Post Office chairman asked for CEO’s pay to be doubled, MPs told

The former Post Office chairman Henry Staunton urged ministers to double the pay of chief executive Nick Read to prevent him quitting the organisation, MPs have been told.

Answering questions in the House of Commons today, business minister Kevin Hollinrake revealed to MPs the extent of a pay boost Staunton had sought for Read.

It came after Staunton’s bombshell appearance at the Commons business and trade committee on Tuesday, where he claimed Read had said he was going to resign because he was “unhappy with his pay”.

Conservative MP Jane Stevenson asked Hollinrake: “In yesterday’s select committee, Mr Staunton spoke about lobbying for a pay rise for Mr Read, which I know must have been quite galling to many of those subpostmasters.

“The minister was reported as refusing this pay rise. Can I ask him what sort of pay rise Mr Staunton thought would be a fair, equitable agreement at that time?”

Hollinrake replied: “I think on two occasions Mr Staunton sought to lobby or did lobby for a pay increase for Mr Read. He sought to double the overall package of Mr Read on those occasions.”

“Wow,” MPs could be heard saying in response.

The Post Office Horizon IT saga has continued to rumble on, after the ITV drama ‘Mr Bates vs. The Post Office’ brought the miscarriage of justice back into the headlines.

Ministers announced plans to quash convictions en masse after hundreds of sub-postmasters were wrongly convicted using data from faulty accounting software made by Fujitsu.

Staunton, who was recently sacked by business secretary Kemi Badenoch, became embroiled in a wider row about the organisation’s governance, including claiming to the business committee that Read was under investigation after “he fell out with his HR director”. 

Meanwhile campaigner Alan Bates, portrayed by Toby Jones in the ITV series, also appeared before MPs on Tuesday and told them the “dead duck” Post Office should be “sold to someone like Amazon for £1”.

City A.M. contacted the Post Office for comment and was directed to a company-wide statement from Ben Tidswell, senior independent director on the Post Office Board in the wake of Tuesday’s committee session.

He said: “Like many of you, I know that Nick Read has at times felt the weight of Post Office’s awful history on his shoulders. It is no surprise, and is entirely appropriate, that he will have discussed this, in confidence, with the former chairman. However, to my knowledge he has never tendered his resignation and he continues to accept leadership responsibility for the challenges that we are all working on each day.

“Post Office has received a complaint against a number of people within the organisation – Nick is one of those employees – and I am sure you will all agree that Post Office should investigate every complaint with due process. Nick accepts this and has cooperated fully with the investigation.

“In spite of the distractions happening around us, the Board asks that we all remain focused on supporting the government to bring about faster justice and redress to victims, and helping build a Post Office that supports the Postmasters of today.”