Will minister fire more Post Office bosses after sacking the chairman?

KEMI Badenoch says she was forced to sack the chairman of the Post Office over ‘difficulties’ with its governance.

Henry Staunton, who was only appointed in December 2022, was ousted on Saturday after a phone call with the Business Secretary – who would not be drawn on whether there will be other sackings.

She said issues with the Post Office ‘go well beyond the Horizon scandal’ and that there needed to be a ‘change of personnel’ as the company remains under heightened scrutiny over the wrongful prosecution of hundreds of sub-postmasters.

Separately, Lord Arbuthnot, a Tory peer and campaigner for wrongly convicted subpostmasters, said the best option may be to get rid of the Post Office brand entirely.

Asked why Mr Staunton had been asked to leave after just one year in the job, Ms Badenoch told Sky News the ‘wrong thing to do’ would be to ‘sit back with that bureaucratic indifference that we often see across systems and say, “Well, he’s only been there a year: let’s hope things just get better”’.

She added: ‘It was very sad we had to come to this conclusion... and one of the things I think is important when we do need to have a change of personnel is we don’t hound the people or go after them... But I decided that given all of the difficulties the Post Office is having, it’s not just about Horizon, it’s about the entire business model... we needed someone who could chair a board that was able to deal with these things effectively.’

Mr Staunton had been asked to lead the board of directors as the business reels from the fallout of what has been described as the UK’s biggest miscarriage of justice.

More than 700 branch managers were prosecuted by the Post Office between 1999 and 2015 after faulty accounting software made it look as though money was missing from their branches.

Hundreds of sub-postmasters are still awaiting compensation despite the Government announcing those who have had convictions quashed are eligible for £600,000 payouts.

Lord Arbuthnot told Times Radio: ‘This is an opportunity to refocus the Post Office with a completely different brand – that’s now been completely trashed. The brand may have been so tarnished now that we’ve got to get rid of it.’