Suspended, Post Office spin chief and ex-Labour adviser who sneered at the victims
THE Post Office last night suspended its chief spin doctor after he was caught saying victims of the Horizon IT scandal ‘downright stole’ the money.
Former Labour adviser Richard Taylor implied that some postmasters had helped themselves to Post Office cash in secret audio clips recorded in March 2020 and November 2021.
The Post Office communications director can be heard telling an unknown person: ‘You go, “Oh, I’d like to run a Post Office” and... we give you £30,000 in cash to stick in a safe.
‘And the problem with £30,000 in cash in a safe is if you’ve got 11 and a half thousand post officers... some of those people might decide to – not necessarily with any particular intent – to borrow that money for a little while.’
Asked if he truly believed this is what happened in the Horizon IT scandal, Mr Taylor added: ‘Well, some of them downright stole it. The problem is they’re all grouped together. And as is true in life, you know, there are probably some people [who] have been hard done by.
‘But some other people, they did steal the money. At the moment, the narrative is that they’re all innocent and they all need to be vindicated.’
Last night the Post Office said Mr Taylor had been suspended with immediate effect pending an investigation. Former postmasters and their families had demanded that he be sacked.
The timing of Mr Taylor’s comments is likely to cause further outrage, as the first occasion took place three months after a High Court judge laid bare the Post Office’s shocking treatment 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 found the Post Office prosecutions were an ‘ affront to justice [ and] the conscience of the court’.
Jo Hamilton, who was wrongly prosecuted for stealing £36,000 from her branch in South Warnborough, Hampshire, before her conviction was quashed in 2021, said Mr Taylor should be fired.
She told the Mail: ‘This seems to be... the way they think. Even after litigation, they’re still saying it. It doesn’t surprise me at all, sadly. I cannot believe they have people that get paid so much money, technically by the taxpayer, and they’re so awful at their job.
‘We are the beating heart of their business, and they still treat us like dirt and with contempt.’ The married mother-of-two, 66, whose story features in the ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office, added: ‘He should just be sacked. I don’t believe he is the only one [with these views]. He should just go, because clearly the mindset’s still there that we’re all thieves. It’s just same old, same old Post Office.’
Former sub-postmaster Mark Kelly, 45, who was suspended from his Swansea branch in July 2006 after £13,400 allegedly went missing, said Mr Taylor’s comments ‘highlight an assumption of people in the Post Office corporate environment that even when the High Court and the Court of Appeal say the postmasters are innocent, they see them as guilty’.
He called for Mr Taylor to be ‘suspended and reprimanded’, adding: ‘[Post Office chief executive] Nick Read has come into the Post Office to get its act together and to draw a line under [the scandal]. So, you have to get rid of people that still have that view.’
Former postmistress Shazia Saddiq, 40, who was sacked from her branch in Newcastle-uponTyne in October 2016 over an alleged shortfall of £40,000, said: ‘This is classic Post Office. This is what they do.’ But she stopped short of calling for Mr Taylor to be fired, saying: ‘If we go round sacking people, then we are no better than the Post Office.’
Ex-Labour adviser Mr Taylor was appointed as the Post Office’s group corporate affairs,
‘They still treat us like dirt’
communications and brand director in 2020 in a bid to revamp its image following the scandal.
He apologised after the secret recordings were first reported by journalist Nick Wallis for TalkTV, saying: ‘I sincerely apologise for any past remarks that I may have made during personal conversations which cause hurt or offence.’
Varchas Patel, whose former postmaster father Vipinchandra, 70, was wrongfully convicted of stealing £75,000 from his branch before being cleared in 2021, called for Mr Taylor to be sacked.
Mr Patel, 36, said: ‘ There’s an unfortunate belief within the Post Office and its employees still to this day, that somehow, the postmasters all got off on a legal technicality. And that is unanimously untrue.’
A Post Office spokesman said: ‘We became aware overnight of a recording that included comments made by Richard Taylor, and while we are not privy to the full conversation and the associated context, we have suspended him with immediate effect pending an investigation.’