Badenoch: It's 'disappointing' it took ITV drama to prioritise Post Office payments
The Tory leader said Monday that ITV's Post Office drama "brought the urgency and raised the prioritisation" of Post Office payouts.
Speaking at the Horizon IT inquiry, Kemi Badenoch said it is "extremely disappointing" that it took the series, released at the beginning of this year, to change "the priority of the issue".
The government allowed “bureaucracy to get in the way of redress” for wronged subpostmasters, she added.
Badenoch was the business secretary at the time of the scandal, which saw more than 700 subpostmasters falsely prosecuted by the Post Office and handed criminal convictions.
Some subpostmasters are still awaiting full compensation despite the government announcing those who have had convictions quashed are eligible for £600,000 payouts.
Badenoch claimed that, at the time, she and ex-Postal Affairs Minister Kevin Hollinrake “wanted to get the money out there” but were “always given a reason why we couldn’t” by government officials.
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Explaining why she felt bureaucracy was getting in the way of redress, Badenoch told the probe on Monday: “I feel that there is often too much bureaucracy in the way of getting things done, because people are worried about process.
“They are worried about: if things go wrong, they’ll be on the hook for that.
“So they carry out lots of checks and balances well beyond what I think is required in order to deliver the right outcome.”
Questioned by counsel to the inquiry, Jason Beer KC, on who allowed bureaucracy to get in the way of redress, Badenoch replied: “Well, the government machine. I think I remember asking a question like: ‘Why can’t we just give them the money?'”
Lead campaigner and former subpostmaster Sir Alan Bates previously told MPs he wanted the Department for Business and Trade to set a deadline of March next year for redress payments for claimants who took the Post Office to the High Court between 2017 and 2019.
As of October 31, there were still 50 victim claims that had yet to be settled.
Parliament said last week it will launch an inquiry looking at the delays in compensation settlements, with the Chair of the Business & Trade Select Committee, Liam Byrne MP telling ITV News: "We on the committee are going to batter away at this, week in, week out, until it is job done.
"All of us on our committee are frankly horrified and outraged by how long this has taken and we're just not going to give up."
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