Ex-Post Office chair told to delay payments in election run-up, memo suggests

Henry Staunton note of conversation to top civil servant says he was told to delay Horizon compensation payments

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A senior civil servant told the former Post Office chairman that in the run-up to the election there was no appetite to “rip off the band aid” in terms of government finances, according to a memo he wrote at the time.

Henry Staunton, who was sacked as chairman of the Post Office last month, has produced a record of the conversation in which he says he was told to delay compensation payments to wrongly convicted post office operators.