Henry Staunton had only been in post since 2022. But when he was sacked he says Kemi Badenoch told him: ‘Someone’s got to take the rap’

The first Henry Staunton knew of his imminent ousting as Post Office chairman was when he received a call from Sky News on a Saturday afternoon last month. He hadn’t even met Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary, but she phoned him shortly afterwards to confirm the government was sacking him.

According to Staunton, Badenoch did not apologise for the manner in which he discovered his fate. He said she referred to the Horizon scandal, which saw more than 900 sub-postmasters and others wrongly prosecuted between 1999 and 2015 based on flaws in the Post Office’s accounting software, and said: “Well, someone’s got to take the rap for this.”
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He was more shocked by the attitude he encountered in Whitehall. “Early on, I was told by a fairly senior person to stall on spending 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,” he said. “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.”

The government said: “We utterly refute these allegations. The government has sped up compensation to victims, and consistently encouraged postmasters to come forward with their claims. To suggest any actions or conversations happened to the contrary is incorrect. In fact, upon appointment, Mr Staunton was set concrete objectives, in writing, to focus on reaching settlements with claimants – clear evidence of the government’s intent. The secretary of state asked Henry Staunton to step down as chairman of the Post Office because a change in leadership was needed.”

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/post-office-chairman-interview-henry-staunton-ws5k6sh9p