A government adviser has called for the resignation of the post office’s board, after it was revealed that senior executives had received unauthorized bonuses linked to the deputy postman scandal.
Tuesday, the Post launched an internal review conducted by non-executive director Amanda Burton to determine whether her compensation committee’s bonus policies complied with “corporate governance best practices”.
The review, which will report to Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch, has been commissioned following the revelations that the Post Office awarded executive bonuses for supporting an investigation by Sir Wyn Williams into its faulty Horizon computer system, including for a clause the chairman called “misleading and inaccurate”.
“It seems that no one on the board has read the accounts. If that’s the level of skill or energy they put into their roles, then they really should go for it,’ said Lord James Arbuthnot, a Tory peer who advises the Horizon Compensation Scheme. He said the government representative on the committee should also resign.
Labor said the bonuses were ‘completely unacceptable’; Shadow Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds said the Post Office had “very serious questions to answer” and still needed to convince the public that it understood the magnitude of the Horizon computer scandal.
Hundreds of sub-postmasters were wrongfully prosecuted for theft between 2000 and 2013 following failures in the Horizon computer system. In 2021, the Court of Appeal overturned the criminal convictions of 83 people, but many are still awaiting compensation.
Reynolds added: “The Horizon scandal is one of the greatest injustices in modern British history and yet we constantly discover behavior which adds further insult to injury.”
In a statement Published on Friday, Sir Wyn said he had not approved the payment of a bonus awarded to Post Office executives last March for ‘supporting and enabling the investigation to be completed as expected’. He also said the metric could not have been achieved at the time.
Chief executive Nick Read has already agreed to return an undetermined amount of his £455,000 bonus from 2021-22. Some 50 senior executives received payment as a result of the clause, including chief financial officer Alisdair Cameron who won £310,000 in bonuses over the same period.
Burton, who joined the Post Office board in April, was already in line to succeed Lisa Harrington as chair of its compensation committee. Although they did not approve the bonuses awarded, some questioned whether an internal review was appropriate.
Business and Commerce Committee Chairman Darren Jones confirmed on Tuesday that he would hold a public hearing shortly into the “alleged misrepresentations” at the Post Office.
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