POL00290109
POL00290109
From: Alisdair Cameron.
Sent: Tue 10/12/2019 1
To: Patrick Bourke{
Cec: Nick Readf~~
Subject: RE: Mediation
lam not sure how much clarity helps.
We can say “we are not using Government investment funding or network subsidy” — but as
people pick through it, the point Tom always makes is that everything is Government money
in the end. If we need to say more, we can say we are paying it out of commercial profits —
but it starting to be touch and go whether if you add the legal fees and this settlement, we
don’t get quite close to it being all of our commercial profit this year, depending on what line
of profit you take.....
We can say, a touch defensively, that next year active govt support will be £50m, £365 down
from peak every year and this has to be seen in that context.
So maybe if you do want to go further: “We will fund the settlement from commercial profits
and related facilities. We will not be using Government investment funding or network
subsidy to pay for or settle the Group Litigation. Government support for Post Office is
reducing as we improve our commercial stability and will be down £365m per annum from its
peak to the agreed support next year.”
But whether any of this helps I don’t know or just triggers more questions and outrage —
maybe one for Cardew?
So I might be tempted to stick at the first sentence of “its our facilities” and let BEIS say “no
government investment funding has been used?”. Whatever we do needs to be agreed with
BEIS...
Thanks Al
Al Cameron
Chief Financial Officer
20 Finsbury Street
London
EC2Y 9AQ
GRO)
POL00290109
POL00290109
From: Patrick Bourke {
Sent: 10 December 2019 11:34
To: Alisdair Cameron
Subject: Mediation
Importance: High
Al
I asked you yesterday in the margins of the 1030 meeting about how best to phrase any enquiries we get from
externals on how we are going to fund the settlement, which might be positioned as ‘are you using tax payers money
for this’ etc.
Your suggestion was that we would use: “This is being funded through existing Post Office facilities”. Are you able to
build on that a bit — it just seems slightly opaque (!), is there a different way of expressing it ? I assume we would use
the same to answr questions about legal fees etc.
Thanks
Patrick
Patrick Bourke
Government Affairs & Policy Director
1* Floor
20 Finsbury Street
London EC2Y 9AQ