The former Post Office chairman Henry Staunton used an “offensive and outdated” term about a prospective candidate for a job, an investigation has found, as the company’s chief executive was cleared of wrongdoing.
Nick Read, who has run the Post Office since 2019, was exonerated of a “myriad charge sheet” laid out in a whistleblowing complaint running to 12 pages filed by Jane Davies, the company’s former HR director.
However, the investigating barrister’s report found that Staunton used discriminatory language and “infantilising” terms about women during a meeting in January last year. Details of the complaint became public after Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary, sacked Staunton as chairman in January, prompting a slanging match.
The investigation, conducted by Marianne Tutin, an employment barrister at Devereux
