through some Freedom of Information responses he has pieced together some important lines about who knew what at ministerial level when it came to the Post Office’s attempts to cover up the Horizon scandal between 2014 and 2016.
Verity focuses on who had sight of the Swift Review (first grubbed up by campaigner Eleanor Shaikh in 2022) and explores the contents of an earlier document, codenamed “Project Zebra” by the Post Office.
Project Zebra was a Deloitte report, which went to the “Project Sparrow” Post Office board sub-committee in June 2014. According to Verity the report makes it absolutely clear that:
“authorised Fujitsu staff with the right database access privileges could use fake digital signatures or keys to delete, create or amend data on customer purchases that had been electronically signed by sub-postmasters. Fujitsu staff could then “re-sign it with a fake key”.Deloitte said Fujitsu staff had also been able to correct errors using an emergency process known as a “balancing transaction”, which can “create transactions directly in branch ledgers”.
This information was kept hidden from the independent investigators Second Sight (who were still working for the Post Office on the Mediation Scheme at that point), and puts the infamous Paula Vennells email from 30 Jan 2015 into a new light.
When presented with Verity’s analysis, the barrister Paul Marshall doesn’t mince his words: “On the face of it,” he says, “it discloses a conspiracy by the Post Office to pervert the course of justice.”
Do have a read of Andy Verity’s excellent report and, if you want to investigate the Swift Review further, Professor Richard Moorhead wrote several important substack posts about it in September 2022.
Head of PMQs
Entirely under his own steam, former Subpostmaster Chris Head (pictured) has become a very important person in the Post Office story by his relentless and focused campaign to get just compensation for people applying to the GLO, HSS and OC schemes.
The sheer sense he is talking in the media and on twitter finally came to the attention of Sir Keir Starmer KC, who you may better know as the leader of the Labour party.
One of Chris’s comments formed the basis of a question at Prime Ministers’ Questions in the Commons on Wednesday as Starmer said to the PM:
“Chris Head, once accused by the Post Office of owing more than £80,000, said this:
“There is a lack of transparency…We need to see the correspondence between [the] Post Office, the department and UKGI because all of this time everything gets shrouded in secrecy”—[Interruption.]
These are his words; have some respect, please. These are victims.
I appreciate that the inquiry is ongoing, but as the Prime Minister knows—as do I and the whole House—that does not provide a reason why he cannot draw a line under this, give postmasters such as Chris the peace of mind that they need, and release all the correspondence that he wants to see. Will he now do so?”
The Prime Minister responded with the usual blether. A few minutes later, Chris’ name was raised by his own MP, Kate Osborne, in the preamble to her question, which was:
“The Prime Minister has promised a new law to swiftly exonerate and compensate victims. Today he said “shortly”, so will he commit today to ensuring that it is brought forward before the next general election?“
Rishi Sunak responded:
“Yes, the legislation will be brought before the House very, very soon.”
Which brings us neatly to…
Thursday
Before the Big Announcement, veteran campaigner Kevan Jones (pictured) secured an Urgent Question in the Commons on Postmaster Compensation.
The Business Minister Kevin Hollinrake was brought to the despatch box to answer Jones’ questions and his fellow MP’s follow ups. Hollinrake told us:
“As of this month, £160 million has been paid in financial redress to more than 2,700 victims affected by the Horizon scandal. More than 78% of eligible full claims received have been settled as follows: 102 convictions have been overturned, and 42 full claims have been submitted, of which 32 have been settled; 2,793 applications to the Horizon shortfall scheme have been received, and 2,197 have been settled; 58 full claims have been submitted to the group litigation order scheme, and 41 have been settled.”
I have been corresponding with one lawyer who has a single client in the HSS. In Jan 2021 he told me his client “is quite old and neither he nor his wife in the best of health. They need to move on.”
Three years later the poor man is still waiting for a sensible offer. Their lawyer has detailed the delay and intransigence he has been up against since submitting his client’s claim back in 2020, and I am afraid that whilst Minister Hollinrake might claim, or even believe that the issue of compensation is being adequately addressed, the reports I am hearing from those who are still fighting suggests otherwise.
You can watch the short debate here. Or read it in Hansard here.
After watching what was going on in the Commons, Chris Head tweeted his solutions to the current mess with a nice photo of him standing next to Minister Hollinrake in Portcullis House. With Chris’s permission, I have turned his solutions into a blog post. They all make sense to me.
Incidentally, if you would like to get every post I put up on the postofficescandal.uk website within minutes of it going live, do consider adding your email address to the “Subscribe For Latest Blog Updates” box which appears on the home page. You’ll then be added to the list and get the posts whenever they drop. This is a free service. The email addresses are kept safe by Resident Wizard Andrew Neale (who designed and hosts the website), and are not used for any purpose other than sending you blog posts.
The Big Announcement
The government has finally announced how and when it will quash some of the hundreds of Postmaster convictions. You can watch ITV News’ taken on it here.
Joshua Rozenberg provided his usual incisive analysis of what yesterday’s govt announcement might mean on his substack this morning here.
The Post Office provides figures on the progress of the conviction quashing to date, here.
Anna
When the Big Announcement dropped I was in Darkest East Sussex doing Post Office-related filming. As I travelled to and from East Sussex I spoke to a Subpostmaster I’m currently calling Anna about her experience in 2004 of losing her Post Office, her partner, her reputation and her savings.
Anna is 67 and currently works as a cleaner. She didn’t tell anyone in her family what happened to her until 2020. She didn’t start socialising again until last year. She put in a claim in the Horizon Shortfall Scheme and received a derisory offer which she would have taken were it not for the Post Office’s “mean-mouthed” apology and flat refusal to believe her depression was caused by what they did to her.
With “Anna”‘s permission, I posted her story on twitter. In less than 24 hours it has clocked up more than a quarter of a million views. I am hoping Anna will allow me to put up a blog post using her real name, with more details about her story in the near future. Again, it might be worth adding your email address to the website/blog post subscription box if you want to be among the first to read any further developments.
ITV News investigations
On Monday this week I started working on some proper deep-level Post Office stuff for the ITV News investigations unit, which is largely why I haven’t popped up in the media to pontificate on various things over the course of the week.
If you are or were a key player in this scandal, or you have documents which may be of interest, now is very definitely the time to get in touch.
If you have previously sent me information or told me you have something concrete which might shape the Post Office story in a significant way, please drop me a line.
I have started ploughing through the mountain of files I’m already sitting on, as something which may not have been considered newsworthy pre-ITV Drama could now interest a large and hungry potential audience. Thanks to ITV News I now have the time and budget to work on it!
Until next week
I’m sorry this is such a monster newsletter. I’ve been at it (and its ancillary blog posts) for the best part of six hours, which is a Bit Silly. I am grateful to you for reading this far and would like to extend the warmest welcome to all new subscribers to this service. I know I’ve probably missed lots and I am deeply grateful to the secret emailers who are kindly sending me links to some really interesting stuff, but if I put it all in it would take you six hours to read this newsletter and no one wants that.
Nonetheless, if you have any (non-investigatory) thoughts you’d like to share, or any documents you’d like the Business Select Committee to pull up and publish, please just do hit reply. Now January’s madness has died down, I am at least in a position to read and appreciate everything I get sent, even if I am not always in a position to reply.
Have a great weekend.
Nick