The Post Office’s embattled chief government has been issued with a ultimate probability to submit the 80-page investigation into his conduct earlier than a committee of MPs look to formally summon the report.
After quite a few lapsed deadlines to supply the report, Nick Read has been instructed by the Business and Trade Committee chair he has a deadline of 9am on Tuesday morning.
If it’s not submitted by then, the committee will focus on formally summoning the doc, an sometimes used and restricted energy retained by MP committees when they’re unsuccessful of their regular requests.
The existence of the report got here as a bombshell final week.
It had been thought that the previous Post Office chairman Henry Staunton, sacked earlier this 12 months by enterprise secretary Kemi Badenoch, had been topic to investigation.
But on the committee listening to final week, Mr Staunton mentioned he was solely talked about in a single paragraph and the report was “a big investigation into Nick”.
The report was compiled by a former human assets (HR) director and whistle-blower and mentioned Mr Read threatened to resign as a result of he was sad along with his pay and made accusations of bullying. According to a Sunday Times report, Mr Read sought a £1.1m pay package deal.
Mr Read has denied he made resignation threats.
Sub-postmaster victims of the Post Office’s defective Horizon software program have been in search of redress after tons of have been convicted of false accounting, theft and fraud and lots of extra misplaced their companies and have been in monetary and private wreck after the Fujitsu-built accounting software program wrongfully documented financial shortfalls.
The postmasters’ struggle for justice had been more and more overshadowed by company wrangling of the Post Office.
Read extra:
Who is Henry Staunton, the City grandee who took on Kemi Badenoch?
After he was faraway from his put up, Mr Staunton mentioned he had been instructed by the Department for Business and Trade to decelerate the processing of compensation.
In paperwork completely obtained by Sky News, he referred to as for the Post Office to be “removed completely” from the compensation course of and for it to be put below the management of postmasters as a result of “deep dysfunction” throughout the organisation.
It’s understood the chair of the Business and Trade Committee, Labour MP Liam Byrne, requested the HR investigation be despatched to the committee by final Thursday, and when the deadline handed, by Monday afternoon.
The Post Office has not responded to request for remark.
Source: information.sky.com”