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Witness Name: Kemi Badenoch
Statement No.: WITN11480200
Dated: 7 October 2024
POST OFFICE HORIZON IT INQUIRY
SECOND WITNESS STATEMENT OF RT. HON KEMI BADENOCH MP
1, Kemi Badenoch, will say as follows.
Introduction
1. I make this statement in response to the Inquiry's request for evidence dated 22
July 2024 ("the Rule 9 request’). I have prepared it with the support of the
Government Legal Department and counsel. I served as the Secretary of State for
Business and Trade at the Department for Business and Trade (“DBT” or “the
Department”) from 7 February 2023 until 5 July 2024.
2. My written evidence to the Inquiry is provided in two statements. My first
statement, dated 13 September 2023, dealt specifically with the dismissal of Henry
Staunton as Post Office Chair. I understand that statement has been given the
reference WITN11480100. This is my second statement, intended to describe the
briefings I received on relevant issues, my reflections on the Post Office (“POL”)
Board and culture within POL, and my reflections on the redress and
compensation schemes.
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Background
3. My career to date is set out in paragraphs 3 to 8 of my first witness statement. As
described there, I have a bachelor’s degree in law and a master’s degree in
engineering. Following a career in the private sector, I have been an MP since
2017, first for the Saffron Walden constituency and then, following boundary
changes in 2024, for North West Essex.
4. From 27 July 2019 until 13 February 2020, I served as Parliamentary Under
Secretary of State at the Department for Education. I was then appointed as the
Exchequer Secretary to HM Treasury on 13 February 2020 and served in this role
until 15 September 2021. I also served as the Minister of State (Minister for
Equalities) in the Cabinet Office from 14 February 2020 until July 2022.
5. Between 16 September 2021 and 6 September 2022, I served as Minister of State
at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.
6. From 6 September 2022 until 7 February 2023, I served as the Secretary of State
for International Trade and President of the Board of Trade. From 25 October 2022
I also served as Minister for Women and Equalities.
7. I was appointed Secretary of State for Business and Trade on 7 February 2023,
and continued in this post until 4 July 2024. Throughout this time, I remained
President of the Board of Trade and Minister for Women and Equalities.
Knowledge of and approach to Post Office issues
8. The Inquiry has asked me what, if any, relevant briefings I received before or at
the time of my appointment as Secretary of State for Business and Trade on 7
February 2023.
9. On 21 February 2023, I had an introductory meeting with David Bickerton, Director
General for the Business Group at DBT [BEISO001060 ]. POL was one of the
central topics of our discussion. I was briefed on Horizon, including a history of the
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scandal and the prosecution of SPMs, the Inquiry, and the compensation schemes
— including the purpose of the different schemes, the payments made to date, and
the various issues relating to each scheme [BEIS0001061 J.
Two days later (on 23 February 2023) I had another meeting with David Bickerton
at which it was suggested that Post Office business should be delegated to the
Minister, Kevin Hollinrake. It was entirely normal as Secretary of State to delegate
aspects of my large portfolio to Ministers (the portfolio of departmental and specific
ministerial responsibilities is set out here: [List of Ministerial Responsibilities- April
2024] (RLIT0000374), and it seemed entirely sensible to delegate Post Office
issues to Kevin Hollinrake, given his interest in and grip of the issues and the fact
he was already doing this work as Minister within BEIS, prior to the creation of
DBT and my arrival as Secretary of State [BEISO001062 J.
. I trusted Kevin Hollinrake with the autonomy to get on with the job. He was already
on top of the issue, and our way of working was that I didn't need to know about
every single thing that was happening unless there was a problem or a decision
that required my intervention or my knowledge. I had weekly meetings with Kevin
Hollinrake and other ministers where we discussed these issues. We also had
weekly updates about what was going on, and we would often speak informally in
the House of Commons as well, so I had a pretty good idea of developments.
Kevin and I had so many touch points and I felt fully abreast of his view of how
things were going. Decisions would often come to me in papers as well.
I cannot speak highly enough of how Kevin Hollinrake performed as a minister. He
was excellent. He had a lot of empathy with the postmasters, and he gained their
trust very quickly. I did not want to intervene or get in the way of that relationship,
or make it look like I was trying to take credit for what he was doing. And he
understood the issue — he had been working on it even as a backbench MP before
he became a minister. As soon as he became my minister, in February 2023, he
let me know that we were not going as quickly as we needed to on compensation,
and he needed some help from his Secretary of State to accelerate things. I
address this in more detail below.
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13. The Inquiry has asked me to comment on the quality of the initial briefings I
received from DBT officials. I was satisfied with my briefings, which were
appropriate for the level of knowledge I needed to know as Secretary of State. It
is important to remember that as a Secretary of State, I was responsible for about
25 different arm’s length bodies, quangos, etc — on top of all the other issues my
Department was responsible for. That meant I was never going to be able to get
into the weeds of any organisation. It is simply impossible for one individual,
especially one running a Government department with such a wide remit, to be
briefed on the entirety of everything that's going on. The Secretary of State needs
a high-level initial briefing that explains historical context, what the organisation's
objectives are, how they're getting on (including risks and issues), what your
responsibilities are as Secretary of State and so on. Anything more than that in an
initial briefing would just not be sustainable, given the scope of the Secretary of
State’s role and responsibilities, and the vast range of different areas that the
Government as a whole is expected to deal with. Kevin needed to have had a
better grasp of the detail than I did, but I wouldn't have expected him to get into
the weeds — that was for DBT and UKGI officials (and for Post Office employees
as well) to do.
14. The issues were not with the briefings, they were with the complexity of the
problem that we were trying to solve. I worry that we sometimes concentrate on
processes when the problems are far more fundamental and substantive:
concentrating on process can be and often is displacement activity. The issues
with the Post Office are far more fundamental than what kind of briefing officials
are giving the Secretary of State, because that's not where the problem lies. I
address this more below.
Experience of the POL Board and culture within POL
15. My general views on the culture within the Post Office executive and board are
that this was an organisation that was in real distress, and it had been in distress
for a long time. It was struggling to recruit and retain talent for all sorts of reasons.
These include heightened public scrutiny and pressure (in part due to the historic
failures that this Inquiry is examining), and Government-imposed remuneration
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16.
17.
18.
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limits - as an organisation dependent on public subsidy, it is obviously for the
Treasury to decide how much money it gets — but these are abnormal conditions
for a commercial organisation to have to deal with, and they impact on morale and
culture.
These issues are not unusual amongst Government-owned arm's length
organisations that exist in a competitive market, but they were acute within the
Post Office because of the stress of the scandal (including the focus rightly placed
on it in the media and by the Inquiry), the frequent changes in leadership and also,
I think, the economic stress of trying to transform an organisation that was built for
a different age — fundamentally, the Post Office is a 20th century organisation that
is struggling to evolve in a 21st century world. If it was a private organisation, it
would have disappeared in its current form long ago, but we are keeping it alive —
the result is that it is in a permanent state of stress and that will always impact
culture. We need to make sure that we are recruiting with that in mind.
This stress impacts on culture in several ways, including by fostering a blame
culture, where people focus first on covering themselves, before looking at the
objectives of the organisation. That's a problem in any organisation, but especially
so in an organisation with such deep-rooted historical problems in need of
transformation. This is not a criticism of individuals, but an observation on the
prevailing culture.
Similarly, whilst leadership in the Post Office is public service, the level of stress
that comes with the job — and possibly also a perception sometimes that time at
the Post Office is not career-enhancing — often means that the board and
executives want to be remunerated better. This has an impact on retention and
recruitment of the right people. So there's a lot of focus on executive remuneration.
All of these sorts of things impact culture at the higher levels, and that feeds down
to the lower levels. And then you layer on top of that the normal organisational
work that needs to happen.
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20. Unsurprisingly, during my time as Secretary of State it was clear that there
remained serious problems at board level.
21. A good example of this is POL Remuneration Committee’s decision to sign off on
executive bonuses based on ‘the Inquiry Metric’. I understand the Post Office has
accepted that this metric should not have been signed off and apologised to the
Inquiry (BEISO0001063 ). Nick Read also apologised to me, in a letter dated 10 May
2023 in which he acknowledged the “error made in including an inappropriate
metric as part of the Transformation Incentive scheme in 2021/22 in relation to the
Post Office’s performance in discharging what were, and continue to be, its clear
obligations to the Horizon IT Inquiry’. He indicated that Amanda Burton, POL’s
incoming RemCo Chair, would conduct an investigation; that POL intended to
commission an independent expert to review POL’s governance framework; and
that Mr Read had himself volunteered to return the relevant portion of his own
bonus payment [BEIS0001064 J.
22. On 15 May 2023 I was provided with Nick Read's letter, accompanied by an email
briefing [BEISO001065 ]. I replied to Nick Read the same day to express my
disappointment and explain that we intended to commission an independent
review to establish the facts [BEISO0001066 J.
23. Having received Amanda Burton's investigation [RLIT0000342 J, there was further
correspondence between Kevin Hollinrake and Henry Staunton on these issues
[BEIS0001011; BEISO001012 ; BEISO001013 J.
24. In June 2023, Simmons and Simmons (the legal firm) were commissioned to
conduct a review of governance of POL’s remuneration committee, with a focus
on performance bonuses [BEIS0001014 ]. Simmons and Simmons finalised their
review in August 2023, making several recommendations [POL00363154 ]. These
were communicated to POL, and on 28 August 2023 Henry Staunton wrote to
Kevin Hollinrake setting out the Post Office’s plan for implementing the
recommendations [BEIS0001016 J.
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25. The ‘Inquiry metric’ just seemed wrong to me, instinctively. It seemed an
extraordinary thing to have occurred, and it was a good example of how this
organisation was in a very high state of distress, and this was leading to bad
decisions and mistakes.
26. Another good example of the Post Office’s cultural and board level problems is the
role of Henry Staunton himself. I have already commented, in my first statement,
about the serious allegations against Mr Staunton as they were described to me
(and which I understand were substantially upheld following an investigation). I
have also explained that Mr Staunton’s allegations about the content of our phone
call on 27 January 2024, as reported in the Sunday Times article of 18 February
2024 [RLIT0000256], were totally untrue. (1 understand that, since I made my first
statement, DBT has found the recording of the call [BEISO001058 ], prepared a
verbatim transcript [BEISO0001059 J, and provided these to the Inquiry.) The culture
from an organisation comes from its leaders, and as a bare minimum we — and
the postmasters — are entitled to expect honesty and good faith.
27. However, the cultural problems at the Post Office did not begin and end with Mr
Staunton. After Mr Staunton’s dismissal, I became aware of the criticisms made
by POL’s postmaster NEDs, Saf Ismail and Elliot Jacobs, as reported in an article
in The Times on 19 February 2024 (RLIT0000201). That report was based on a
“leaked” note of a discussion prepared by Mr Staunton which was subsequently
obtained and published by the Business and Trade Select Committee
[BEIS0001067 ]. Clearly those criticisms were (and are still) concerning, and show
that much still needs to be done to improve POL’s culture. But by this time they
were grist to the mill, not a bolt from the blue raising problems of which we were
completely unaware. By this stage, my central objective was already to get the
organisation the leadership that it needed.
28. I have been asked by the Inquiry whether I agree that “it was clear that cultural
change that needed to start with senior leaders was simply not high on Nick Read’s
agenda”. I actually do not. When I met Nick Read, I formed the impression that he
cared about the organisation and was doing his very best. What he was dealing
with would have been exceptionally difficult for anyone. I am not sure that many
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of the people who were working with him understood the pressures he was
working under. He has been given a particularly tough time trying to sort out a
mess that was not of his making; and I feel he has unfairly borne the brunt because
of the way the media have personalised their reporting. My feeling is that, on
balance, he did a good job in very difficult circumstances. I do not think he was a
bad CEO.
But by this time, he had been drawn into the story in a way that seriously
undermined postmasters’ trust in POL’s leadership, including in delivering the
compensation schemes and the longer-term work to sort out POL’s culture. We
needed a reset. So this article was a new revelation that didn’t change the plan or
the process. It was something we were already dealing with.
I attended a meeting of the POL Board on 25 March 2024 and the ‘10@10' all staff
meeting on 27 March 2024 [BEIS0001068 J. This was not an opportunity for me to
judge the performance or culture of the Board. These sorts of meetings can create
a Schrédinger’s Cat situation, where everybody is on their best behaviour at the
meeting, and it is not possible to make a genuine observation of board dynamics.
The purpose of it was to give the board an opportunity to meet me and let them
know that I was personally taking control of the process to recruit the new chair
and trying to ensure that they have what they need in order to thrive. It was
important to show that we were all pushing in the same direction and that we were
engaged [BEIS0001020 J.
I have already explained my views on the importance (and difficulty) of recruiting
the right people in senior roles at POL. It was critical to find the right person as the
new Chair. We needed, in my view, a direct appointment not going through yet
another long, bureaucratic recruitment process, especially given that the previous
recruitment processes had not resulted in good appointments as Chair.
Kevin and I were therefore very hands on in the process to recruit Nigel Railton
and took it extremely seriously. Kevin met him first. I had my departmental
executives, the non-executive directors at the department (who all have significant
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business experience), the Permanent Secretary and others sit on the interviews.
We were all impressed.
Work to reset the culture at POL was a fundamental priority, and I saw Nigel
Railton’s appointment as interim Chair as an opportunity to be grasped. We
needed someone who would get a grip, somebody who could reset it, think about
the future, somebody who was not going to be tainted by the previous issues
around redress — but who was looking towards the future, as we needed to decide
(and this is still an ongoing question) what the Post Office should look like. Nigel
instilled confidence that he could get a grip on the organisation and drive change.
On 22 April 2024, I wrote to Laura Trott MP, Chief Secretary to the Treasury,
explaining my intention to appoint Mr Railton [BEISO001069 ] and that “The
priorities I have set for him include stabilising the organisation, intensifying work
to address Post Office’s historic failures and enabling the future success of the
Post Office through effective financial management and performance and delivery
of critical IT projects, and cost/headcount reductions at the centre to result in lower
overall costs.” I said “Nigel will be taking up the Chair role at a challenging time
and I am keen that we do everything possible to support him in delivering these
objectives.” I made clear that it was likely that Mr Railton “will want to bring
essential change to the Post Office to deliver on his mandate” and asked for
general and specific financial support to support him in doing so, including in
relation to restructuring the executive team:
“lam asking you to agree in advance a number of areas where we believe Nigel
may approach us for support to ensure that we are collectively ready to make
decisions at pace:
i. Funding to be made available for an incoming Chair to enable him to
restructure some key executive positions.
ii. Exemption from approval provisions on employee settlement
agreements if relating to such a restructure and to support the proposed
exit of the Chief Finance Officer.
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iii. Potential for additional invest-to-save funding to be applied for within the
current Spending Review period.
iv. Funding flexibility, e.g. for Post Office Limited to be allowed to take out
commercial loans (or receive loans from HMG).”
35. It may be helpful at this stage to address the reference to the proposed exit of
Alisdair Cameron as POL CFO in my letter to Laura Trott. As Secretary of State, I
would not generally become involved in HR issues at POL at a level below the
CEO. I was aware that Mr Cameron had been on long-term sick leave, but as a
general matter I felt that this was an HR issue that needed to be addressed by
POL’s HR team. But by the time Nigel Railton was coming to be appointed, Mr
Cameron had been off work for a long time, and Kevin and I were asking if there
were ways to remove him in a lawful and reasonable manner whilst minimising
expense to the taxpayer. It was for this reason that I sought to raise the issue of
financing a departure payment in my letter to Laura Trott. I am aware that Mr
Cameron left his role in late June, during the pre-election purdah period, but I do
not know much more than this.
36. Nigel Railton was appointed Chair on 1 May 2024. In my introductory letter to him,
I explained that my ‘strategic priorities’ included “supporting the cultural
transformation of the Company and focusing on improving POL’s capacity,
capability and resilience at all levels”. I gave specific instruction to Mr Railton to
“identif[y] opportunities for efficiency and productivity gains’ at the executive and
Board level, “making changes where necessary’ (BEISO001070 -— this is a draft
version; I understand that the final version cannot be located, though I believe it
would have been in very similar terms).
37. We need to decide what future we want for the Post Office in the 21S century. One
question relates to its future corporate structure, and whether some different
structure may help to put subpostmasters at the centre of the business. But in
truth, getting the right leadership is critical - because the right culture comes from
the right leaders.
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38. But we also have to recognise that long-term planning is impossible if your funding
is being determined by a totally separate body, the Treasury, with a whole host of
other really important demands on finances — such as schools, the NHS, and
security and defence. A normal truly commercial organisation does not have the
same constraints in its long-term planning, and it lives or dies by its own
commercial decisions. It can raise funds. It can set its own business plans. The
Post Office, on the other hand, is caught in this awkward halfway house, where it
is given only enough to exist in a state of permanent starvation. The solution to
this is not easy, because the Post Office is somewhere down the list of funding
priorities after defence, the health service, education and so on, so we must look
for creative answers.
Compensation & Redress
39. Right from my first briefing, I was concerned with the pace at which the
compensation was being delivered. Kevin Hollinrake also told me that we should
be going faster, and he needed some help from his Secretary of State to
accelerate things. We had briefings on the issue with officials, and it was quite
clear to me that we were allowing bureaucracy to get in the way of redress too
much of the time. Kevin and I wanted to get the money out there, and we were
always given a reason why we couldn’t. For example, officials suggested we
should wait until the end of inquiry so that we knew precisely what to do. I was
adamant that we could not wait that long and that we had to get the money out. I
was particularly concerned that postmasters would die waiting for compensation,
and I remember saying in one meeting that I don't want any of that happening on
my watch, and that we needed to get the redress out to people before it is too late.
I wanted to know what we could do to get the payments out the door, and said we
needed to do whatever we could to make it happen.
40. Pausing there, it is worth highlighting two points. First, as a shareholder we were
trying to come up with solutions, which meant inserting ourselves into the process
and changing the dynamic between us and the Post Office, and we would
sometimes have different opinions about exactly what should be done. I do not
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think POL has performed brilliantly on compensation, but that is probably
understandable given the very difficult circumstances I’ve touched on above.
Second, there is an explanation for why things are slow in Government. There is
a cautious, risk-averse culture within the civil service, which is systemic and
baked-in. This is a rational — and probably inevitable — response to the vast array
of statutory and public law demands that regulate the process by which
Government makes decisions, and reflects the ever-present risk of Government
decisions being judicially reviewed, undermined and unwound by the courts. The
natural reaction to that is to do lots of preparatory work to make sure that all the
bases are covered to limit the risk of something going wrong further down the line.
There is also an understandable focus on providing value for money when
spending taxpayer money (which obviously involves trade-offs). This emphasis on
caution slows down decision-making. It’s not that civil servants are slow-going or
lazy or don’t care — the risk-averse culture is a natural reaction to the legal
demands placed on Government. They are required to spend a lot of time
considering the various impacts, seeking and assessing various representations,
taking into account and weighing all relevant information, making sure all possible
alternative options have been thought about, making sure that the entire process
is evidenced and so on. As I say, this has become a baked-in, systemic feature of
the system. If we want our Government to make decisions faster, we need to
reduce some of the public law burden — and if we choose not to do so, we must
accept that this has consequences for the speed and efficiency of Government.
Every time we create more public law to hold Government to account, it is slower
to deliver for people. This is a real issue across government, and needs to be
confronted. So whilst it is easy to imagine that Government could have clicked its
fingers to get compensation out the door, that fails to recognise the systemic and
cultural complexity of decision-making in Government.
But Kevin and I wanted to cut through this. Kevin knew what was going on. He
was the most proactive minister we have ever had on the Post Office, and speed
of compensation was an issue that we were taking seriously. Kevin and I agreed
that we should prioritise getting money out the door, even if this risked paying
more than was due. This led to fixed payments. And, if necessary, I was prepared
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to make a Ministerial Direction to make it happen, bypassing ordinary Value For
Money requirements when deciding how to allocate departmental funds — this is
(for good reason) a pretty exceptional step.
43. I set out my views in some detail in an official letter, dated August 2023, to Jeremy
Hunt MP, then Chancellor of the Exchequer [BEIS0000703 ]:
“Kevin Hollinrake and I are both determined that postmasters affected by the
Post Office Horizon scandal should get proper compensation — and that they
should get it as rapidly as possible [...] Kevin and I have therefore been looking
at the ways in which we could radically speed up the processes. We already
make interim payments of £163k to almost all postmasters whose convictions
are overturned, and we undertake only limited scrutiny of GLO claims for certain
heads of loss under £10k and HSS ones under £8k. We are only looking to
extend these measures substantially in relation to the GLO, which has started
to receive claims [...] Some of the options we are considering would actually
save more on the costs of lawyers or other advisors than they would cost in
extra compensation. Others do have additional costs — but in my view these
would be well worthwhile in light of the non-financial benefits of accelerating the
schemes. In particular, I would like us to be able to offer a £100k fixed payment
to every claimant who applies to the GLO scheme. I recognise that announcing
this would create significant pressure to offer the same for HSS claimants,
which we should consider separately, but I believe this is the right route forward
for the GLO scheme. Such radical action would offer great advantages in terms
of the speed of the process.”
44. Despite some initial resistance from the Treasury [BEISO000705 ], I was prepared
to issue a Ministerial Direction to get this over the line C
45. During my time as Secretary of State, I think DBT officials performed quite well.
They went about things with the best intentions, and were professional, focused
and hard working. I think they could have been more creative in their advice,
thinking outside the box to find solutions to the problems that confronted them. But
I have explained above how and why cautious, risk-averse thinking prevails in the
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civil service — this is a systemic issue, and not a criticism of individual civil servants
(nor, in fact, a criticism of the civil service at all). And, to be fair, it is the role of
ministers to set the strategy and push civil servants in the direction they want them
to go. I think Kevin and I did so effectively throughout the time we were in post
together.
Statement of truth
I believe the content of this statement to be true.
GRO
Signed: 'v-revrrrrererrrrrr rent
Dated: 7 October 2024
Index to the Second Witness Statement of Kemi Badenoch
No. I Document Description URN Control Number
First Witness Statement of
1 WITN11480100 WITN11480100
Kemi Badenoch
Email from Rob Brightwell to
Secretary of State dated 17
2 February 2023 re David BEIS0001060 BEISO001060
Bickerton — SoS intro
meeting
Post Office introductory
3 brief for Secretary of State, BEISO001061 BEISO0001061
February 2022
List on Ministerial
4 RLIT0000374 RLIT0000374
Responsibilities- April 2024
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Email chain from Minister
Hollinrake to Secretary
of State, David Bickerton
and Brooks-White re:
Submission: Post Office
financial issues
BEISO001062
BEIS0001062
Email from Rob Brightwell to
Secretary of State,
CC'ing David Bickerton, Carl
Creswell and others
RE: David Bickerton - SoS
intro meeting
BEIS0001063
BEIS0001063
Letter from Nick Read to Rt
Hon Kemi Badenoch
MP re: Clarification to Post
Office Annual Report
and Accounts 2021-22
BEISO0001064
BEIS0001064
Email from Rose Lasko-
Skinner to Kemi
Badenoch, CC Sonia
Zvedeniuk, Dylan Sharpe
and others re: [RLS 008] for
info - background on
Post Office CEO stepping
down
BEISO001065
BEISO001065
Letter from The RT Hon
Kemi Badenoch MP to
Nick Read re: Post Office
Accounts
BEISO001066
BEIS0001066
10
Final Review of
Transformation Incentive
Scheme
RLITO000342
RLITO000342
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(TIS) - Confidential report to
the POL Board
11
Post Office Letter from
Henry Staunton to Kevin
Hollinrake MP re final draft
report - clarification to
PO annual report and
accounts 2021-22
BEIS0001011
BEISO001011
12
Letter from Kevin Hollirake
MP to Henry Staunton
re: Amanda Burton's draft
investigation report
BEISO001012
BEIS0001012
13
Letter from Henry Staunton
to Kevin Hollinrake
MP re: Final Report by
Amanda Burton -
Clarification to Post Office
Annual Report and
Accounts 2021-22
BEISO001013
BEIS0001013
14
Email from Beth White to
Minister Hollinrake,
CC'ing Permanent Sec,
David Bickerton, Carl
Creswell and others RE:
ToR for the POL Bonus
Review
BEISO0001014
BEIS0001014
15
Simmons & Simmons -
Department for Business
and Trade - Review of the
government relevant to
Post Office Limited's Senior
Executive
Remuneration
POL00363154
POL-BSFF-
0191157
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16
Letter from Henry Staunton
to Kevin Hollinrake
MP re Implementation of the
Simmons &
Simmons Recommendations
BEIS0001016
BEIS0001016
17
The Sunday Times Article:
Post Office boss: I was told
to stall compensation to help
Tories
RLITO000256
18
Call between Henry
Staunton and Secretary of
State Kemi Badenoch
BEISO0001058
BEIS0001058
19
Transcript of telephone call
between Henry
Staunton and Kemi
Badenoch MP
BEISO001059
BEIS0001059
20
News article from The Times
titled 'Postmasters on Post
Office board ‘ignored and
unwanted’
RLITO000201
RLITO000201
21
Email from Elliot Jacobs to
[REDACTED] re:
Confidential draft for
discussion
BEISO001067
BEISO001067
22
Email from Secretary of
state Business and trade
to Carl Creswell, Ed Baird,
Brooks-White and
others re: [Commission]
Briefing for SoS'
attendance to POL Board
Meeting and POL's
10@
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Email from Minister
Hollinrake's Private
Secretary
to Minister Hollinrake re:
Postmaster NEDs
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24
Letter from RT Hon Kemi
Badenoch MP to Rt
Hon Laura Trott MBE MP
Re: Appointment of
Nigel Railton as interim
Chair of Post Office
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25
Draft Letter from RT Hon
Kemi Badenoch MP to
Nigel Re: Strategic Priorities
for 2024/2025
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26
Post Office Horizon
Compensation Letter from
DBT
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27
Letter from Jeremy Hunt to
Kemi Badenoch MP
re Accelerating Post Office
Horizon
Compensation
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28
Email from Emily Snow to
the Secretary of State
for International Trade, Carl
Creswell, Minister
Hollinrake and others re:
Draft Letter from SoS to
Chancellor
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Page 18 of 18