Government under fresh pressure over Post Office Horizon scandal as new cover-up evidence revealed – UK politics live
Good morning. Kemi Badenoch, the business and trade secretary, probably left the Commons chamber yesterday afternoon feeling she had done rather well in terms of quashing the allegations made about the government’s handling of the Post Office Horizon scandal. In response to serious claims made by Henry Staunton, the Post Office chair she sacked, she retaliated with blanket, unequivocal denials, scorn and invective, and damning allegations about Staunton’s competence and integrity. Some of these came as a surprise to opposition MPs and, without hard evidence to challenge what Badenoch was saying, their criticisms of her were as a result more muted than they otherwise would have been.
But this morning Badenoch’s “win” does not look quite so convincing, and three developments have occured that pose further problems for her and her government.
1) Staunton has hit back, with a lengthy statement in which he says had not even been told about the bullying allegation against him that Badenoch implied, in her statement to MPs, was a major reason for his dimissal. A spokesperson for Staunton said:
This is the first time the existence of such allegations have been mentioned and Mr Staunton is not aware of any aspect of his conduct which could give rise to such allegations.
They were certainly not raised by the Secretary of State at any stage and certainly not during the conversation which led to Mr Staunton’s dismissal. Such behaviour would in any case be totally out of character.
The full Staunton statement is here.
Henry Staunton's response to Kemi Badenoch tonight in full pic.twitter.com/bVkvp6ge5s
— Eleni Courea (@elenicourea) February 19, 2024
2) The BBC has published the results of an investigation showing that “David Cameron’s government knew the Post Office had ditched a secret investigation that might have helped wrongly accused postmasters prove their innocence”. In its story the BBC quotes Paul Marshall, a barrister who acted on behalf of some of the post office operators, saying:
The important feature of all of this is that in 2014, it appears that the Post Office board was alive to the true position - that remote access by Fujitsu was possible.
And yet the Post Office board was responsible for maintaining and advancing the Post Office’s defence to the sub-postmasters’ claim in 2019 - that it was impossible. That was false - and, it would appear, known to be so …
On the face of it, it discloses a conspiracy by the Post Office to pervert the course of justice.
3) Liam Byrne, the Labour chair of the Commons business committee, has said that his committee will be demanding evidence from the business department to establish which version of events – Badenoch’s or Staunton’s – is true. Yesterday the committee invited Staunton to give evidence to it next week. And this morning, in an interview on the Today programme, Byrne said the committee would be requesting papers relating to the row, including the email that Staunton said he wrote, and that he believes is still retained on the Post Office’s system, recording the conversation in which he claims he was told by a government official to “stall” Horizon compensation payments.
In his interview, Byrne also described the BBC story about the Cameron government knowing that the Post Office realised there was a risk of Horizon terminals being access remotely at a time when it was still defending the prosecution of post office operators who were convicted on the basis of Post Office evidence asserting categorically this was not possible. Byrne said the report seemed to be “the first evidence that we’ve got from quite an early stage that ministers were sighted on just what it was that was going on”.
Here is the agenda for the day.
10am: Alex Salmond, the former Scottish first minister, gives evidence to the Commons Scottish affairs committee.
10.15am: Andrew Bailey, the governor of the Bank of England, gives evidence to the Commons Treasury committee.
10.45am: Rishi Sunak gives a speech to the NFU conference.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby conference.
11.30am: Chris Heaton-Harris, the Northern Ireland secretary, gives evidence to the Commons Northern Ireland affairs committee.
Morning: David Cameron, the foreign secretary, carries out further visits on the Falklands Islands.
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