Karen McEwan, the Post Office’s group chief people officer, this week told the public inquiry into the Post Office Horizon scandal that the state-owned body’s former chair Henry Staunton had asked her to ‘close down’ a barrister-led investigation into the conduct of the outgoing chief executive Nick Read.
Read had faced accusations of bullying by former HR executive at the Post Office Jane Davies but was cleared of the allegations in April.
Staunton was sacked in January by then business secretary Kemi Badenoch.
Davies is now bringing an employment tribunal case against the Post Office, the inquiry heard on Tuesday.
McEwan, who joined the Post Office in September 2023, told the hearing that Staunton had asked her to “close down” the investigation because of concern for Read’s wellbeing. Staunton had compared internal investigations to a “cancer”, she said.
However, she told the inquiry chaired by Wyn Williams, she later realised that the barrister-led review was also looking into comments by Staunton after Davies filed her employment lawsuit against the Post Office last year.
McEwan’s written witness statement said: “I considered that to some extent that Henry’s view was self-serving, as I understand that he was aware that he had been named in the complaint made by Jane Davies and this appeared to exacerbate his view that investigations should be closed down.”
Post Office scandal
The Post Office Horizon scandal: an explainer
Post Office chair used ‘offensive and outdated’ terms
After his sacking in January Staunton claimed he was the victim of a “smear campaign” led by Badenoch. Last week, at the inquiry, he warned of another Horizon-style scandal if “untouchable” investigators and executives involved in the prosecution of post office operatives were not fired before the organisation rolled out its new IT system.
In April, the barrister-led inquiry that cleared Read concluded that Staunton had used discriminatory language and “infantilising” terms about women during a meeting and of using outdated terms in relation to job candidates’ skin colour.
“I deny those allegations completely, and felt deeply stung by them,” Staunton told the public inquiry on 1 October. “I find racism and misogyny utterly abhorrent. This was well-known to my colleagues at the Post Office,” he said.
“By way of example only, I responded strongly when I became aware that the Post Office had used racist terms to categorise postmasters,” Staunton said.
Meanwhile, Post Office chief executive Nick Read, who took over from former boss Paula Vennells in 2019, told the inquiry this week in response to the allegation he had failed to improve the organisation’s culture, that he had not been made not fully aware of the “scale and enormity” of the scandal before he took up the role of chief executive in 2019.
Read said the Post Office CEO job description advertised in 2019 didn’t mention the landmark High Court judgment against the organisation and its ramifications for the role.
The scandal over the treatment of hundreds of Post Office subpostmasters wrongly accused and convicted of fraud is one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in UK history. Renewed interest this year was triggered, in part, by the ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office, and by continuing revelations from the public inquiry into the controversy.
In 2019 Justice For Sub-postmasters Alliance won a High Court case, led by former sub-postmaster Alan Bates. Mr Justice Fraser found “bugs, errors and defects in the Horizon system caused discrepancies in postmasters’ branch accounts”.
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