9 issues we discovered as Alan Bates and Post Office bosses had been grilled by MPs
Former subpostmaster and hero campaigner Alan Bates has branded the Post Office a “dead duck” that ought to be offered off.
In a mammoth proof session in Parliament, MPs grilled former subpostmasters concerning the organisation as compensation continues to be delayed. Hundreds of subpostmasters are nonetheless awaiting compensation regardless of the Government saying that those that have had convictions quashed are eligible for £600,000 payouts.
Former Post Office chairman Henry Staunton was additionally questioned by MPs about his declare he was ordered to decelerate funds to victims of the Horizon IT scandal so the Tories may “limp into” the basic election. In a packed day, present Post Office chief govt Nick Read – who it emerged stated the organisation stands by some Horizon convictions – additionally gave proof to the The Business and Trade Committee.
ITV drama ‘Mr Bates vs the Post Office’ ignited a ferocious backlash over the scandal, which noticed greater than 700 subpostmasters prosecuted by the Post Office and handed prison convictions between 1999 and 2015.
The Mirror has rounded up the important thing seven moments from a dramatic day in Parliament as victims proceed to struggle for justice.
1. Alan Bates says Post Office ought to be offered
Former subpostmaster and lead campaigner Mr Bates branded the Post Office a “dead duck” and stated will probably be a “money pit” for taxpayers for years. He instructed MPs he believes it ought to be offered off, stating: “It will not change and you cannot change it.
“My private view concerning the Post Office is it is a lifeless duck and it has been for years and it’ll be a cash pit for the taxpayer for years to return. And you must promote it to somebody like Amazon for a pound.”
And quizzed about rumours that the organisation had been told to go slow on compensation, he said: “It would not shock me.” He has told MPs that the Government should “get on and pay folks” amid continued fall-out from the Horizon IT scandal.
His story recently became the subject of an ITV drama titled Mr Bates vs The Post Office, starring actor Toby Jones. Mr Bates told added that he had considered getting all the former subpostmasters involved in the initial High Court case to “stand as MPs when the following election comes”, adding: “Then we’ll kind it out as soon as and for all.”
2. Staunton claims chief exec nearly quit because he wasn’t paid enough
Former chairman of the Post Office Mr Staunton claimed the organisation’s current chief executive was going to resign because he was “sad along with his pay”. He said he’d tried to secure a pay rise for Nick Read, who was thinking of quitting because he wasn’t paid enough.
But he said he was given short shrift by former Business Secretary Grant Shapps. The Tory Minister had told him about Mr Read’s pay: “Don’t even consider coming for any wage improve.”
Pressed on the gap between executive pay he said: “There’s an infinite discrepancy, as after all there may be in and the opposite industrial organisation between the individual on the store ground and the Chief Executive officer after all.”
3. Post Office branded ‘rotten to core’ because of low pay
Huge pay gaps in the Post Office show how the business is “rotten to the core”, bosses have been told.
Labour MP Ian Lavery pointed out that two of three postmasters who gave evidence were earning less than £20,000 a year. He told bosses: “Your bonuses on prime of the a whole bunch of 1000’s of kilos in wages was 20 occasions greater than their annual wage. Does this probably not present how the Post Office is rotten to the core?”
Mr Read responded: “I’m not going to reply that query, clearly, I’m clearly properly paid and I’m clearly able the place I’m making an attempt to guarantee that the industrial sustainability of the put up workplace goes to be there for the following era as properly.”
4. Ex-chairman says allegations came to light during probe into chief exec
Addressing allegations that his behaviour was being looked into, Mr Staunton confirmed that an investigation was ongoing. He said that an allegation of politically incorrect comments made by himself had been made in an 80 page report relating to Mr Read.
Asked if he was informed that his behaviour was under investigation in November last year, Mr Staunton said: “What there may be, really, is Mr Read fell out along with his HR director and he or she produced a ‘communicate up’ doc which was 80 pages thick.
“Within that, was one paragraph… about comments that I allegedly made. So this is an investigation, not into me, this is an investigation made into the chief executive Nick Read.
“That one paragraph you might say was about politically incorrect feedback attributed to me which I strenuously deny. This was not an investigation into me, this was an investigation based mostly on the 80-page doc ready by the HR director.”
5. Ex-postmaster says he sold everything and left country
Former subpostmaster Tim Brentnall, who is still battling to get full financial redress more than three years after his conviction was overturned, told MPs £600,000 “does not go wherever close to” redressing the ordeal people like him have gone through.
He said people in the business where he worked shunned the shop after he was painted as a fraudster. The Horizon victim said he had hidden away as a result of his ordeal.
He said he’d been accused of stealing more than £20,000. He added: “I offered my automobile, borrowed cash from my dad and mom and the enterprise I paid the cash again to to keep away from the theft cost, however they then then charged me with false accounting.”
6. Staunton doubles down on claims – and says he is victim of ‘smear campaign’
Mr Staunton doubled down on his claims that he’d been ordered to slow down payments – and said he has been the victim of a “smear marketing campaign”.
Describing a meeting with senior civil servant Sarah Munby, he said he was told that “cash was tight”. He said he was told “that is no time to tear off the band-aid” and said he’d have to look at “three levers” – including compensation. Mr Staunton said: “It’s such an uncommon dialog that I did a full word of it really used placing in citation marks what I used to be instructed. And I used to be accused of being a liar till fortunately, I discovered this word simply only a few days in the past.”
He also said that he is a victim of a “smear marketing campaign” after his fallout with Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch, after she stated his declare within the Sunday Times that he was instructed to delay pay-puts to subpostmasters was “fully false”. “We all know that issues had been shifting far too slowly… and the rationale why folks have latched onto what I stated within the Sunday Times was that lastly somebody was being sincere about how deep-seated the issues had been and why nothing was being executed,” he said.
“I nonetheless suppose that extra could possibly be executed, at the least to make compensation extra beneficiant, and the method of getting justice much less bureaucratic. But I’ll at the least have achieved one thing if the daylight of disinfectant, which the Secretary of State so approves of, implies that Government now lives as much as its guarantees.
“What the public wants to know is: why was everything so slow? … And why does everything remain so slow? I’ve spoken up on matters of genuine public concern, have been fired, and am now subject to a smear campaign.”
7. Post Office says it is acquired 1,000 extra claims since ITV drama
The Post Office revealed that it has had one other 1,000 claims for compensation since ITV’s sequence on the Horizon scandal.
“The closure was potentially looming until the excellent ITV series when we’ve had over 1,000 new claims in, which I think is fantastic by the way, because my job is to pay out fair compensation,” Simon Recaldin, remediation issues director on the Post Office, instructed MPs on the Business and Trade Committee.
He stated this now makes it tougher to determine when the compensation programme will probably be accomplished. “For you to now ask me to put a timescale on that is going to be challenging because I’d already dealt with 2,500 claims and I’d made the offers for 2,500 claims, and we were going through the process of resolving any disputes in that,” he stated.
“Therefore, I had a trajectory for those towards the end of this year and March next year to close all those down. Now, with another 1,000 cases in there, I have to reassess that plan in terms of how I deliver those.”
8. Final compensation invoice is more likely to be greater than £1billion
Department for Business official Carl Cresswell stated he estimates that the ultimate sum paid in compensation by taxpayers will cross £1billion.
He stated: “I personally think that we will end up spending more money on compensation overall than that £1billion figure that was said in the earlier stages.” At the second round a 3rd of victims have put in claims, the committee has heard. Mr Cresswell says he hopes that by August that will probably be as much as 95%.
He stated that 28 individuals who had been paid lower than £75,000 have had their compensation determine topped up.
9. We nonetheless do not understand how a lot of this Fujitsu pays
Members of the general public will probably be “astonished” that taxpayers may foot a invoice of greater than £1billion over the scandal.
Tory MP Mark Pawsey stated: “I think many of our constituents would be astonished to find that they, as taxpayers are having to contribute this money because of the bad decisions of the management within the post office.”
Mr Cresswell responded that there’s nonetheless dialogue about how a lot of the invoice software program developer Fujitsu foots.
He stated: ” I think the the public mood is very much behind the postmasters, rightly, but I think that the question about who contributes towards the costs overall, taxpayer or someone else is still very much alive.”
Andy McDonald stated: “They (Fujitsu) came here with lots of expressions of sorrow and commitments. What are you doing to actually nail it down?” He stated he was stunned {that a} sum hasn’t been agreed already.
Mr Cresswell instructed the committee: “I think the principle of the moral obligation has been stated. We are in contact with Fujitsu, but I’m afraid we have not at this point achieved or you have said that you think that we should do.”
