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As the Guardian reports this morning:
The chair of the Post Office has been dismissed by the government as the state-owned company reels from the Horizon IT scandal.
Henry Staunton was this weekend told by the business secretary, Kemi Badenoch, that he will be replaced.
Badenoch said in a statement: “The Post Office is rightfully under a heightened level of scrutiny at this time. With that in mind, I felt there was a need for new leadership, and we have parted ways with mutual consent.”
Staunton did not help his own cause by defending the indefensible before parliament, but Badenoch and her Tory predecessors are as much to blame.
The fault in this appointment is implicit in this comment, which followed those noted above:
Staunton, 75, only became chair in December 2022, after a long career in FTSE boardrooms.
The Post Office is not a public company.
It is a public service.
It should not be run for profit, although a bizarre profit proxy was created within it to permit the payment of bonuses to directors on this basis, with dire consequences.
And, to make it quite clear what that means, the replacement for Henry Staunton, whoever they might be, should not be someone whose skills are in:
- Profit maximising
- Shareholder serving
- Cost slashing
- Union bashing
- Service destroying
- Utility undermining
- Failure creation
They should instead be skilled in:
- Public service delivery
- Partnership building
- System integrity
- Honesty
- Transparency
- Subsidy negotiation with the government, since that will be required.
They should also be happy with a salary not that much greater than the prime minister’s, and any bonus should be restricted to no more than ten per cent of pay and be based on a vector of achievements, all related to public and organisational success, but not profit.
What chance is there of the government deciding to go in this direction? Near enough zero, I suspect, in which case another round of failure will be guaranteed.
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