Post Office Mediation Scheme

Debate between Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom and Mike Wood

Wednesday 17th December 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Arbuthnot]

Well, yes, it has been. My hon. Friend has been working on this issue since the very beginning. Obviously, constituency cases are confidential to constituency MPs. All I can say is that my own constituent, Jo Hamilton, has been told that she cannot have a result until after Second Sight has produced its report in April. I first became concerned about her case in 2008, and this sort of time lapse is utterly unacceptable.

Not only is the Post Office doing this in breach of its word to Members of Parliament and in breach of its duties to the people it works with—the sub-postmasters—but it is undermining and belittling the work of the forensic accountants whom it chose. It is the independence of these accountants, which MPs initially questioned but which we now welcome, that the Post Office finds hard to take.

The Post Office has accepted that its support systems left much to be desired, and as a result it has changed them. The sheer number of calls to the Post Office helpline is astonishing. The calls are from professional users, but tens of thousands of them were abandoned; they were not just made, but abandoned. Jo Hamilton encountered support staff who could not tell her what was going on. She herself had not been trained at all, let alone trained to deal with issues such as this. What has the Post Office done about the absence of such training? It has blamed Jo herself, and others like her, for not having asked for more training, despite the fact that it should have been clear to the Post Office itself, if it was not clear to Jo herself, that she needed such help.

[Mike Wood (Batley and Spen) (Lab)]

Indeed, has the Post Office not done more than that, because as late as 24 November it announced that a quarter of the staff who provide advice and support to sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses will be made redundant by the middle of February? So the very poor service that sub-postmasters can draw on at present will be reduced by the Post Office by 25%.

[Mr Arbuthnot]

My understanding is that the figure is something like that, but I hope that the hon. Gentleman, who has been a key member of the working group of MPs on this issue, will be able to expand on that point when he makes his speech, because I do not know the full detail.

The Post Office carried out no proper investigation into what had happened to Jo Hamilton. Julian Wilson, of the Redditch constituency, was told by Post Office staff that if there was money over at the end of the day, he should put it in an envelope and put that envelope in the safe, and then use that money to pay later shortfalls. It is so obvious that that amounts to false accounting, on the instructions of the Post Office itself, that it is bewildering. He kept asking for audits but the Post Office said, “We’ll audit you when we think you need an audit.” And yet he gets prosecuted and decides to plead guilty.

What allowance has been made by the Post Office for the fact that historically its support was so poor? So far as I can tell, none. What allowance has been made for the contract term that provides that the weakest links in the Post Office—the sub-postmasters—have to be found guilty unless they prove their innocence? So far as I can tell, none. This is not the way that our criminal law should work. What has happened to the money that the Post Office got from people such as Jo Hamilton via the South Warnborough village? Did it get taken into Post Office profits? This is, essentially, an issue of Post Office culture—the protection of assets at the expense of people.