Post Office Horizon Scandal

Debate between Andy Carter and Kevin Hollinrake

Thursday 22nd February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for paying regular attention to this issue. I know that the Committee has a session next week and will be asking some of those questions.

We are keen to get compensation to victims as soon as possible. We are somewhat at the mercy of claims, and we cannot offer compensation if claims do not come in. Like others, I am very keen for people to come forward to submit a claim. One of the reasons why we put forward the fixed-sum awards of £600,000 for overturned convictions and £75,000 for members of the GLO scheme is to try to accelerate the payment of compensation, which contradicts the claim that people are trying to slow things down.

I am meeting the Horizon compensation advisory board this afternoon to look at its recommendations for accelerating compensation. We have taken nothing off the table, and I remind the right hon. Gentleman that the House recently voted to extend the compensation deadline from 4 August, on the recommendation of Sir Wyn Williams, because we do not want people to be timed out of compensation. The maximum budget for compensation has, thus far, been set at £1 billion.

One of the issues we are trying to resolve urgently is the fact that people are reluctant to come forward to have their convictions overturned by the Court of Appeal, which is one of the reasons why we have not compensated enough people with convictions. We cannot compensate them until we overturn their convictions, which is exactly why we have proposed the legislation. Once we have done that, the door will be opened for compensation to flow freely. That is exactly what the right hon. Gentleman and I want to see.

There has never been any confusion in our mind about the need to deliver this quickly. I have focused on that every single day, both since I have been in office and before. I have never been resisted by anyone in my Department or in other parts of Government. There may be confusion, but I promise that there has been no confusion in Government.

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

I add my thanks to the Minister for his work in helping me to advise my constituents who have come forward asking many questions about the situation that they found themselves in. I am very pleased that the Government are working to compensate postmasters who were convicted in a court of law, but there are many individuals who worked for the Post Office and faced disciplinary proceedings who did not end up in court. However, their professional reputations were trashed, they had no ability to find jobs when they were dismissed, and they were significantly out of pocket. The Post Office must know whom it disciplined; it must have records through the disciplinary procedure. Will the Minister outline what steps the Post Office has taken to contact those individuals so that they can get the compensation that they rightly deserve?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank my hon. Friend for so ably representing his constituents who have fallen victim to this scandal. People do not need to have gone before a court of law to be compensated. A postmaster with a contract with the Post Office can access either the Horizon shortfall scheme or the GLO. A prosecution of any form is not required to be able to claim through those schemes. I think he raises a point about somebody who worked for a postmaster or for the Post Office. That is separate and I am very happy to talk to him about that point, which has been raised by a number of Members. The Post Office would not necessarily know whether a postmaster who is working independently and runs an independent business had disciplined their members of staff, so it might not be as straightforward as he sets out. Nevertheless, I am happy to engage with him on that.

Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill (Third sitting)

Debate between Andy Carter and Kevin Hollinrake

Committee stage
Thursday 15th June 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Very useful. Thank you.

[Andy Carter]

Q Mr Burrus, could I just put to you something that I suspect some of the platforms might say? They have spent billions and billions and billions developing their platforms. Is it not reasonable that they make charges for app users to access those platforms? What they are doing is just recouping their costs, so making a reasonable profit from your members who get access to these fantastic platforms.

Gene Burrus: I think that ignores and rewrites the history of how these platforms got to be as powerful as they are today. If you go back in time to 2008, for example, when there was intense competition among mobile platforms to be your phone, right? There were dozens of firms that you barely know exist any more, like Blackberry, like Nokia, like Microsoft. There were lots of firms competing in that space. And the game then was actually to be as attractive as possible to developers, to the point where those platforms were paying developers to be on their platform, because they were going to recoup that investment through the sale—in Apple’s case—of very expensive mobile devices. And that is where they have recouped—handsomely recouped. It is probably the best business in human history, actually. It is only after they gained a degree of market power that they then began to use that power to try to flip the game and try to extract. Once they had developers in a place where they could not leave, that is when they attempted to go and extract those rents from developers.

I think that argument is a false argument. Apple has recouped its investment in these markets through the sale of very expensive hardware, and Google has recouped its investment in Android through billions and billions of dollars in ad revenue that it has continued to generate. The recoupment argument is a false one, I think.

Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Andy Carter and Kevin Hollinrake

Committee stage
Tuesday 13th June 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Andy Carter]

Q You wrote an article in The Times recently about fast-growing British tech firms seeing acquisition by the US giants as a viable exit route. Do you think the Bill might change any of that?

Max von Thun: Yes, to an extent. The merger requirements for SMS firms are really just about reporting. They require SMS firms to let the CMA know if they are acquiring companies that meet certain thresholds. That will allow the CMA to avoid things slipping under its radar. Another part of the Bill is about what is called an acquirer-focused threshold, which is basically designed to prevent what have often been called killer acquisitions from taking place. Those are acquisitions that do not meet the UK’s merger control thresholds when it comes to turnover or market share, because they are very small start-ups that do not generate much revenue but that often produce very innovative technology.

The tech giants buy them up either to prevent eventual rivals from emerging or to use that technology to extend their dominance into new markets. The Bill will prevent some of that. That means, to an extent, that in some cases involving very large platforms it will be harder to be bought up if you are a start-up. It is important to acknowledge that to an individual founder being bought up by a big tech firm can often be attractive. Big tech firms can pay a lot of money to acquire you. They can offer all sorts of technical and logistical expertise to help you to grow, but if we look at the wider ecosystem, those deals can be very harmful, essentially by eliminating competition.

Think of what Instagram might have become had it not been bought up by Facebook. Rather than just being part of Meta’s business model, it could be challenging Facebook. To take a more local example, DeepMind, a leading AI company, was bought by Google in 2014. Had it not been, it would be an independent AI company. That would have put the UK at the forefront of a lot of the development in general AI. Obviously, the UK is already doing well in AI, but now DeepMind is part of Google’s empire and subordinate to Google’s business objectives. Those are some of the reasons we should care about this.

Also, if you make it a little harder for these companies to buy up start-ups, the market will respond. The UK already has a lot of alternatives. It has a very healthy venture capital scene—I think the best in Europe. If it is harder for big tech purchases to take place, investors will partly fill that space. I am sure that there are things that the Government can do as well to incentivise private investment—maybe investing themselves in some cases, as they did with the Future Fund, and so on. There are a lot of other routes that, in the long run, are better for the tech sector than these types of deals.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Q Thank you for your evidence. You probably heard my questions from earlier. We are very keen to ensure that innovation continues, not just in terms of the start-ups and scale-ups but with our big tech firms. Do you see anything in the Bill that will inhibit that?

Max von Thun: Honestly, not really. If I look at what is in the legislation, focusing on the conduct requirements and the PCIs that the large firms will have to comply with, what I see is something that says, “You’re allowed to operate in the UK. You’re allowed to grow in the UK. You’re allowed to invest. You just have to play by the rules. You can’t use your dominance to unfairly exploit small businesses or prevent rivals from emerging.” It does not stop them investing lots of money in R&D or hiring top talent. We are seeing all the innovation that they are doing now, and I do not see anything in the Bill that will stop that.

More broadly, there is quite a lot of evidence, not just in tech but in other sectors, that more competitive and less concentrated markets are better for innovation because challengers invest a lot of money in trying to take on the incumbents because they believe that they can replace them. The dominant firms have to defend themselves, and they invest more to protect themselves. The Bill will have that effect.

Lastly, particularly since the whole debate around Microsoft and Activision, we have seen to an extent an attempt to conflate the interests of a small subset of dominant firms with the wider tech sector. That is often a mistake. What is good for a large majority of tech start-ups may not necessarily be good for big tech firms. It may be, but it is important to separate out the two.

Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill

Debate between Andy Carter and Kevin Hollinrake

2nd reading
Wednesday 17th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his engagement on this. We have discussed this at length many times, both in my role as a Minister and in my previous role as a Back Bencher, when we looked at the best form of regulation. I think we both agree that ex post regulation is preferable to ex ante regulation, as is a pro-competitive environment, as I said earlier. We should step in only when there is market failure. Of course we should look at the powers and ensure that they are being used wisely, and I have confidence that the CMA will do that. There are a number of checks and balances on the CMA and the DMU, not least through the competition appeal tribunal and the courts, which ensure that decisions are valid and worthwhile, but we should also have a good debate on how we scrutinise the DMU and CMA generally. Obviously they report to Parliament every year, and the Select Committee work is also important. I think that my hon. Friend and I would agree that the best way to regulate markets is through competitive environments, and that is what we should always favour in this discussion.

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

I echo the comments of my colleagues who have welcomed the Bill. The Minister will know that the DMU will be regulating a highly specialised area and that detailed knowledge of the sector will be critically important. Can he assure me that the DMU will have sufficient powers to recruit people who really understand the sector? Will it be able to pay accordingly in order to recruit those people, and not be bound by civil service contracts and pay bands that might limit its ability to recruit very experienced people?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. The tech industry is clearly very powerful in terms of its resources and its ability to recruit the best people. My experience of the CMA is that there are good people within it, and I expect that to be reflected in the DMU as well. People who have been connected to the CMA, including former chairs, have spoken highly of its abilities, but my hon. Friend makes the important point that we need to have the best people so that we can hold those powerful entities to account.

The legislation will be delivered through making market inquiries more efficient, focused and proportionate, updating the merger regime and amending existing legislation concerning anti-competitive conduct and abuse of a dominant position. The measures in parts 3 and 4 make important updates and improvements to consumer law. The UK is currently the only G7 country without civil penalties for common breaches of consumer protection such as unfair trading. Part 3 creates a new model that will allow the CMA to act faster, tackle more cases and protect consumers’ interests while creating a level playing field for businesses.

Part 4 tackles the subscription traps that cost consumers £1.6 billion a year. We expect there to be a £400 million saving for consumers as a result of the measures we have proposed. I am sure that many Members know constituents—

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Andy Carter and Kevin Hollinrake

Monday 27th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

16. What steps she is taking to provide support for people who require additional help transitioning to universal credit.

[Andy Carter (Warrington South) (Con)]

20. What steps she is taking to provide support for people who require additional help transitioning to universal credit.