The Post Office should be “handed over” to postmasters, its former chairman has said, accusing the government of using it as a “fig leaf” for stalling and evasion.
In a letter seen exclusively by Sky News, Henry Staunton told the business and trade committee the government has “consistently hidden behind the Post Office’s skirts, spinning their way away from trouble”.
He also accused the Department for Business and Trade of not owning up to their “failings” or doing “the decent thing” by sub-postmasters.
Hundreds of sub-postmasters were wrongly convicted of theft and false accounting based on evidence from faulty Horizon IT software between 1999 and 2015.
Mr Staunton, who was sacked in January, wrote to Liam Byrne, the chair of the business and trade committee, after an explosive meeting on Tuesday.
MPs were told by the former Post Office chairman that its current chief executive, Nick Read, was under investigation.
Mr Staunton was answering questions about an internal probe into his own behaviour and about allegations he made that he had been told to stall on compensation payments to victims while he was chairman.
In the letter he said: “The government cannot continue to dodge its responsibilities, pretending in public to be all heart and compassion, while it allows stony-faced lawyers to rack up their hours doing their best to prevaricate and penny-pinch.”
Read more:
What is the Post Office scandal, why were postmasters prosecuted, and what is Horizon?
Postmistress felt she had to grovel for compensation
Describing “deep dysfunction” within the Post Office, he also called for a “hard, concrete deadline” for victim compensation, “ideally no more than six months”.
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