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Early evening summary
Henry Staunton, the former Post Office chair, has told MPs that he is the victim of a “smear campaign” by the government because he stood up for the victims of the Horizon IT scandal. (See 2.46pm.) He also implied that Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary, misled MPs when she said Staunton was being sacked partly because he was the subject of a misconduct inquiry. Staunton told MPs that it was Nick Read, the Post Office chief executive, who is actually the subject of this inquiry. (See 2.58pm.) Kevin Hollinrake, the post services minister, subsequently told Politco:
We were very clear when we agreed to part company with Henry Staunton that we wouldn’t discuss those kinds of matters. So I think to talk about that, as a former chairman of a board, where you are bound by confidentiality, both while you’re in the role, and after, I think is entirely inappropriate.
As Politco points out, Badenoch herself did not seem too bothered about confidentiality when she told MPs that Staunton was the subject of bullying allegations.
Paul Scully, the former minister for London, has apologised for claiming yesterday there are “no-go areas” in parts of London and Birmingham. (See 3.52pm.)
Downing Street has said Lee Anderson’s comment about Sadiq Khan was unacceptable because it was wrong “to conflate all Muslims with Islamist extremism”. The PM’s spokesperson provided this explanation after Michael Tomlinson, the illegal migration minister, was cut off in a radio interview after he repeatedly refused to say what was wrong with Anderson’s comment. (See 9.21am.)
Updated
Three quarters of voters want to see tax rates unchanged, or increased, poll suggests
Jeremy Hunt is reportedly considering cutting national insurance by 1p in the pound, Richard Partington reports.
But polling by DeltaPoll for Channel 4 News suggests that three quarters of voters want to see taxes retained where they are now, or increased, because they care more about funding public services. In its summary of the findings C4 News says:
The poll of 1,500 UK voters, conducted between 23-26 February is released today ahead of the spring budget 2024 next week.
The new data shows that more than four in ten respondents (41%) believed that taxes and public spending should be kept at the level they are now. A further third (34%) said they would like to see taxes increased with greater spending on public services, while one in seven (14%) believed that taxes and public spending should be reduced. Among Conservative voters, that figure rose only marginally to one in six (17%).
When asked to rank a list of economic priorities, voters placed cutting taxes fourth (11%), after growing the economy (23%), reducing inflation (22%), and investing in public service (12%), with 8% choosing to prioritise reducing the national debt, a cornerstone of shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves’ economic policy.
Polling now regularly suggests that voters believe funding public services is a higher priority than cutting taxes. But Hunt seems all set to ignore these survey results. That is partly because politicians suspect people don’t tell the truth when they are asked by pollsters about tax cuts and partly because, even if voters as a whole are not obsessed about tax cuts, Tory MPs and newspapers are.
As Natasha Clark from LBC reports, a source “close to Kemi Badenoch” is hitting back against Henry Staunton more aggressively.
A source close to Kemi Badenoch said: “Henry Staunton has been nothing but a distraction against our work to get justice and compensation to the postmasters. Now he tries to deflect the focus onto Nick Read.
— Natasha Clark (@NatashaC) February 27, 2024
“He and Read were being investigated. But while Read cooperated,…
A source close to Kemi Badenoch said: “Henry Staunton has been nothing but a distraction against our work to get justice and compensation to the postmasters. Now he tries to deflect the focus onto Nick Read.
“He and Read were being investigated. But while Read cooperated, Staunton tried to block his investigation. As was said in the committee, Board members were going to resign. And still no one has corroborated his story.”
In his evidence to the Commons business committee Henry Staunton, who was sacked as chair by Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary, implied she misled MPs when she told them last week that he was sacked partly because of an inquiry into misconduct allegations against him. Staunton said it was actually Nick Read, the Post Office chief executive, who is being investigated. (See 2.58pm.)
As ITV’s Robert Peston reports, the Department for Business and Trade has issued a reponse. It says:
The department was aware that Nick Read was also under investigation, although we have not seen the 80 page report referred to by Henry Staunton and cannot attest to the content.
The secretary of state was clear in her statement to the House of Commons on 19 February that she lost confidence in Mr Staunton because he was blocking an investigation into his conduct, as well as his attempt to bypass the formal process to appoint a new director to the board.
It was these issues, as well as overall concerns about his grip on the Post Office – demonstrated by his discredited newspaper interview and the manner in which his story has changed in the following days – that led to his sacking. The department will await the outcome of the investigation into Mr Read before making any further judgment.
Shelter Scotland accuses SNP government of failing on housing and homelessness
The Scottish government has been accused of “gaslighting” voters by the housing charity Shelter after homelessness in Scotland hit record levels, despite ministerial claims it is properly funding for housing and local councils.
Several hours before Holyrood began voting on this year’s Scottish budget, official data showed Scottish councils had broken their legal duties to provide emergency housing nearly 1,600 times between May and September last year, while on 30 September 2023 there were 9,860 children in temporary accommodation, up 3 points since March, and 15,625 households in emergency accommodation – a new record.
Alison Watson, the director of Shelter Scotland, said the Scottish National party and Scottish Greens government pushed through progressive policies, boasting Scotland has the best housing rights in the UK, but had a very patchy track record on adequately funding them. She said:
The Scottish government’s strategies for housing and homelessness are failing and any attempt to say otherwise is starting to feel like an attempt to gaslight the Scottish public.
[It] can’t claim to be determined to fight poverty while presiding over record homelessness, repeatedly deprioritising housing in its spending choices, and ploughing ahead with a strategy which today’s figures once again clearly show isn’t working.
Shelter pointed to a 27% year on year cut in funding for the affordable housing supply programme, and a 5% cut in spending on housing support and homelessness, alongside real terms cuts to local council funding overall. That qualified ministerial claims that its £90m in discretionary housing payments were effective.
Shona Robison, the deputy first minister, told MSPs these financial problems were exacerbated by the UK government’s housing cuts and urged Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, to increase spending on housing and capital investment in next week’s UK budget.
She said ministers were setting up a new housing investment taskforce to help meet the goal of building 110,000 more affordable homes by 2032. This remained a “key priority”, she told MSPs. She went on:
If members today have alternative priorities, if they wish more investment to be made in one area, then I ask them to be straight with the people of Scotland, and say what they would cut to pay for it.
[I] cannot stress enough the danger to Scotland’s public finances from the decisions of the UK government at the spring budget next week.
The former prime minister Liz Truss told the rightwing Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) conference in the US last week that she would like to see the former Ukip leader Nigel Farage join the Tories. “I would like him to become a member of the Conservative party and help turn our country around,” she said.
Many Tory MPs are not so keen, and it may never happen. But, according to a HuffPost UK story by Kevin Schofield, Labour officials have spent some time thinking through the implications of Farage becoming Tory leader. “With Farage you have to be prepared for anything,” a party source said.
Updated
Home Office has 'long way to go' to improve border security, former independent borders watchdog tells MPs
Henry Staunton was not the only official sacked recently by the government from a prominent public post who has been giving evidence to MPs today. As Staunton was still speaking about how Kemi Badenoch terminated his contract as Post Office chair, David Neal started speaking to the home affairs committed about being dismissed as the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration.
Here are some of the main points from his evidence.
Neal said there was a “long way to go” to improve border security. He said:
In my best judgment, I would suggest there is some way to go for the workings of Border Force – because that’s one of the areas we inspect – to work to its optimum level …
There’s a long, long way to go with the functioning of security at the border and the role that Border Force plays within it.
He said he had been sacked for doing his job. He said:
I’ve been sacked for doing my job. I think I’ve been sacked for doing what the law asks of me and I’ve breached, I’ve fallen down over a clause in my employment contract, which I think is a crying shame.
When he was sacked, the Home Office was sitting on 15 reports he had submitted that had not been published. Neal had started to reveal some of their findings to journalists, and the Home Office said he was sacked because he had given the Daily Mail false information about passengers on high-risk private jets not being subject to security checks.
He said the manner of his dismissal revealed “shocking leadership” by the Home Office. He said:
For my high-performing team of 30 civil servants, the notification that I was sacked was in the media before my team or I had had the chance to speak to them, which is just shocking. Shocking leadership.
He claimed No 10 had blocked his reappointment. He said:
I now know that the Home Office, so the ministers, supported my reappointment, my extension, my reappointment. And the home secretary supported my reappointment.
That reappointment process was sent to the Cabinet Office and that was sent on to No 10 and it was turned down by No 10. So I’ve no idea why it was turned down by No 10.
Neal was due to leave his post in March because he had not been given a second term in office. But last week he was sacked with immediate effect after the Mail story appeared.
He said that James Cleverly, the home secretary, was wrong when he told the committee recently Neal could have applied for a second term. “If I was offered to reapply, then I would have been delighted,” Neal said.
Labour demands Tory London mayor candidate apologise for ‘Islamophobia’
Labour has demanded an apology from Sadiq Khan’s Conservative opponent in the London mayoral election over comments and actions that led to her being accused of Islamophobia and racism. Ben Quinn has the story.
The House of Commons library is one of the less showy but more useful branches of parliament, producing an endless stream of learned reports about political life – among them this new analysis of the number of female MPs.
Their spreadsheet shows that in the 106 years since women have been able to stand for the Commons, 564 have been elected, the most recent of whom is Gen Kitchen, the brand new Labour MP for Wellingborough. This is still less than the 650 total of all the MPs currently in the Commons.
The research does nonetheless show that things are moving more quickly. When Harriet Harman was elected in 1982, she was just the 114th woman ever. The halfway point to the current total of 282 female MPs was only reached at the 2005 election.
The library’s briefing points out that it was only in December 2016 when the combined total of all women MPs reached the number of men in the Commons at that time.
Caroline Johnson, who won the Sleaford and North Hykeham byelection, became no 455, matching the total number of male MPs then in the Commons.
The current gender balance is 226 women out of 650 MPs, the highest total ever. After the 2019 general election it was 220, but since then six female MPs have died, stood down or been removed via a recall petition, with 12 winning byelections.
Finally, while most people know of Nancy Astor as the first female MP, in 1919, she was simply the first to sit in the Commons. A year before, Constance, Countess Markievicz won a Dublin seat in the general election, but as a Sinn Féin’s representative she did not take the seat.
UPDATE: A reader has sent a link to this interactive graphic from the Pudding, which illustrates very well how long it took for the number of women in the Commons to increase. It might take a moment to load, but there is a lot of info there when you get to it.
Updated
Former minister Paul Scully apologises for saying there are 'no-go areas' in London and Birmingham
Paul Scully, the former minister for London, has apologised for claiming yesterday there are “no-go areas” in parts of London and Birmingham. In an interview with the News Agents podcast, he said:
I think I do regret the use of the word “no-go areas’, because I think that actually has other connotations that are hadn’t really taken on board. And I’m slightly furious with myself, the fact that actually that’s allowed my message to be misconstrued.
What I was trying to say was that the kind of comments that we’ve heard from Lee Anderson and others in recent days and weeks, the populist approach, sometimes is fuelled by conversations that people have, and perceptions that people have, in cities around the UK.
I mentioned Tower Hamlets and Birmingham, where very small groups of people really misuse and abuse their doctrine in terms of Islamic gangs, but it can be black gangs, white gangs, etc. And then people write off a whole community because of the actions of mindless and slightly threatening small group of people. And so it’s areas that people feel uncomfortable in on occasion. But that’s the different from a no-go area in terms of the wider context, and for that I do apologise.
Updated
Kevin Hollinrake, the postal services minister, has said that it was “entirely inappropriate” for Henry Staunton to talk to the Commons business committee about Nick Read, the chief executive, being investigated over a misconduct complaint. (See 2.58pm.) This is from Emilio Casalicchio from Politico.
NEW: Post Office Minister Kevin Hollinrake tells me claims from Henry Staunton about PO CEO Nick Read were "astounding" and "entirely inappropriate." More in Playbook PM after 5pm.
— Emilio Casalicchio (@e_casalicchio) February 27, 2024
This is what Henry Staunton told the business committee about Nick Read, the Post Office chief executive, wanting to resign.
Huge, huge pressures on him. I must have had four conversations when he said he was going to chuck it in.
And my job was just to be someone that would understand the pressures that he was on, because I think it would be very difficult to find a replacement at this stage with the business in the state that it’s in.
If I didn’t think he was doing satisfactorily, I’d have asked to change things.
Staunton said he had raised this with Grant Shapps, the then business secretary, and Kevin Hollinrake, the postal services minister, but they both ruled out paying Read more.
At the end of his evidence, Read was asked by Liam Byrne, the chair, if he had ever “tried to resign” as chief executive. Read said he hadn’t.
The business committee hearing has just ended. Liam Byrne, the chair, concluded by saying that Staunton had told him that Nick Read had considered resigning, even though earlier in the session that Read had denied this on oath.
Staunton said he would also have liked the chance to deny the allegation made by Badenoch that he had mishandled the process for appointing a new director to the board. He said he had acted “scrupulously” in this.
Staunton says it's Nick Read who is subject to misconduct inquiry, not him, contrary to what Badenoch implied
Asked to explain why Kemi Badenoch told MPs that he was under investigation over serious allegations, Staunton said this related to Nick Read, the chief executive, falling out this his HR director. He said she produced an 80-page report setting out complaints about Read. He said one paragraph related to him, alleging he made a politically incorrect comment. He said this did not mean that he personally was the subject of an investigation.
He said Read found dealing with this complaint very stressful, and considered resigning.
Asked if the investigation into Read was still underway, Read said it was.
Jonathan Gullis (Con), who was asking the questions, said the committee did not realise this. He told Read he had '“made news”.
Updated
Staunton says he is victim of 'smear campaign' by government because he has stood up for post office operators
Staunton told the committee he would like to read a statement he had prepared in advance. He said he did this because he did not realise the Post Office would be presenting its own case in writing.
He said:
What happened to these poor postmasters in their families is a tragedy and a scandal. They have been failed time and time again by a whole host of British institutions, who are supposed to be there to protect the citizen and ensure fair play.
We all know that they weren’t. We all know that there was inaction all round by the judicial system, the government, Whitehall and particularly inside the Post Office until the ITV drama, Mr. Bates v the Post office, and there was a rocket put under the secretary of state …
We all know that things were moving far too slowly … and the reason why people have latched onto what I said in the Sunday Times was that finally someone was being honest about how deep seated the problems were and why nothing was being done.
I still think that more could be done, at least to make compensation more generous, and the process of getting justice less bureaucratic.
But I will at least have achieved something if the sunlight of disinfectant, which the secretary of state so approves of, means that government now lives up to its promises.
What the public wants to know is why was everything so slow? … And why does everything remain so slow? I’ve spoken up on matters of genuine public concern, have been fired, and am now subject to a smear campaign.
Updated
Asked what he felt about the government’s allegations against him (Kemi Badenoch has called him a liar), Staunton said that he had experience in corporate governance going back decades. He said that he was considered a successful company chair. That would not have happened if he was the sort of person his critics claim, he suggests.
Staunton says Post Office chief executive was justified in saying he 'personally' was never told to slow compensation payments
Byrne asks about the statement from Nick Read, the chief executive of the Post Office, saying he has never been told to delay compensation payments. The government has cited this as proof that Staunton’s claims are wrong.
In a letter to the committee Read said:
For the avoidance of doubt, I personally have never been instructed to delay on compensation, nor have any of my leadership team to my knowledge – and have worked closely with government officials and ministers to deliver compensation as quickly as we can.
Staunton said that Read was able to say this honestly because he personally was not told to slow compensation payments. He says that when he told Read what he had been told by Sarah Munby, they agreed that they would not do this.
Staunton dismisses suggestion there was misunderstanding over 'stall compensation payments' chat with top official
Liam Byrne, the chair, is questioning Staunton.
Q: Your note of your conversation with Sarah Munby does not specifically refer to compensation?
Staunton says his note was not a full record of what was said.
Q: Kemi Badenoch says the money for compensation was ring fenced, and so the Post Office had no incentive to slow compensation payments.
Staunton says, if you read the Post Office accounts, they will show that there is not a “hard ring fence” for the compensation payments.
Q: In her record of the conversation, Munby gives a different account.
Staunton says the version published by Munby last week was written a year after the conversation. He says his note was contemporaneous.
Q: Do you think she is lying?
Staunton says he does not want to get into that. He is just setting out what happened from his point of view.
Q: Could Munby have had a different interpretation of the conversation with you?
Staunton suggests that’s unlikely. He goes on:
When you’re talking about three levers – this is not a PhD in accounting. This is three very simple issues that we’re talking about.
Updated
Former Post Office chair Henry Staunton insists he was told to slow compensation payments
Henry Staunton, the former Post Office chair, is giving evidence now. He is also asked to swear on oath he will tell the truth.
Here is a summary of what he alleged in his Sunday Times interview, and here is a summary of Kemi Badenoch’s response.
Q: Where you ever told to slow down compensation payments?
Staunton says he wants to use the phrase “a nod and a wink”.
He says he met Sarah Munby, permanent secretary at the business department, in January last year.
Summarising all the problems at the Post Office, he said it would take three to five years to turn things round – probably five years.
He says Munby told him this was not a time for long-term planning, because money was tight.
He says there were only three spending levers they could change: the inquiry costs, the compensation costs, and the need for a new Horizon system.
He says he told Munby that the inquiry costs could not be changed, the compensation had to be paid, and the Post Office desperately needed a new IT system.
He says Munby told him again money was tight, and this was “not the time to rip off the band aid’.
He says this conversation was so unusual he made a note of it.
He says he discussed this with Nick Read. Read says ‘“they live in a different world”, he says.
Updated
Liam Byrne, the committee chair, ended the session with Read by asking why the committee should have confidence in him given that only 20% of the money set aside for compensation has been paid out, there are complaints the system is too slow, and the culture has not been changed.
Read replied saying he was “delivering great things for the Post Office”. He said trading was excellent, and trust was improving.
Read says mass exoneration bill for victims of Post Office Horizon scandal 'least worst option'
Charlotte Nichols (Lab) is asking the questions now.
She asks Read to confirm that he supports the government’s plan for a bill exonerating post office operators convicted on Horizon evidence. (His earlier answer was somewhat ambiguous – see 1.24pm.)
Read replies:
We support anything that is going to accelerate justice for wronged postmasters.
Q: Do you think some post office operators are guilty as charged, as Nick Vamos said. Why is there opposition from you to the plan?
Read says he is not opposed to the plan.
Q: Do you think some of them are guilty?
Read says:
There may well be people [who are guilty included in the exoneration scheme], but it is the least worst option.
He suggests there might be “one or two” people in this category.
Jonathan Gullis asks Read if he has training to prepare for today’s select committee hearing.
Read says of course he has prepared for this. It is an important hearing.
Gullis asks about a Telegraph story saying the Post Office is spending £15,000 a month on a City PR firm, TB Cardew. He suggests they coached Read for today’s hearing, and he says this implies the Post Office is paying to spin its way out of a crisis.
Read does not accept that. He says they are a big organisation and they use a PR organisation to promote themselves properly.
Back at the business committee, asked if he is happy with pay rates for post office operators, Nick Read, the chief executive, says he is not.
Q: Can you commit to ensuring all post office operators get X% of the minimum wage?
Read says the Post Office has hardship funds. It wants to ensure the proportion of revenue going to post office operators increases year on year.
Pause in Gaza fighting leading to sustainable ceasefire 'in reach right now', Foreign Office minister Andrew Mitchell tells MPs
Turning away from the business committee, Andrew Mitchell, the development minister and de facto deputy foreign secretary, has told MPs that a pause in the conflict in Gaza which could pave the way for a sustained ceasefire is “in reach right now”,
In a statement to MPs, he said:
The most effective way to end the fighting in Gaza, the absolute focus of our diplomatic efforts right now, is to agree an immediate humanitarian pause.
This would allow for the safe release of hostages and a significant increase in the aid going to Gaza.
Crucially, it would also provide a vital opportunity to establish the conditions for a genuinely long-term and sustainable ceasefire without a return to destruction, fighting and loss of life.
That is the position shared by our close partners. It is an outcome that we believe is in reach right now and we urge all sides to seize it.
Henry Staunton's conduct 'somewhat erratic' in weeks before he was sacked as Post Office chair, MPs told
Asked about allegations that one of the problems with Henry Staunton was that he was not “alert” during meetings, Tidswell says that is not a concern he raised. But he says he was the person who had to tell Staunton that there had been a complaint about him and that after that his conduct changed. “His behaviour changed in a way that was somewhat erratic,” Tidswell says. He says this happened from November. But Staunton was not falling asleep in meetings, he says.
Andy McDonald (Ind) takes Nick Read back to the Vamos letter. (See 1.24pm.)
Read says he did not tell the Post Office board about the need to send that letter to the Ministry of Justice. He says he did not feel the need to do that.
Updated
Ben Tidswell, chair of the Post Office’s remediation committee, told the business committee that Carl Creswell, an official from the Department for Business and Trade, was right when he told the committee earlier that Tidswell had told him that some board members might resign if Henry Staunton were not sacked. (See 11.14am.)
Asked about the allegations against Staunton, Tidswell said:
There were a number of concerns, the most significant of which were that Mr Staunton was obstructing investigations and particularly the investigation into him, the whistleblowing investigation into him. And he had taken steps to circumvent the shareholder’s position in relation to the appointment of my replacement.
Read rejects claim that letter to justice department showed Post Office wanted to block mass exoneration law
Gullis asked about the letter sent by the Post Office to the justice department last month saying it would oppose attempts to overturn 369 of the cases that have been identify as Horizon miscarriage of justice cases.
Here is the Read letter, and here is the legal note it referred to, an opinion from Nick Vamos, head of business crime at Peters & Peters, the solicitors advising the Post Office.
Read said he did not solicit the note from Vamos. But, having received it, he felt obliged to pass it on to the justice department, he said
Gullis put it to him that this showed the Post Office wanted to stop the government from legislating to exonerate former post office operators.
Read did not accept that. He said he was just making sure that the government had all the available information before it legislated. He said if mass exoneration was the right way forward, it was important to do it properly.
Jonathan Gullis (Con) is asking the questions now. He puts it to Nick Read that people like Alan Bates are saying the culture of the Post Office has not changed. (See 11.46am.)
Read insists it is changing. He says:
I think we’ve made a lot of progress in, certainly since 2019.
Don’t get me wrong. This is a scandal. It’s gone on for 25 years … It won’t be changed overnight. But we’ve made progress.
Simon Recaldin, the Post Office’s remediation matters director, tells the Commons business committee that post officer operators can claim for legal advice to help them fill in the claim form.
He says that the amount they could get for legal advice used to be capped at £1,200. But now there is no cap, he says. The Post Office will pay whatever sum is reasonable, he claims.
Asked what the upper limit is, he says it is whatever is reasonable.
Liam Byrne, the committee chair, says former post office operators who have spoken to the committee did not seem to be aware that the cap had been lifted. They felt £1,200 was not enough to fund the legal advice they needed, he suggests.
Q: Have you ever been asked to limit compensation payments?
No, says Recaldin.
Read accepts he has not got written evidence to show government told him to speed up compensation payments
Byrne put it to him that in all the documentation submitted to the committee from the Post Office there was no written evidence showing that it has been told by the government to speed up compensation payments.
Read accepted that, but said that this was an issue discussed with the government regularly.
He said that he has not had a conversation with Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary, about accelerating the compensation scheme. But he has discussed this with Kevin Hollinrake, the post services minister, he said.
Read denies being told to slow down compensation payments
Asked if he had ever been asked to slow down compensation payments, Nick Read, the Post Office chief executive, said he had not.
Asked if he thought Henry Staunton was lying when he said he had been told to do that by Sarah Munby, permanent secretary at the business department at the time, Read said he thought what Staunton said was not accurate.
But he suggested that Staunton might have misinterpreted what Munby said to him.
Post Office chief executive Nick Read and colleagues asked to give evidence on oath at Commons business committee
Back at the business committee, four witnesses from the Post Office are now giving evidence. They are: Nick Read, chief executive of the Post Office; Ben Tidswell, chair of its remediation committee; Simon Recaldin, its remediation matters director; and Simon Oldnall, its Horizon and GLO IT director.
Liam Byrne, chair of the committee, started by requiring them all to swear an oath saying the evidence they would give would be the truth. This is unusual in select committee hearings, and earlier witnesses were not required to swear an oath. Byrne told the Post Office witnesses that not telling the truth would be contempt of parliament.
No 10 says Lee Anderson's language wrong because 'it's unacceptable to conflate all Muslims with Islamist extremism'
At the Downing Street lobby briefing yesterday No 10 was reluctant to explain what it was about Lee Anderson’s comment about Sadiq Khan that was “wrong”. After Michael Tomlinson came unstuck on this question this morning (see 9.21am), Downing Street clearly decided it needed to come up with an answer and at the lobby briefing the PM’s spokesperson did explain what was wrong with what Anderson said. The spokesperson said:
The prime minister responded to these questions yesterday, he doesn’t believe that the individual is a racist but … the language he used was wrong and it’s unacceptable obviously to conflate all Muslims with Islamist extremism or the extreme ideology of Islamism. That’s why the PM regarded those comments as wrong and unacceptable.
The Commons business committee is now taking evidence from Dr Neil Hudgell from Hudgell Solicitors and James Hartley from Freeths, two legal firms representing former post office operators.
Back at the business committee Liam Byrne, the chair, ended the hearing with the three former post office operators by asking what legislation MPs could pass to improve the situation.
Bates backed three proposals: taking the Post Office out of the the scheme; setting binding deadlines for the payment of compensation; and imposing fines if those deadlines are not met, with the money going for former post office operators.
SNP's Stephen Flynn says Commons speaker 'effectively lied' when he offered second debate on Gaza
Stephen Flynn, the SNP leader at Wesminster, said today the Commons speaker Sir Linsay Hoyle “effectively lied” when he suggested last week that the SNP hold an emergency debate to make up for the chaos that surrounded their original motion on Gaza.
Flynn told BBC Radio Scotland that he had wanted to work with other party leaders on a motion that not only supported an immediate ceasefire, but then set out tangible next steps, including ending arms sales to Israel and mandating the UK government to vote at the United Nations in favour of an immediate ceasefire.
He reiterated his call for Hoyle to resign – he and SNP colleagues have already signed an early day motion calling for this – saying:
We don’t think that the speaker of the House of Commons is fit to continue in his role. He was obviously bullied into submission last week by the leader of the Labour party.
When it was pointed out by the interviewer that both Keir Starmer and Hoyle had denied this, Flynn said that was “like me denying that I’m a bald”. He went on:
Everyone that on Westminster estate knows what happened last week. So the reality is the speaker was unduly influenced by the leader of the Labour party, and as a result, he subsequently lied to the SNP because he created a complete circus in Westminster.
Post Office is 'dead duck' and 'money pit' for taxpayers which should be sold off to firm like Amazon for £1, Bates tells MPs
The former post office operators giving evidence to the business committee said there was a problem with the whole culture at the Post Office.
Bates said the Post Office was a “dead duck” and had been for years. He said:
I think over the years I’ve been dealing with Post Office, the culture has always been Post Office.
It hasn’t changed, it’s been the same for donkey’s years – it will not change and you cannot change it.
My personal view about Post Office is it’s a dead duck and it has been for years, and it’s going to be a money pit for the taxpayer in the years to come.
You should sell it to someone like Amazon for £1, get really good contracts for all the serving sub-postmasters and within a few years you’ll have one of the best networks around Britain.
Updated
What Kemi Badenoch told business committee about why Henry Staunton was sacked
The question from Jonathan Gullis about possible Post Office board resignations if Henry Staunton had not been sacked (see 11.14am) may have been prompted by a line in a letter from Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary, to Liam Byrne, chair of the committee. The letter was published by the committee yesterday.
This is what she says in it about her decision to dismiss Staunton.
[Staunton] made false claims about my conversation with him [the one where he was sacked], including that: 1. I told him that “someone’s got to take the rap” for the Horizon scandal, and that was the reason for his dismissal, and; 2. I refused to apologise to him after he learned of his dismissal from Sky News.
As I said in my statement, these claims are completely fictitious, and I have deposited copies of the readout of the dismissal call in the libraries of both houses to demonstrate this. The note of our conversation, written at the time by officials, has been made public and clearly records my apology that someone had leaked the story to the media. It also shows that I explained that Mr Staunton’s dismissal was due to allegations of serious governance failures and allegations of personal misconducts at Post Office Limited; there is no mention of the Horizon scandal.
It may assist the committee to know that the sequence of events leading to my call with Mr Staunton was that members of the Post Office Board raised concerns about his behaviour with my officials formally on 22 January 2024. Following careful consideration of the complaints provided to me about his conduct, I then informed Mr Staunton on 27 January that I was exercising my right as shareholder and removing him as chair.
It should be noted that Mr Staunton has changed his story since his interview: he now claims that it was the characterisation of our conversation that led him to believe he had to “take the rap” rather than any specific statement by me.
Post Office compensation scheme not getting any better, Alan Bates tells MPs
At the business committee three former post office operators are now giving evidence. They are Alan Bates, founder of the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance and the person whose story formed the basis of the ITV drama that turbocharged political interest in the scandal; Tony Downey, another former post officer operator; and Tim Brentnall, another post officer operator.
Asked if there has been any improvement in the speed at which compensation is being dealt with, Bates said there had not been in his case. He said his claim was being refused.
Asked if he was happy with the way things were going, he replied:
It’s very disappointing, it’s been going on for years, and I can’t see an end to this.
He said it would be better if responsibility for handling the compensation scheme were removed from the Post Office.
Downey and Brentnall also criticised the way the compensation scheme was working
Updated
At the end of the hearing with the first panel of witnesses, Liam Byrne, the chair, said he was not convinced all compensation payments in the GLO scheme would be paid by August. Creswell said that was the target.
Some Post Office board members may have resigned if Kemi Badenoch had failed to sack Henry Staunton, MPs told
Jonathan Gullis (Con) asks Creswell if he was told that members of the Post Office board might leave if Henry Staunton was not removed as chair.
Creswell says he was told that. Those complaints came to him, and this point was made to him about Staunton. He says there were concerns about Staunton’s conduct, and “anxiety” that board members might leave if Staunton did not.
This answer is helpful to Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary who sacked Staunton. In a statement to MPs last week she was right to sack Staunton because of his conduct, and she claimed that his allegations about the government (mainly that it was stalling compensation payments, but there were others) were motivated by the desire for revenge.
Asked to give details, Creswell says that Staunton was trying to silence a whistleblower critical of what he was doing, and that there were problems with how Staunton was trying to replace a director on the board.
UPDATE: Asked if people would resign if Staunton were not sacked, Creswell replied:
Yes, I was told that explicitly.
Asked if he was told that by just one person, he said:
By one individual on behalf of two members of the board. So, the complaints about Mr Staunton’s behaviour came to me and I had a phone call with Mr [Ben] Tidswell … he is the senior independent director on the Post Office board and his job is – among other things – to hold the chair to account.
So, it was he who contacted me and, indeed, he did say, as you have suggested, that the level of anxiety about Mr Staunton’s behaviour was such that we might see resignations from the board.
Updated
Back at the business committee Andy McDonald (elected as a Labour MP, but currently sitting as an independent after having the whip withdrawn) complained about the amount of compensation being offered to post officer operators. He said what happend to them was “born of malice”. As a result, he said, compensation should not just cover loss of earnings, and other ways people were disadvantaged. He said there should be “aggravated and exemplary” damages to reflect the malice involved.
Sir Ross Cranston, the former Labour solicitor general who is now independent reviewer of the Post Office GLO scheme, said the scheme was operating on the basis that compensation should be “full and fair”. But that went beyond just paying people for what they lost, he said.
Labour would lift block on onshore windfarms, says Ed Miliband
Ed Miliband, the shadow energy secretary, has claimed a “culture of inertia and stasis” has blocked renewable energy projects under the Conservatives. He also said Labour will overturn a de facto onshore wind ban “at the stroke of a pen” if it wins the general election. Alex Lawson has the story here.
Liam Byrne, the committee chair, showed the hearing a chart illustrating the process for getting compensation under the Group Litigation Order.
Byrne said the committee has been told by post office operators that getting a disclosure report from the Post Office, stage one of the process, was proving difficult.
Creswell told him reports have been issued now in 55% of cases.
But he said they were now coming more quickly, and that the disclosure reports were being submitted more quickly than new claims were coming in.
Byrne suggested he found it hard to believe that all claims would be settled by August at this rate. Creswell pushed back, saying he was broadly satisfied with the rate at which the scheme was proceeding.
There are 478 post office operators in the system for the Group Litigation Order scheme. (See 10.30am.)
Creswell told the committee that 106 of them have submitted full claims. He said 104 offers had been made, 80 of them had been accepted, and 76 had been paid.
There were another 41 partial claims, he said.
Creswell said he wanted everyone in the scheme to submit a claim, and that his goal was to get them all paid by August.
Government official in charge of compensation for post office operators insists there was no order to slow payments
At the Commons business committee Carl Creswell, an official from the Department for Business and Trade who oversees compensation payments for post office operators, is giving evidence now.
There are three separate compensation schemes: the Group Litigation Order scheme, which is for the 55 post office operators who were unfairly prosecuted (they sued the Post Office, but most of the £58m settlement was swallowed up in legal fees); the Overturned Convictions scheme; and the Horizon Shortfall scheme, which is for post office operators who were not convicted but who were made to pay money to the Post Office for supposed shortfalls now blamed on Horizon errors.
Henry Staunton, the former Post Office chair, told the Sunday Times recently that he had been told to stall compensation payments until the election.
Asked if that was the case, Creswell said that, if there had been an order to delay compensation payments, “someone would have mentioned it to me”. But did that happen? “Not at all,” he said.
UPDATE: Creswell said:
You would have thought someone would have mentioned it to me if that were the intent. Not at all.
I worked very closely with Sarah Munby [the permanent secretary at the business department alleged by Henry Staunton to have told him to delay compensation payments], she and I worked with Treasury to secure the funding needed for the schemes.
Every conversation I had with her, with ministers, with other senior civil servants in other parts of government, have all been about how we can pay out this money more quickly, so, no, that is completely incorrect that assertion.
Updated
Yesterday the Commons business committee published a series of documents it had received from the Post Office and the government in response to questions it had asked ahead of today’s hearing.
You can find them all here.
Commons business committee takes evidence on Post Office Horizon scandal
The Commons business committee will be starting a marathon evidence session at 10am on the Post Office Horizon scandal. Here is the list of witnesses appearing.
10am: Carl Creswell, director of business resilience at the Department for Business and Trade; Mark Chesher, a partner at Addleshaw Goddard; Rob Francis, a partner at Dentons Solicitors; and Ross Cranston, the independent reviewer, of the Post Office GLO scheme (one of the compensation schemes).
11am: Alan Bates, founder of the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance; Tony Downey, another former post officer operator; and Tim Brentnall, another post officer operator
11.30am: Dr Neil Hudgell, executive chairman at Hudgell Solicitors, and James Hartley, a partner and head of dispute resolution at Freeths.
12pm: Nick Read, chief executive of the Post Office; Ben Tidswell, chair of its remediation committee; Simon Recaldin, its remediation matters director; and Simon Oldnall, its Horizon and GLO IT director.
1pm: Henry Staunton, Post Office chair until he was sacked by Kemi Badenoch last month
Updated
Lee Anderson 'has many, many merits' and is not racist, says legal migration minister Tom Pursglove
Tom Pursglove, the legal migration minister, was also giving interviews this morning. Like Michael Tomlinson (see 9.21am), he also refused to say that Lee Anderson’s comment about Sadiq Khan last week was Islamphobic. But he told Times Radio:
I don’t think Lee personally is racist, but what he said was unacceptable.
He also said that he had worked with Anderson on a number of constituency issues such as helping disabled people into work and providing sanctuary for Ukrainian refugees. He went on:
I think, actually, Lee has many, many merits and for me those issues, those experiences, that engagement that I’ve had, is actually a very different side to the Lee that is portrayed in the media.
Minister cut off during interview after refusing to say why Lee Anderson’s Sadiq Khan slur was wrong
Good morning. Yesterday Rishi Sunak spent all day in interviews describing Lee Anderson’s claim about the Labour mayor of London (“I don’t actually believe that the Islamists have got control of our country, but what I do believe is they’ve got control of [Sadiq] Khan, and they’ve got control of London”) as wrong, while dodging questions about whether the comment was Islamophobic. The obvious follow-up was why was it wrong. Sunak managed to get through interviews yesterday without being up-ended by this challenge, but this morning on LBC Michael Tomlinson, the illegal immigration minister, was cut off after repeatedly refusing to answer this question.
Tomlinson was being interviewed by Nick Ferrari who started by asking why Anderson had to have the whip suspended. Because what he said was wrong, Tomlinson replied. Ferrari repeatedly asked why Anderson’s comment was wrong, and Tomlinson just kept replying: “What he said was wrong.”
Ferrari then tried a different tack, and asked if the comment was Islamphobic. But he did not have any more joy with that either, because Tomlinson just replied: “What he said was wrong.”
After two more times, and getting the same answer again, an exasperated Ferrari, who said he was “normally a very polite man”, told listeners:
I have to curtail the interview. I’m grateful for your time but enough already. Michael Tomlinson is a minister of state for illegal migration unable to answer a question.
It was a slice of radio that perfectly captured how moronic government ministers sound when they slavishly parrot the line to take from No 10, when they lack the wit or nous to dodge a question without making it too obvious. Listeners must have been cheering when Ferrari pushed the ejector seat button, and it would be nice if other presenters did this a bit more often too.
But the episode also illustrates why the Lee Anderson row is so difficult for Sunak and the Conservative party. No 10 does not want ministers describing what Anderson said as racist or Islamophobic (even though Anderson himself has subtly distanced himself from the core part of his allegation against Khan last week – see below) because it wants to draw a line under this affair. And that is for three reasons: 1) Anderson has significant support amongst Tories (again, see below); 2) conceding Anderson’s comment was racist would open Suella Braverman up to the same charge; and 3) this would also accelerate a wider debate about Islamophobia in the Conservative party, which Sunak would rather avoid.
In other developments on this story:
Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, has suggested that the No 10 response to Anderson’s comments amounts to “hysteria”. She posted this on X last night.
We need to urgently focus now on the big problem: how to tackle Islamist extremism in the UK.
— Suella Braverman MP (@SuellaBraverman) February 26, 2024
The hysteria in response to those calling out the crisis is one of the reasons why we’re not making progress.
Language does matter but it’s time for resolute government action: 1/2
We need to urgently focus now on the big problem: how to tackle Islamist extremism in the UK.
The hysteria in response to those calling out the crisis is one of the reasons why we’re not making progress.
Language does matter but it’s time for resolute government action:
Braverman, of course, wrote an article for the Telegraph last week saying that Keir Starmer was “in hock to the Islamists” and that “the truth is that the Islamists, the extremists and the anti-Semites are in charge now.”
Grassroots Conservative supporters have called Rishi Sunak a “snake” over Lee Anderson’s suspension, the Guardian has reported. Here is our story by Eleni Courea, Ben Quinn and Pippa Crerar.
The Daily Express has splashed on a version of the same tale.
EXPRESS: Get him back! Tories rally round ‘race row’ Lee Anderson #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/RMs0eFDag4
— Neil Henderson (@hendopolis) February 26, 2024
Sajjad Karim, a former Conservative MEP who chaired the European parliament’s working group on Islamophobia, has told the Guardian that Boris Johnson’s handling of an inquiry into Islamophobia in the Tory party “ended up sending a signal to the party membership that was basically, Muslims are fair game”. Karim was speaking to Archie Bland, who has written this up in his First Edition newsletter.
Anderson has claimed that he is receiving “phenomenal support” over the comments about Sadiq Khan that led to him being suspended from the Conservative party. In an interview with GB News, where he works as a presenter, he said:
I know I’m not everybody’s cup of tea and I do speak in a different language to a lot of people in Parliament. When I went into pubs in Ashfield at the weekend, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, which I did, I got a round of applause and I went in. These are normal working class people.
Some people over in that place (Westminster) might not like that sort of response, but this is what normal people are thinking in places like Ashfield.
My inbox has exploded with support. I cannot keep up with my WhatsApp messages, my text messages, my Facebook messages, Instagram, whatever social media platform I’m on. The amount of support coming through is absolutely phenomenal.
Anderson said in the interview that he would not apologise to Khan, “not while I’ve got a breath in my body, because the comments I made weren’t racist at all”.
But, in his interview, Anderson did not restate his claim that Khan was under the control of Islamists. Instead he focused on a different allegation – that Khan had lost control of policing in London. He said:
I stick by my words in that we have lost control or losing control of the city. When people again and again can come out and demonstrate and shout murderous chants and put these graphics onto Big Ben, ‘from the river to the sea’ and nothing happens.
We’ve got yobos running around with masks on, which is now illegal, and the police stand idly by and do nothing. Who has got control of Parliament Square? Is it the extremists or is it Mayor Khan and the Metropolitan police?
Anderson said that he had been on “a political journey”, declared that he wanted to stand again at the next election, and did not rule out joining Reform UK.
Here is the agenda for the day.
10am: The Commons business committee starts a marathon evidence session about the Post Office Horizon scandal. Among the key witnesses are Alan Bates, who led the campaign for justice for former post office operators at 11am, Nick Read, the Post Office chief executive, at 12pm, and Henry Staunton, the former Post Office chair, at 1pm.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
2.15pm: David Neal, who was sacked last week as the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration, gives evidence to the Commons home affairs committee.
If you want to contact me, do try the “send us a message” feature. You’ll see it just below the byline – on the left of the screen, if you are reading on a laptop or a desktop. This is for people who want to message me directly. I find it very useful when people message to point out errors (even typos – no mistake is too small to correct). Often I find your questions very interesting, too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either in the comments below the line; privately (if you leave an email address and that seems more appropriate); or in the main blog, if I think it is a topic of wide interest.
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