There are too many things in government going around in circles – Badenoch tells the inquiryposted at 2:00 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time on November 11

14:00 GMT on November 11

Emma Simpson
business correspondent

Kemi Badenoch was business secretary for 17 months. She told the inquiry that she was determined to speed up the entire compensation process.

“What I was seeing, the way the Department (of Business and Commerce) and the Post Office were functioning, we would never get to the end. I had my own goal: to make sure the subpostmasters did the right thing.”

He criticized the “bureaucracy” of Whitehall and the “absence of common sense” when making decisions.

The investigation saw an exchange of letters between Badenoch and Chancellor Jeremy Hunt in August 2023 requesting the extension of interim payments for Group Litigation Order (GLO) compensation. But he initially rejected the idea.

He admitted that the ITV drama about the Post Office scandal in January this year changed the government’s priority on the issue.

“If you look at it in the context of what is happening in government,” he told the inquiry. “There are a thousand things that are being asked for, money. “After a while, it becomes just another line in a ledger.”

The government had to change the way it did things, he said. In his opinion, there were too many going around in circles and people avoided making serious decisions because they were all afraid of getting into trouble later.

After lunch, we’ll hear how he handled the fallout from the drama when the scandal rose to the top of the news agenda.