The chair of the Post Office’s remuneration committee has said she was surprised at how frequently the firm’s boss, Nick Read, asked about his pay and bonuses, given the pressure the organisation was under due to the ongoing fallout of the Horizon IT scandal.
Amanda Burton, who joined the board of the Post Office as a non-executive director last April, was asked at the public inquiry into the scandal about testimony into Read’s so-called “obsession” with his pay.
“He certainly did take an interest in his pay, that is absolutely correct, yes,” she said.
Pressed on the issue by the counsel for the inquiry, she was asked to elaborate on whether his focus on pay was “beyond average” or “obsessive”.
“I would have said considering the background we were operating in, I would have considered it a highly sensitive matter, [with a] need to be more circumspect,” she said. “Nick Read did ask about his pay and bonus opportunity more than I might have expected.”
In February, it emerged that Henry Staunton, the former chair of the Post Office, twice asked the government for Read’s pay to be doubled.
However, the requests were refused by Kevin Hollinrake, the Conservative MP and then Post Office minister, who said that as a publicly owned asset under huge financial pressure it was not justified.
The Post Office announced this month that Read would step down as CEO in March next year, five and a half years after being appointed to the role. He had already temporarily stepped back from his role in July to give his “entire attention” to preparing for his own appearance at the inquiry next month.
This year Jane Davies, the former chief people officer at the Post Office, said Read asked repeatedly for pay increases in an “obsession” with remuneration.
The inquiry has heard that the pay requests to the government came from Staunton, who wanted to ensure Read would remain in post given the lower levels of remuneration compared with the wider commercial market.
In 2022-23, Read was paid £573,000, including bonuses. The year before he earned £816,000, of which £415,000 was salary and the rest bonuses.
This reflects the fact that he agreed to pay back a £54,000 portion of his bonus that was linked to the Post Office’s participation in the official inquiry.
In the year 2020-21 he was paid £415,000 and did not receive a bonus.
Burton was asked at the inquiry on Friday whether she felt executive pay at the Post Office was “sufficient”.
“I think it depends from whose perspective you are looking at it,” she said. “From a postmaster’s point of view it would look to be more than sufficient. If you were running a charity, for example, it would look more than sufficient. However, [in terms of running] a public company it looks less sufficient.”
The inquiry also heard an allegation that Staunton, who was dismissed in January by the former business secretary Kemi Badenoch, attempted to block an independent investigation into Read after accusations of bullying by Davies.
The inquiry heard that Staunton began to “aggressively” ask for the investigation to be stopped, after he learned that there had been complaints about “inappropriate comments” of his own that were also part of the investigation.
“He was generally being very firm we should stop the investigation,” said Burton. “He did it under the guise it was causing stress to Mr Read and that the investigation was unfair and should stop.”
Asked by inquiry counsel why she used the word “guise”, and whether his intervention was because he was also under investigation, Burton said: “Yes, it did[n’t] seem coincidental that as soon as Mr Staunton was informed the investigation was also into him these attempts took place,” she said. “He had conversations with a number of people … conversations of quite an aggressive nature … and tried to delay his own interview with the [independent] barrister.”
Burton also said that she had heard Staunton use the phrase “untouchables” earlier this year, referring to a group of Post Office investigators who would never face disciplinary action relating to the Horizon IT scandal, which she said she thought was the repetition of comments made by Read.
“I think [Staunton] was quoting Mr Read,” she said. “It seemed to suggest there were certain people above normal policies and processes and actions wouldn’t be taken against them. In my personal view you can’t have people who are untouchable. I would hope there are no people who are untouchable.”
Sir Martin Donnelly, the permanent secretary at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills between 2010 and 2016, told the inquiry there was a lack of information flowing from the Post Office to his department and in hindsight there should have been “more people marking the Post Office”.
He said the department’s shareholder executive – where officials managed the government’s relationships with state-owned businesses such as the Post Office – “did not succeed in preventing the most serious miscarriages of justice over many years”. He added: “That is a matter of huge regret to me.”
