Top mandarin insists: I did NOT tell Post Office boss to stall payouts

A SENIOR civil servant has denied telling the former Post Office head to stall payments to wronged sub-postmasters.

In a rare public intervention by a mandarin, Sarah Munby said she did not instruct Henry Staunton to delay compensation for those caught up in the Horizon scandal.

The former Post Office chairman had claimed that he had been told to hold back on payments to allow the Government to ‘limp into the election’ in a better financial position. He released a memo which claimed Ms Munby, then permanent secretary at the business department, had told him ‘now was not the time for dealing with long-term issues’.

But yesterday, Ms Munby wrote to Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch saying she could give the ‘very strongest reassurances’ that she had not told Mr Staunton to stall payouts. She wrote: ‘It is not true that I made any instruction, either explicitly or implicitly, to Mr Staunton to in any way delay compensation payments. I did not.

‘Neither Mr Staunton’s note, nor the contemporaneous note that my office made, suggest otherwise. In fact, no mention of delaying compensation appears in either note.’

Ms Munby, now permanent secretary at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, added: ‘We discussed Post Office operational funding, not compensation funding. These two areas of spend were separately ringfenced, and it is factually wrong to suggest that cuts to compensation would have improved the Post Office’s financial position.’ She also said she would be happy for contemporaneous memos to be published.

Mr Staunton, the former chairman of W H Smith, has been engaged in a bitter war of words with Mrs Badenoch, who sacked him last month.

The pair have clashed following an interview he gave at the weekend claiming he was told to slow down compensation payments to help Government finances.

Mrs Badenoch responded by telling MPs that he had spread ‘madeup anecdotes’ after she dismissed him following the outcry over the Horizon scandal.

She also claimed Mr Staunton had been under ‘formal investigation’ for misconduct, including ‘serious matters such as bullying’. He has claimed he was not aware of any bullying allegations.

Mr Staunton released a memo on Tuesday claiming that Ms Munby had told him not to focus on ‘longterm issues’ and not to ‘rip off the Band-Aid’ to protect the Post Office’s finances.

Mr Staunton is to be brought before MPs next week to give evidence on the scandal. The business and trade committee will also call the current Post Office chief executive Nick Read and sub-postmasters including Alan Bates.

Mr Read has admitted the Post Office was aware accounts on the Horizon IT system could be changed remotely from at least 2004. It means executives were aware of problems with the Fujitsu software eight years earlier than previously thought, but continued to prosecute hundreds of sub-postmasters for theft, false accounting and other offences.

‘Not true I made any instruction’