Chancellor Jeremy Hunt fails to express confidence in Nick Read’s position as Post Office boss amid claims chairman ‘threatened to quit if he wasn’t paid more than £1m’

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt failed to express confidence in the chief executive of the Post Office Nick Read this morning amid claims he threatened to quit the role unless he was paid more than £1 million. 

It comes after ousted Post Office chairman Henry Staunton highlighted the organisation was investigating Mr Read and pointed to the existence of an 80-page whistleblowing dossier compiled by the organistion’s HR.

Asked on Times Radio if Mr Read’s position is tenable after recent reports and a select committee appearance, Mr Hunt said: ‘Everyone deserves a chance to make their case.

‘We are a country that believes you’re innocent until proven guilty. In the middle of an investigation, for me to say that his position is tenable or not tenable wouldn’t be appropriate.’

Mr Staunton had told MPs on the Business and Trade Committee on Tuesday that Mr Read said he was going to resign because he was ‘unhappy with his pay’. He was paid £815,600 in 2021-22 and £573,000 in 2022-23.

The then chairman suggested boosting Mr Read’s maximum pay package of £1.1 million, adding that would still place him in the ‘lower quartile’ of his private-sector peers.

In Parliament last week, the postal affairs minister Kevin Hollinrake confirmed that Mr Staunton had tried to ‘double’ Mr Read’s salary twice.

A source told the Sunday Times that the Post Office board was ‘forever trying to increase Read’s pay’ and ‘tried to find ever more creative ways to talk [to then-business secretary Grant Shapps] into it.’  

The Post Office said: ‘Nick Read was rated as exceptional by both Tim Parker (the previous chairman) and Henry Staunton. Post Office uses external consultants to advise and benchmark its pay policies, and the CEO pay ratio is 17:1, compared to the median UK CEO pay ratio of 40:1.’

The company’s executive directors do not set their own remuneration and this is done by the remuneration committee, with outside advice and agreed with the Government.

As a commercial organisation and like other firms, the Post Office offers a number of different remuneration incentives to its executives in order to attract and retain them.

It comes as ousted chairman Henry Staunton furiously told MPs the Post Office should be ‘handed over’ to postmasters in the wake of the Horizon scandal.

Mr Staunton, who was fired from his role in January, accused the Government of not owning up to its ‘failings’ or doing ‘the decent thing’ by wrongly-accused sub-postmasters in a blistering letter.

The note, addressed to Liam Byrne – the chair of the business and trade committee, said the Government had ‘consistently hidden behind the Post Office’s skirts, spinning their way away from trouble’.

Mr Staunton became further entrenched with his row with Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch earlier this week who he accused to creating a ‘smear campaign’ against him amid allegations of bullying.

During an explosive business and trade committee meeting, Mr Staunton revealed that the Post Office’s current chief exec, Nick Read, was being investigated and claimed he tried to resign four times after complaining his salary was too low.

Mr Staunton was being quizzed about his own behaviour and allegations that he was told to stall compensation payments to victims of the Horizon disaster. 

In a letter, seen by Sky News,Mr Staunton said: ‘The government cannot continue to dodge its responsibilities, pretending in public to be all heart and compassion, while it allows stony-faced lawyers to rack up their hours doing their best to prevaricate and penny-pinch.’  

He went on to describe the ‘deep dysfunction’ within the Post Office and called for a ‘hard, concrete deadline’ for victim compensation, ‘ideally no more than six months’.

More than 700 postmasters and postmistresses were wrongly convicted of theft and false account due to the faulty Horizon IT software between 1999 and 2015. 

The scandal was plunged back into the public spotlight earlier this year following the success of the ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office that looked into how Alan Bates and other postmasters brought the issue to light.

Mr Staunton reportedly went on to claim compensation for the victims should be increased by £600,000 to £1m for each convicted post master. 

He added that it should be taken out of government control by ‘handing it over, lock, stock and barrel to the post masters themselves’. 

The letter documented the former chairman’s ‘further thoughts on what now needs to be done’.

It marks the latest in a war of words between himself and Ms Badenoch who last week informed the Commons there was ‘no evidence whatsoever’ that Mr Staunton had been told to delay compensation payments. 

MailOnline has contacted the Department for Business and Trade.