Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Bill

Debate between Alistair Carmichael and Marion Fellows

2nd reading
Wednesday 20th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Marion Fellows]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. There is absolutely no reason, and the Scottish Government are indeed prepared to do that. There is ongoing work on that, but it will mean that Scottish victims will have to wait longer for exoneration.

[Mr Carmichael]

The Scottish Parliament has provisions in its own Standing Orders for emergency procedures, just as we have. It would be open to it to do it in three days, if it chose to.

[Marion Fellows]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I am surrounded by lawyerly people and I am not a lawyer. In fact, I sat in a room last night for a briefing where I was surrounded by lawyers and even the lawyers were agreeing that they could not agree on the right way forward. The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct, and the Scottish Government will do that, but they cannot do it until we see what happens with the Bill as it is brought towards enactment and until we can take into consideration all the amendments that may be necessary for Northern Ireland. That will create a delay. Yes, the Scottish Government can—I cannot say they will, because I am not a Member of the Scottish Parliament or the Scottish Government—and it is possible for the Scottish Parliament to pass a Bill in three days, but it must be aligned with the exoneration Bill passed here. Otherwise, Scottish victims will not be treated equitably and fairly.

On 10 January, the Minister spoke in this place to, I believe, the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) and said he saw no reason at that point why there could not be UK legislation. At an Interministerial Standing Committee on 12 March, the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said that he saw no reason why that could not happen. Yet a few days after that the Bill arrived in Scotland with no mention of Scotland at all. It is the Scottish Government’s belief that the Bill could be amended to take into consideration the differences in legal terms. For example, amendments would be needed to bring about alignment on embezzlement and to cover all the different crimes, if you like—well, not crimes, because the sub-postmasters did nothing wrong—so that the Bill would apply in Scotland. The Bill could clear the decks of all the things sub-postmasters were charged with and convicted for, so it is all possible. The issue is one of timing, with sub-postmasters in Scotland being told, “Okay, you’ve waited, but you’ll have to wait longer.”

In this place, and right across the work I have done over the past few years on the Post Office, there has always been cross-party agreement on getting things sorted out for the victims. As the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde said, that is the point of the whole thing. It is about the victims. It is about what has happened since “Mr Bates vs the Post Office” was broadcast. I sat with my daughter-in-law, who is herself a lawyer—I don’t hold that against her—and she kept saying, “Is this true, Marion? Is this true?” and I had to say that yes, it was.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Carmichael]

I do not really need to answer that, so I will take the hon. Lady’s intervention.

[Marion Fellows]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman. One of the issues about timing, and it is about timing, is that I think everyone would agree that it is best that every victim is exonerated at the same time. As we do not yet have the programme for the timing of the Committee and Third Reading stages, it is possible that the Scottish Parliament could be in recess. It will be in recess as early as 29 June, a full month before this place.

[Mr Carmichael]

That is a political decision for the Scottish Government, who control the Scottish Parliament’s business, to take.

[Marion Fellows]

May I gently correct the right hon. Gentleman? The recess dates are not set by the Scottish Government; they are set by the parliamentary board.

[Mr Carmichael]

They are set by the Parliamentary Bureau, of which the majority of members come from the SNP and the Greens. I have kept this fairly broad in its terms. Can I just say gently to the hon. Lady that if the Scottish Government, instead of trying to evade political accountability, would take their responsibilities seriously and get on with it, they would get on with the drafting of the necessary legislation? If they want to wait and see how it all works here, to see if there are further amendments, then of course they can do so. They should be mindful of the fact that, apart from this one point, on the substantive provisions in the Bill there is complete unanimity across all parties in the House. So I would not see this as a Bill that is likely to attract amendment on the substance.

If the hon. Lady wishes to introduce her amendments relating to jurisdiction at a later stage, then that is another matter altogether. If we consider the consequences for the substance of the Bill, we would effectively be writing a whole new part of it. For example, if we have regard to the offences for which compensation is to be paid, very few are terms of art in Scots law, so we would be writing a new Bill to be inserted here.

Why are the Scottish Government so resistant to getting on and doing what they are constitutionally charged to do, when they could do it if they started now, in a timescale that brings everybody to the same place? The hon. Lady herself said that compensation had to be done equitably and fairly. I put it to her and to her colleagues that the consequence of their route being followed would be Scottish victims having justice of a lesser quality, because the decisions about prosecution are accountable to this House in England, and there would be no such accountability for decisions on prosecution if they were to be taken in the Scottish Parliament.

Post Office Management Culture

Debate between Alistair Carmichael and Marion Fellows

Thursday 8th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Marion Fellows]

I absolutely agree. The ITV drama exposed what happened, despite numerous efforts by many distinguished people in this place and the other place, by journalists such as Nick Wallis and by Computer Weekly. Many thousands of people knew about this scandal, but not the general public.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this debate. She has heard me speak often enough about the culture in the Post Office. Does she agree that following the money is often a good approach? Last year, the cost of administering the Post Office centrally went up by 10%, but the money going to sub-postmasters went down by 2%. When those figures are reversed, we will know that there has been a genuine change of culture within the Post Office.

[Marion Fellows]

I could not agree more with the right hon. Gentleman. I frequently agree with him on Post Office matters. This is important, because the all-party parliamentary group on post offices, of which he is a member and I am the chair, is a true cross-party group. There is no party that does not have a member of the APPG.

Sean Hudson of the Communication Workers Union described the management culture perfectly:

“Every serious management failure results in a culture of offering that failure up for external investigation at significant expense to POL and the taxpayer, without learning from those mistakes.”

It has since transpired that the legal fees for resolving disclosure issues in the past year alone cost £24 million. That money could have gone into the network to help struggling sub-postmasters, many of whom are working for below the minimum wage. For context, POL announced remuneration improvements this year of just £26 million, which in no way take into account the rise of costs and overheads. Some of the issues were only brought to light through the perseverance of campaigners through freedom of information requests that revealed that not all relevant evidence had been disclosed to the inquiry. Some of the issues outlined came to light before the transmission of ITV’s “Mr Bates vs The Post Office”, which has had a monumental impact on the public consciousness in Britain. It is important that that was beamed into front rooms across the nation. It has caused deep distrust of Post Office management among the general public.

With the words “openness and transparency” in mind, I want to bring to the attention of the House the case of my constituent Salman Aslam. Salman, or Sal, is a young man who ran a post office in my constituency for five years, before he walked away last year. Sal took over the post office from his father, when he was in remission from Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Sal began noticing shortfalls, which he continually plugged himself and which ranged from £4,000 to £16,000 at a time. He estimates that he has paid in about £100,000 of his own money. When audited last year, a shortfall doubled in front of his eyes to £80,000, He decided he could no longer go on, for the sake of his finances, and of his mental and physical health, which doctors were saying was under threat due to his levels of stress.

Throughout the five-year ordeal, Sal contacted the Post Office for help continually, but none was forthcoming, and after handing in his keys, the Post Office was not in touch for more than a year, leaving him in a perennial state of stress and fear. Sal went public with his story a few weeks ago—I had a hand in that—and once the story went out, Post Office Ltd immediately sprang into action and the communications department got in touch with him. That is not indicative of a change of culture. It echoes tales of the past that are all too familiar: desperate postmasters reaching out to POL for help, but receiving little in return; and communication from POL arriving only after some negative press.

Throughout the Horizon scandal, POL prioritised institutional reputation over the welfare of sub-postmasters, whom Mr Read himself recently told the Business and Trade Committee were the trusted asset that made the network what it is. Sal is one of many postmasters who have been in touch in the past weeks to tell me that they are experiencing shortfalls—not historical shortfalls, but ones that have occurred in the past year. Issues with Horizon appear to be continuing to this day, which is seriously concerning. Is the Minister aware of ongoing issues with Horizon? What has he done, or is he going to do, to address these? Sal, like all the victims who preceded him, is in this position through no fault of his own. Today, I call for an undertaking from the Government, the Post Office’s sole shareholder, that he will not be pursued for the ghost debt of £80,000, and I ask the Government to examine what kind of redress he can expect, having sunk so much of his own money into his post office to cover repeated shortfalls generated by Horizon. I have other constituents who are also in that position.

The culture of change that Nick Read has called for has not been apparent. In 2023, POL was rocked by scandals once again, with one appropriately named “bonusgate”. The former Chair of the Business and Trade Committee, the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones), outlined the statutory definition of “false accounting” at a meeting and said:

“it seems to me that in the annual accounts that Post Office reported to Parliament there was false or misleading information presented that did lead to…financial gain”.

I said in July:

“That is the management culture of POL: bonuses for doing ‘a reasonable job’.”—[Official Report, 13 July 2023; Vol. 736, c. 161WH.]

We should compare that with the compensation schemes, which have been fraught with difficulty every step of the way. The fundamental principles of public life, including openness, honesty, and integrity, have not been upheld by the management of POL for decades.

Regrettably, even the compensation schemes established to address the injustices of the lamentable Horizon chapter are not immune from POL’s unjust approach. Dan Neidle, a renowned tax expert, soon realised that the schemes are designed to ensure that the lowest amount of compensation is paid out. The application forms are so legally intricate that even a legal expert such as Mr Neidle expressed the need for legal advice in order to complete them, but POL provides only token amounts for legal advice. The original absence of an option to claim punitive damages, something a lawyer would notice, puts applicants, many of whom are elderly and financially vulnerable, at risk of missing out on a significant portion of their compensation. I have seen a heavily redacted offer, and that is what happened to a sub-postmistress who was spat at by members of her local community after rumours of her stealing abounded in the neighbourhood. This is appalling, shameful and a stain on us all.

Sub-postmasters and Sub-postmistresses: Remuneration

Debate between Alistair Carmichael and Marion Fellows

Tuesday 23rd May 2023 Westminster Hall

[Mr Carmichael]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and I do not think we are going to have much contention in this debate. The same point was made to me by Valerie Johnson, who is the sub-postmistress at Baltasound, Unst. She pointed out that holiday pay is contracted to cover roughly £5 per hour, but there has been no update since 2016. That is probably the sort of thing that produces the outcome to which the hon. Gentleman just referred.

The final point I want to deal with relates to bank charges. As we know, we are pushing more and more banks into using the Post Office, and the figures that have been put to me show massive disparities between the amounts that can be paid in on a daily or annual basis. For Barclays, the limit is £3,000 per transaction but only £10,000 per year. For Danske Bank, it is £1,000 per day and £5,000 every 180 days. Ironically, the Post Office instant saver account has a limit of £1,000 per day or £10,000 per year, as does the Post Office reward saver. Brian Smith told me just last week that when people hand over their takings and pay money into bank accounts through the post office, it does not know whether that person is anywhere near the account cap. If the post office staff spend time counting out the money, only to find that they cannot take it because the customer has exceeded the cap, that is a source of enormous and legitimate frustration for them.

Mr Twigg, you may think that I have just about vented my spleen and exhausted everything that I have to say, but today it has been brought to my attention that negotiations between the Post Office and the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency are reaching a crisis point. At present, 6 million DVLA transactions, worth something in the region of £3.2 million, are made through post offices every year. I am told by the Post Office that the likeliest outcome is that it will get a 12-month extension to the agreement, which would take it to 31 March 2024, but that the DVLA is not committing beyond that point.

[Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)]

Does the right hon. Member agree that the Government’s pledge—made many years ago and never kept—that local post offices would be the “front office of Government” is really beginning to sound more and more hollow, and that they are likely to be in breach of the Equality Act 2010 and indeed their own policy on access to cash and social inclusion, if this change goes ahead?

Tackling the Digital Divide

Debate between Alistair Carmichael and Marion Fellows

Thursday 4th November 2021 Westminster Hall

[Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve for the first time under your chairmanship, Ms Ali. I congratulate the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) and the hon. Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) on securing this important debate. The right hon. Member for East Ham made an extremely well-informed and helpful contribution. As was mentioned by the hon. Member for West Bromwich West (Shaun Bailey), someone does not have to be in an outlying constituency, such as North Devon or the constituency of the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael)—the most outlying in the United Kingdom—to realise that there are problems. The digital divide is UK-wide.

The hon. Member for North Devon said that it is really important that people are online. I think we have all come to that consensus here. Several Members mentioned education, work opportunities and actually being able to access Government services, all of which is important. The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) pointed out that the two Governments in Scotland are, it would be fair to say, doing their utmost to make sure that people across their governing areas are covered. However, there are difficulties with geography and, as the hon. Member for West Bromwich West said, processes.

I want to update the Minister on what the Scottish Government have been trying to do. They are trying to eradicate digital exclusion as best they can. They have made huge moves to get 88% of Scotland online, but serious discrepancies remain. Access sits at only 82% in the most deprived areas and 96% in the least deprived. Access is at 66% for over-60s, whereas it is at 99% for 16 to 24-year-olds, so there is work to be done, and that has been recognised. Across the UK, superfast broadband availability averages 86% in rural areas and 97.2% in urban areas. In Scotland, it averages 73% and 97.5% respectively. Again, there is work to be done.

The picture for gigabit broadband is more positive in Scotland, with 45.4% of households having such speeds compared with 37.5% in England, 71% in Northern Ireland and 29% in Wales. However, the rural-urban divide persists for gigabit broadband in Scotland, too. That needs to be addressed. The Scottish Government and Convention of Scottish Local Authorities—COSLA —have a joint digital inclusion strategy to try to help tackle the digital exclusion in Scotland. They are investing in 4G notspots to ensure greater coverage and investing £463 million in the Digital Scotland superfast broadband programme, which has extended fibre broadband access to more than 950,000 homes and businesses across Scotland.

The Scottish Government and COSLA are also promoting the digital participation charter, which has been signed by 673 organisations. That is important. Each organisation has committed to supporting their employees and people across Scotland to develop the essential digital skills needed to do their jobs, live their lives and use digital services with confidence. Other Members referred to the fact that we need to educate people on how to use digital services. It is as important as rolling out broadband and tackle the other fibre optic issues we have been talking about.

The digital divide may have existed before the pandemic, but it has been exacerbated by it. That is why the Scottish Government have invested in several digital inclusion programmes throughout the pandemic. So far they have invested £25 million for digital inclusion among school-ages children. More than 72,000 devices and over 14,000 connectivity packages have been distributed to learners across Scotland via this funding. That goes over and above the Connecting Scotland programme, which the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland mentioned. He has pulled something out of a hat, because I have not read The Press and Journal, but I absolutely get his point. The Scottish Government were aiming to have everything done by the end of the year.

[Mr Carmichael]

I did not honestly expect that the hon. Lady would know the details. I say to her colleagues, perhaps through herself, that the frustration that we have felt in our communities at the moment is from not knowing. It comes from not being told in the first instance and then not being given the explanation. There may well be a reasonable explanation, but not knowing it just leaves us wondering.

[Marion Fellows]

I thank the right hon. Member for his intervention. I assure him that I will try to find out, if I can. I make no guarantees or promises, but I will try. I do not think I can say any fairer than that.

Local authorities in Scotland also bear the responsibility for laptop and digital device provision to students, which is hugely important. In many cases, it is easier to do such things in Scotland through the 32 local authorities and COSLA, because it is more joined up. There has been investment in the Connecting Scotland programme, which helps to provide low-income households with digital devices and support, and the Scottish Government have now increased funding to more than £48 million.

In less than a year, Connecting Scotland has reached 9,000 people who are at clinically high risk, or extremely high risk, from covid-19. That was really important, because of the sense of isolation. As the Scottish National party’s disability spokesperson here at Westminster, I can vouch for the importance of helping deprived people who also suffer from extreme loneliness and physical disabilities to feel part of the community, even if that is done digitally. The Scottish Government are committed to tackling the digital divide in Scotland, and they will continue to do so.

The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland referred to the R100 contracts. It is now largely a full-fibre programme, delivering full-fibre connections on the ground while the UK Government are still planning to do so. Will the Minister tell us how far they are getting along? If I talk about what is being done in Scotland, it is not because I think that everything is better in Scotland—though often it is—but because it is useful for other parts of the UK to learn from what we are doing and not to have to start reinventing wheels. The R100 contract delivery will extend beyond the end of 2021. The Scottish broadband voucher scheme will ensure that the 100% superfast commitment is met. The main voucher offers up £5,000 to obtain a superfast broadband connection, and the £400 interim voucher is available to those for whom a R100 contract bill will be delivered after 2021. Again, this work is ongoing.

The SNP is going far beyond the commitment to deliver access to superfast broadband, and a significant proportion of connections are being delivered as full fibre. Such technology will future-proof our connectivity, but Scotland’s topography means that the build is complex and will take time. We all recognise the different geographies and topographies across the UK, but if we are to move forward, it is really important that we get broadband out to everyone as soon as we can.

Despite broadband investment remaining fully reserved to the UK Government, which is where we get the two-Government approach, the SNP Scottish Government have taken by making substantial investments in Scotland’s digital infrastructure in order to improve coverage. The Scottish Government are committed to tackling the digital divide and will continue to do so. Will the UK Government do more to match Scotland’s digital ambitions and deliver key funding to tackle the digital divide? Will the Minister confirm that Scotland will receive its fair share of the £5 billion earmarked by the UK Government for investment in gigabit-capable infrastructure in order to carry out these ambitions? The SNP Scottish Government have chosen to focus on delivering technology that will underpin economic growth and connectivity for decades to come.

I have quoted several figures, but it is really important to think of the people behind the digital divide—the people who suffer because of it and who cannot be as ambitious as some of us are. It sometimes seems like a first-world problem when we complain about things such as not being able to get superfast broadband, but it is very difficult when someone is disabled and housebound and does not have the cash to buy digital equipment. If the UK Government are serious about levelling up, they must look at this issue in full, and commit to ensuring that those who have suffered throughout, before and after the pandemic have access to proper, good-quality broadband and digital equipment to help them grow and prosper.