The chief executive of the Post Office, Nick Read, will return part of his £450,000 bonus for last year, after a rebuke from the chairman of the inquiry into the Horizon computer scandal.
The Horizon inquiry is investigating how hundreds of sub-postmasters became victims of a vast miscarriage of justice.
They were blamed for discrepancies in their sub-post office’s finances and were prosecuted, with many receiving prison sentences, criminal records or going bankrupt. The discrepancies were down to the Post Office’s glitch-prone IT system, called Horizon.
In its financial accounts for last year the Post Office said its executives had met all their obligations to support the Horizon inquiry, even though said inquiry is still ongoing! They also wrongly said that inquiry chairman Sir Wyn Williams had approved bonuses relating to that support.
Mr Read apologised for what he described as “unacceptable errors”.
How many times do we have to read or hear about this type of “unacceptable error”? How many times do we put our faith in chief executives only to realise they are thief executives instead? How many times do we put our faith in men and women we assume know what they’re doing, for no other reason than that they get paid a lot?
No chief executive should be getting massive bonuses while the people underneath him are arrested, smeared or jailed for something he or she should have known about.
The Homeland Party would re-nationalise the postal service and see to it that a competent manager was put in charge, regardless of class, education or school tie – ideally someone who had worked their way up the ladder, gaining in-house experience at every level.
The Homeland Party would pry open the stranglehold corporate cronyism has on our economy and our people.
We will not tolerate this level of incompetence and neither should you.
