Post Office Court of Appeal Judgment

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Tuesday 27th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

The Department is indeed the single shareholder in the Post Office. This has been going on for so long that we have gone through various models of ownership of the Post Office and various names of the Department, but throughout, we have worked with Post Office management, who have reported back about how Horizon was believed to have been working. We will continue to make sure that these questions come out of the independent inquiry, led by Sir Wyn Williams.

In terms of a statutory inquiry, I have covered some of these areas, but it is important to make sure that we are driven by the outcomes for the sub-postmasters, although we differ in some ways on the process to get there. I will happily discuss this further with the APPG.

On compensation, the group litigants have had that money in the final settlement. It is incredibly frustrating and difficult for them that they have been pushed from both sides, with the extremely high costs of their litigation and the drive from the Post Office, but we will continue to work with the Post Office to make sure that postmasters have adequate justice and see their compensation discussed in full.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con) [V]]

Unfortunately, in part due to the serial failure to act by successive Ministers, I and the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), and others, have been forced to campaign for sub-postmasters, including my constituents Mr and Mrs Rudkin, for the past 10 years. Given the huge miscarriage of justice now fully exposed, including the 10-year attempted cover-up by the Post Office, will the Minister concede that only a full public inquiry and independent compensation panel for victims will now suffice finally to lance this boil?

[Paul Scully]

As I said, an independent inquiry is looking into the actions of the Post Office and the responsibility of the Government within that, and everybody is participating fully. To ensure that we “lance the boil”, the Post Office has launched a historic shortfall scheme, which has started to make payments, and those whose convictions were rightly quashed last Friday will be considering compensation. We will ensure that the Post Office addresses that in quick order.