An investigation has found that former Post Office chairman Henry Staunton used ‘offensive and outdated’ terms when discussing a job candidate.
Staunton, who was chairman of the organisation between 1 December 2022 and 27 January 2024– when he was sacked by business minister Kemi Badenoch – used discriminatory language and “infantilising” terms about women during a meeting in January 2023, the barrister’s report found.
The investigation, conducted by employment barrister Marianne Tutin, was not centred on Staunton. It was instead focused on 14 allegations made by an HR whistleblower about the conduct of Post Office chief executive Nick Read, who has now been cleared.
Tutin, however, upheld one allegation concerning Staunton, and said that his conduct during the investigation gave her “cause for concern” about the “reliability and integrity of their evidence”.
Post Office scandal
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She found that while discussing a senior independent director role on the Post Office board, Staunton had said a candidate “doesn’t look coloured, where does she come from?”
This was “offensive and outdated,” said Tutin. But she conceded that Staunton’s desire to increase diversity at board level was genuine.
Staunton was also found to have called younger female candidates “girls” and older female candidates “ladies”, which “can be viewed by many as infantilising or patronising”, Tutin wrote. She added that Staunton intended no offence by using such terms.
The whistleblower, Jane Davies, the Post Office chief people officer between December 2022 and July 2023, claimed last month that her allegations had nothing to do with Staunton and were entirely concerned with the conduct of Read. She had said her allegations had been misrepresented by the Post Office in an attempt to mislead MPs on the business select committee.
Tutin’s investigation concluded that Post Office chief executive Nick Read – its main focus – had no case to answer and he was cleared of all 14 allegations against him.
‘Discriminatory jokes’
Tutin added, concerning Staunton’s use of language: “Discriminatory jokes and banter can still amount to unacceptable behaviour.”
According to a report in The Times, Staunton said the “girls” quote came from a previous conversation he had had when chair of another organisation in which a woman in a senior management role had told him that she did not like appointing “girls” because they were, in her experience, “pains in the arses”.
He added that he understood that the term “coloured” had fallen out of use and said he would not use it again. He said the HR director who was present at that meeting had accepted no offence was meant in either case.
Of his sacking by Badenoch on 27 January 2024, Staunton said it was clear to him that he was likely to lose his job after he “began challenging the deep-seated mistrust of the postmasters, which still pervades the senior echelons of the Post Office and the slow, bureaucratic and unsympathetic response to the need for remediation. I leave it to others to decide to what extent the Post Office‘s investigation can be judged to be truly independent.”
Speaking in front of the business select committee in late February, Staunton had claimed that Read had considered resigning four times because he was unhappy with his pay packet, amid reports that the chief executive wanted to see it doubled to £1 million.
Horizon system public inquiry
Meanwhile, the public inquiry into the Post Office Horizon IT scandal heard yesterday that one sub-postmistress was jailed while pregnant because the Post Office denied her access to computer data because it would have cost £15,000 to provide.
Seema Misra, 48, who ran a post office in West Byfleet, Surrey, was wrongfully jailed while eight weeks pregnant after being accused of stealing £74,000. The investigator in Misra’s case, John Longman, giving evidence to the inquiry yesterday, admitted that the evidence that may have cleared Misra would have cost the Post Office £15,000 to provide.
The inquiry yesterday also heard from Allan Leighton, the chairman of Royal Mail, the Post Office’s parent company, between 2002 and 2009. He said he was aware that the prosecutions were conducted by the Post Office, unlike other senior executives Alan Cook and Adam Crozier who said earlier this week they had not been aware of this. He added he could not recall hearing about any issues with the Fujitsu-operated Horizon IT system.
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On Thursday and Friday next week the inquiry will hear from Angela van den Bogerd – the Post Office’s former people services director. Her boss, Paula Vennells, CEO of the Post Office from 2012-2019, who had ended an independent investigation into the Horizon problems in 2015, will face the inquiry panel on 22-24 May.
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