The Post Office CPO was asked to “close” the conduct investigation

Karen McEwan, the Post Office’s group people director, told the public inquiry into the Post Office Horizon scandal this week that she had been asked by the state body’s former chairman, Henry Staunton, to “shut down” an investigation led by a lawyer about the conduct of outgoing CEO Nick Read.

Read had faced allegations of harassment by former Post Office HR executive Jane Davies, but was cleared of the allegations in April.

Staunton was fired in January by then business secretary Kemi Badenoch.

Davies is now bringing an employment tribunal case against the Post Office, the inquest heard on Tuesday.

McEwan, who joined the Post Office in September 2023, told the hearing that Staunton had asked him to “shut down” the investigation out of concern for Read’s welfare. Staunton had compared the internal investigations to a “cancer”, he said.

However, he told the inquiry chaired by Wyn Williams, he later realized the solicitor-led review was also looking into Staunton’s comments after Davies brought her employment claim against the Post Office last year .

McEwan’s written witness statement said: “I found that to some extent Henry’s view was selfish as I understand that he was aware that he had been named in the complaint lodged by Jane Davies and this seemed to aggravate his opinion that the investigations should be closed”.

After his dismissal in January, Staunton claimed he was the victim of a “smear campaign” led by Badenoch. At the inquiry last week, he warned of another Horizon-style scandal if “untouchable” investigators and executives involved in the pursuit of postal agents were not fired before the organization implemented its new IT system .

In April, the attorney-led investigation that cleared Read concluded that Staunton had used discriminatory language and “infantile” terms about women during a meeting and that he used outdated terms in relation to the candidates’ skin color .

“I completely deny these allegations and I was deeply hurt by them,” Staunton told the public inquiry on October 1. “I find racism and misogyny absolutely disgusting. This was well known to my colleagues at the Post Office,” he said.

“Just by way of example, I responded strongly when I realized that the Post Office had used racist terms to categorize postmasters,” Staunton said.

Meanwhile, Post Office chief executive Nick Read, who replaced former boss Paula Vennells in 2019, told the inquiry this week in response to the allegation that he had failed to improve the organisation’s culture, that he had not he had been made fully aware of the “scale and enormity” of the scandal before he took over as chief executive in 2019.

Read said the post office CEO job description announced in 2019 failed to mention the landmark High Court ruling against the organization and its ramifications for the role.

The scandal over the treatment of hundreds of deputy postmasters wrongly accused and convicted of fraud is one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in UK history. The renewed interest this year was sparked, in part, by the ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office, and the continuing revelations of the public inquiry into the controversy.

In 2019, the Justice For Sub-postmasters Alliance won a High Court case, led by former Deputy Postmaster General Alan Bates. Justice Fraser found that “mistakes, errors and defects in the Horizon system caused discrepancies in the accounts of the postmasters’ branches”.

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