Post Office suspends spin physician who claimed postmasters ‘stole cash’
The Post Office final night time suspended its chief spin physician after he was caught saying victims of the Horizon IT scandal ‘downright stole’ the cash.
Former Labour adviser Richard Taylor implied that some postmasters had helped themselves to Post Office money in secret audio clips recorded in March 2020 and November 2021.
The Post Office communications director may be heard telling an unknown individual: ‘You go, ‘Oh, I’d prefer to run a Post Office’ and… we provide you with £30,000 in money to stay in a secure.
‘And the issue with £30,000 in money in a secure is in case you’ve received 11 and a half thousand submit officers… a few of these folks may determine to – not essentially with any explicit intent – to borrow that cash for a short time.’
Asked if he really believed that is what occurred within the Horizon IT scandal, Mr Taylor added: ‘Well, a few of them downright stole it. The downside is that they’re all grouped collectively. And as is true in life, you already know, there are in all probability some folks [who] have been exhausting completed by.
Post Office communications director Richard Taylor implied that some postmasters had helped themselves to Post Office money in secret audio clips recorded in March 2020 and November 2021
There are 736 victims of the Horizon scandal with solely 90 folks having efficiently had their wrongful convictions overturned
‘But another folks, they did steal the cash. At the second, the narrative is that they are all harmless they usually all must be vindicated.’
Last night time the Post Office stated Mr Taylor had been suspended with speedy impact pending an investigation. Former postmasters and their households had demanded that he be sacked.
The timing of Mr Taylor’s feedback is prone to trigger additional outrage, as the primary event came about three months after a High Court decide laid naked the Post Office’s surprising therapy of postmasters and postmistresses.
The second time was shortly after dozens of postmasters and postmistresses had their convictions overturned by the Court of Appeal, which discovered the Post Office prosecutions have been an ‘affront to justice [and] the conscience of the court docket’.
Jo Hamilton, who was wrongly prosecuted for stealing £36,000 from her department in South Warnborough, Hampshire, earlier than her conviction was quashed in 2021, stated Mr Taylor must be fired.
She instructed the Mail: ‘This appears to be… the best way they assume. Even after litigation, they’re nonetheless saying it. It would not shock me in any respect, sadly. I can’t imagine they’ve those that receives a commission a lot cash, technically by the taxpayer, they usually’re so terrible at their job.
‘We are the beating coronary heart of their enterprise, they usually nonetheless deal with us like dust and with contempt.’
The married mother-of-two, 66, whose story options within the ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office, added: ‘He ought to simply be sacked. I do not imagine he’s the one one [with these views]. He ought to simply go, as a result of clearly the mindset’s nonetheless there that we’re all thieves. It’s simply standard, standard Post Office.’
Jo Hamilton, who was wrongly prosecuted for stealing £36,000 from her department in South Warnborough, Hampshire, earlier than her conviction was quashed in 2021, stated Mr Taylor must be fired
Varchas Patel former postmaster father Vipinchandra, 70, (pictured) was wrongfully convicted of stealing £75,000 from his department
Former sub-postmaster Mark Kelly, 45, who was suspended from his Swansea department in July 2006 after £13,400 allegedly went lacking, stated Mr Taylor’s feedback ‘spotlight an assumption of individuals within the Post Office company setting that even when the High Court and the Court of Appeal say the postmasters are harmless, they see them as responsible’.
He known as for Mr Taylor to be ‘suspended and reprimanded’, including: ‘[Post Office chief executive] Nick Read has come into the Post Office to get its act collectively and to attract a line underneath [the scandal]. So, you must do away with folks that also have that view.’
Former postmistress Shazia Saddiq, 40, who was sacked from her department in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in October 2016 over an alleged shortfall of £40,000, stated: ‘This is traditional Post Office. This is what they do.’ But she stopped in need of calling for Mr Taylor to be fired, saying: ‘If we go spherical sacking folks, then we are not any higher than the Post Office.’
Ex-Labour adviser Mr Taylor was appointed because the Post Office’s group company affairs, communications and model director in 2020 in a bid to revamp its picture following the scandal.
He apologised after the key recordings have been first reported by journalist Nick Wallis for TalkTV, saying: ‘I sincerely apologise for any previous remarks that I could have made throughout private conversations which trigger harm or offence.’
Varchas Patel, whose former postmaster father Vipinchandra, 70, was wrongfully convicted of stealing £75,000 from his department earlier than being cleared in 2021, known as for Mr Taylor to be sacked.
Mr Patel, 36, stated: ‘There’s an unlucky perception inside the Post Office and its workers nonetheless to this present day, that someway, the postmasters all received off on a authorized technicality. And that’s unanimously unfaithful.’
A Post Office spokesman stated: ‘We turned conscious in a single day of a recording that included feedback made by Richard Taylor, and whereas we’re not aware about the complete dialog and the related context, we have now suspended him with speedy impact pending an investigation.’
