Karen McEwan told the public inquiry this week into the Post Office Horizon Scandal that Henry Staunton, the former chairman of the state-owned organisation, had asked her to “close down” a barrister led investigation into Nick Read’s conduct as the departing chief executive.
Read was accused of bullying by Jane Davies, a former HR executive of the Post Office. She was cleared in April.
Staunton was fired in January, by Kemi Badenoch.
The inquiry heard that Davies will now bring a case to the employment tribunal against the Post Office.
McEwan told the hearing Staunton asked her to “close” the investigation out of concern for Read. She said Staunton compared internal investigation to “cancer”.
She told Wyn Williams that she later realized the barristers were also reviewing comments made by Staunton following Davies’ employment lawsuit filed against the Post Office in 2013.
McEwan wrote in his written statement: “I thought that Henry’s opinion was somewhat self-serving. I understood that he knew that he’d been named by Jane Davies, and that this seemed to exacerbate the view that investigations should not be continued.”
Staunton claimed that Badenoch had launched a “smear” campaign against him after his January dismissal. He warned last week that a Horizon-style scandal could occur if the “untouchables” involved in the prosecution and punishment of post office employees were not fired prior to the rollout of the new IT system.
The barrister led inquiry in April that cleared Read found that Staunton used “infantilizing” and discriminatory terms during a meeting about women and that he had used outdated terms to describe the skin color of job candidates.
Staunton said to the public inquiry that day: “I completely deny these allegations and feel deeply hurt by them.” “I find misogyny and racism utterly disgusting. “My colleagues at the Post Office were well aware of this,” he said.
Staunton stated, “As an example only, when I learned that the Post Office had classified postmasters using racist terms I reacted strongly.”
In response to allegations that he failed to improve organisational culture, Nick Read, the Post Office chief executive who replaced Paula Vennells as chief executive in 2019, said this week to the inquiry that he was not made fully aware of “the scale and enormity” before he assumed the role in 2019.
Read claimed that the job description for the Post Office CEO advertised in 2019 did not mention the landmark High Court judgement against the organisation or its implications for the role.
One of the largest miscarriages in UK justice history is the scandal surrounding the treatment of hundreds Post Office subpostmasters who were wrongly accused of fraud and convicted. The ITV drama Mr Bates Vs the Post Office and the ongoing revelations of the Public Inquiry have sparked renewed interest in the scandal this year.
Justice For Sub-Postmasters Alliance, headed by Alan Bates, a former sub-postmaster, won a High Court Case in 2019. Mr Justice Fraser concluded that “bugs and errors in the Horizon system led to discrepancies between postmasters’ branch account”.
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