Dear Department for Business and Trade,

On 26 July 2021 the Chair of Post Office’s Remuneration Committee, Ken McCall, wrote to BEIS Permanent Secretary and Principal Accounting Officer, Sarah Munby, seeking Shareholder approval for the inclusion of the Post Office CEO & CFO in the Transformation Incentive Scheme (TIS). The scheme included an Inquiry metric and targets:

https://corporate.postoffice.co.uk/media...

The Inquiry metric as set out in this letter included ‘a clear, measurable plan created to demonstrate action on improving the overall culture to be Postmaster centric and to ensure processes for Postmasters are addressed in line with recommendations from the Inquiry’. One target also referred to the planning of operational changes to be implemented in line with the Inquiry‘s recommendations.

Recommendations could only be made by the Inquiry, and therefore only implemented by the Post Office, once the Inquiry had concluded its work.

By the date of this letter, and certainly by the time Sarah Munby gave her approval to its contents in November 2021, it was known that the Inquiry had been elevated to a Statutory footing. As such, it was not anticipated to conclude its work until the autumn of 2022; that is, not until months after the end of the financial year for which the Inquiry-related bonus was to be awarded.

Please can you disclose the letter of 12 November in which Sarah Munby gave Shareholder approval to Ken McCall’s request.

Please can you also disclose:

i) all internal BEIS communications which relate to the TIS Inquiry metric/targets between July 2021 and August 2022;

ii) all communications between BEIS & the Post Office which relate to the TIS Inquiry metric/targets between July 2021 and August 2022;

iii) all communications between BEIS & UKGI which relate to the TIS Inquiry metric/targets between July 2021 and August 2022.

Yours sincerely,
Eleanor Shaikh

Dear Information Rights Unit,

Thank you for your response to FOI2023/04836 in which you disclosed the submission of 21 October 2021 regarding the Post Office TIS Inquiry metric/target.

I would like to request an internal review, however, into your decision to withhold further communications from between July 2021 and August 2022 (both internal and between the Department & UKGI) which refer to the TIS Inquiry metric/target.

You have cited the qualified exemption under Section 35 (1) (a) of the FOI Act (‘Formulation of Government Policy’) without due recognition of the public interest in disclosure which I maintain far outweighs this exemption.

This FOI request concerns decisions around the payment of an Inquiry-related bonus metric to senior executives at the Post Office which, thanks to mainstream media coverage, is now widely understood to have been both unjustified and grossly unethical given that the Inquiry is still in progress, that it is now statutory and that the overwhelming majority of Post Office victims are yet to receive full and fair compensation.

You may be aware that the payment of bonuses under the Inquiry metric has been referred to the Metropolitan Police for investigation into possible criminality, whilst the Postal Minister Kevin Hollinrake promised to ascertain whether or not a breach of the 2006 Companies Act has occurred (Westminster Hall debate, 13 July 2023).

As you will know, due to the severity of this incident, both the Post Office and your own Department commissioned reports into how such bonuses were sanctioned given the relevant metric had not, indeed could not, have been achieved within the time frame of the TIS bonus scheme.

Neither of these reports included within their remit the role of UKGI, Ministers, the BEIS Accounting Officer, the BEIS Policy Team or HM Treasury officials in approving the bonus proposal. This, despite a UKGI representative sitting on the Post Office Board & Remuneration Committee; Tom Cooper’s very function in this role was to assist the Shareholder in maintaining an appropriate degree of oversight.

Despite this lack of scrutiny, the episode gives rise to serious and unanswered questions concerning the quality of oversight of the Post Office both by UKGI in its stewardship role of Government assets and, separately, in the oversight exercised by Ministers & the Departmental Accounting Officer. These channels of oversight ought to have stopped the bonus Inquiry metric in its tracks but they did not. Information which I have reasonably requested may help to shed light on how this was allowed to happen, either through unintended negligence or because the incentives for cooperating with the now Statutory Inquiry were deemed acceptable.

Governance failings at the Post Office - up to and including the role of UKGI and its Shareholder - have already contributed to the greatest miscarriage in British legal history. If you are to hide behind a Section 35 exemption on this matter, what assurance can the public have that anything has changed? How are we to believe that Departmental oversight of PO governance has been strengthened in the light of the Horizon scandal, if such a failing over bonuses has been allowed to arise?

I would argue that, far from leading to ‘poorer decision making’, disclosure and transparency in this instance is the surest way to improve decision making and avoid such failure in future.

Yours sincerely,

Eleanor Shaikh

Dear DBT Information Rights Unit,

This FOI request was submitted on 18 August 2023. Two extensions were needed by you before you decided to disclose just one relevant document and refused to disclose other information which you held within scope of this request.

You have now extended the period of Internal Review for the third time taking the review to a total of 80 working days and a response time which will total over 7 months.

Whilst I appreciate the FOIA Code of Practice allows for an extension of the 20 working day rule on Internal Review, paragraph 5.5 stipulates best practice requires that an extension should be no more than a further 20 days.

If you are not able to disclose the requested documentation by 21 March 2024 I shall be submitting a formal complaint to the Information Commissioner. I shall also forward our correspondence to the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry.

Yours sincerely

Eleanor Shaikh

Thank you for the documents disclosed under FOI2023/04836 & IR2023/07579.

I am concerned, however, that some communications are still missing.

In a February 2024 Channel 4 investigation into the issue of Post Office bonuses and the Inquiry metric, statements made by former BEIS Secretary of State, Kwasi Kwarteng, and former Postal Minister, Paul Scully, refer to the Department’s refusal to pay the ‘excessive’ amount initially requested by the Post Office.

Kwarteng is quoted as saying ‘I questioned the amounts and as I recall we gave them a lot less than they asked for or expected’.

Please can you release:

- all communications (up to the payment of 2021/22 bonuses) between Kwasi Kwarteng and Paul Scully/UKGI/the Post Office regarding the decision over how much should be paid in Post Office bonuses and;

- all communications (up to the payment of 2021/22 bonuses) between Paul Scully and Kwasi Kwarteng/UKGI/the Post Office regarding the decision over how much should be paid in Post Office bonuses.

Yours sincerely,
Eleanor Shaikh

Dear Information Rights Unit,

For clarity:

It appears that not all communications requested under FOI2023/04836 have been disclosed by you.

Since the request was submitted in August 2023, both Kwasi Kwarteng and Paul Scully have referred to the Department’s refusal to pay the ‘excessive’ amount initially requested by the Post Office in TIS bonus payments. Mr Kwarteng is on record as saying ‘I questioned the amounts and as I recall we gave them a lot less than they asked for or expected.’

You have not released any documentation which relates to this dialogue either from Mr Kwarteng or from Mr Scully.

In order to trace the refusal of Mr Kwarteng and Mr Scully to pay ‘excessive’ amounts requested by the Post Office, I am therefore requesting disclosure of communications which refer to this specific matter (either by email, letter or text) between:

i) Kwasi Kwarteng and Paul Scully;
ii) Kwasi Kwarteng and UKGI;
iii) Kwasi Kwarteng and the Post Office;
iv) Paul Scully and BEIS;
v) Paul Scully and UKGI;
vi) Paul Scully and the Post Office.

I hope this clarifies my request of 7 May 2024.

Yours sincerely
Eleanor Shaikh

Dear Information Rights Unit,

Thankyou for your communication of 19 July 2024 regarding FOI2023/04836.

You ask:

‘…did you require communications between Paul Scully and Kwasi Kwarteng?’

As per my clarification of 2 June 2024, the first set of communications requested are between:
‘Kwasi Kwarteng and Paul Scully’. It is unambiguous.

You also ask:

‘They [the policy team] have noted that you have asked for communications between Minister Scully and BEIS which was not in your initial request, is this correct…?’

My email of 2 June 2024 also clearly explains that the reason for requesting specific additional material is that, since the original FOI request was submitted in August 2023, Paul Scully had gone on record to reveal the Government’s further involvement in the debacle over ‘excessive’ Post Office TIS bonus payments. I would have expected any such discussion or communications to have been included in the material disclosured under FOI2023/04836 of 2 April 2024. As they were not, it was necessary to request disclosure of this specific material which I did in my email of 6 May 2024.

For clarity, the above requests are not, as your query might suggest, mutually exclusive; I am requesting both the communications between:

- Kwasi Kwarteng and Paul Scully;

and communications between:

- Paul Scully and BEIS.

As this information was already presented to you on 2 June 2024, I do not accept your reasoning that the statutory timescale for your response ‘will not commence until we are supplied with the further information which we require’. I see no grounds for your delaying a response beyond 20 working days from 2 June.

Yours sincerely,
Eleanor Shaikh

Dear Information Rights Unit,

Please can you explain why the 4 documents released yesterday under FOI2023/04836 have been withdrawn today.

Please can you explain why your covering letter of 16 July 2024, which contained no personal information, has also been withdrawn.

Please can you disclose the covering letter which explained the rationale behind DBT‘s refusal to disclose a briefing document and minutes which fall within the scope of this FOI request.

Yours sincerely,
Eleanor Shaikh

Dear Information Rights Unit,

Please can you confirm that you have received my communication of 17 July 2024 concerning my follow up question to FOI2023/04836 & IR2023/07579.

Please can you indicate when you will be in a position to respond to my questions.

Yours sincerely,
Eleanor Shaikh

Dear Information Rights Unit,

After a number of documents were disclosed by you under FOI2023/04836 on 16 July 2024 they were swiftly withdrawn without explanation.

In the interim they were downloaded and are available to view in the public domain. You may also be aware that 2 national newspapers have since quoted some of the information contained in the documents so your grounds for still not disclosing are unclear.

You have neither acknowledged nor responded to my follow-up queries of 17 and 28 July 2024 regarding this request. If no response has been received by 9 August I will be referring it to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Yours sincerely,
Eleanor Shaikh