Backing Business to Create Economic Growth

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Monday 18th May 2026 Commons Chamber

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith and Chiswick) (Lab)]

What an abrupt end that was. What a cliff-hanger!

I want to speak briefly about the justice measures in the King’s Speech. Important Bills are being introduced or carried over, and it is disappointing that the Opposition did not nominate justice and home affairs for a full day’s debate, even more so because today those in the other place are debating those very same subjects, which are indeed important.

[Max Wilkinson (Cheltenham) (LD)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andy Slaughter]

It is a bit early, but all right.

[Max Wilkinson]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way on the subject of home affairs. As the Liberal Democrats’ home affairs spokesperson, I too am disappointed that there is not a day for me to have my say on this matter, and I will try to do so in this brief intervention. When I am opposite the Home Secretary, who makes a great play of shouting things at me as if I am a terrible liberal making unreasonable statements, she tends to imply strongly that by moving to the authoritarian right, the Labour party is seeing off the challenge of the Reform party. I wonder whether Labour Members are reflecting on that in the wake of the recent election results.

[Andy Slaughter]

That was a bit off-subject, so I will confine my comments to saying that, as usual, we are all disappointed by the official Opposition. We will leave it at that.

Fortunately, the Justice Committee has been involved in scrutinising some of the legislation being carried over—namely, the Courts and Tribunals Bill, which I believe has now been reborn as the courts modernisation Bill, and the Public Office (Accountability) Bill, by which I mean the Hillsborough Bill; I hope the House is keeping up with these nomenclatures. I will deal with those Bills before outlining what else the Committee is doing.

First, on the courts modernisation Bill, the Justice Committee has been engaging closely with the Government’s proposals for reform of the Crown court, holding evidence sessions and collecting written evidence to gather views. We have heard from Sir Brian Leveson, whose independent review of the criminal courts formed the basis for the proposed changes, and from a wide range of practitioners, including barristers, solicitors, magistrates, retired judges and victims’ representatives. The Government declined to allow the Committee to undertake pre-legislative scrutiny, so we have conducted our own on behalf of the House, and next week we will publish a major report of our findings. The passage of the Bill through the Commons has been rapid, and there has been little opportunity for scrutiny of its contents by Members and indeed the wider public, despite the profound constitutional implications.

[Ruth Cadbury]

As a fellow Committee Chair, does my hon. Friend agree that the Government could reconsider their relationship with Select Committees and provide more opportunities for pre-legislative scrutiny by Committees, which play such an important role in addressing legislation prior to it coming to its formal stages in this House?

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Slaughter]

I thank my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour for her intervention, and the answer is that there is a balance. We all want the Government to press on with all the wonderful things that they intend to do, which are in the King’s Speech, but that must be mitigated by the guiding hand of experienced practitioners, such as my hon. Friend, in their Select Committee roles.

I hope that our report on the courts modernisation Bill will make a significant contribution to Members’ understanding and analysis of its provisions, and aid their scrutiny and deliberations. I also hope that Ministers will take on board the issues that we will raise.

Secondly, I welcome back the Hillsborough Bill, which is the result of years of committed campaigning led by the families, victims and survivors of the Hillsborough disaster and other public tragedies. I spoke on Second Reading to highlight the areas of the Bill where I thought further clarity was required, including the application of the duty of candour to subcontractors, not just those with a direct contractual relationship; the scope of the exemption from the offence of “misleading the public” for acts done for the “purposes of journalism”; and how the expansion of legal aid will be funded. I am pleased to see that the Government have now published their proposals for the last of those.

When the Bill’s remaining stages take place, I intend to table amendments to require the Government to consider the merits of a national oversight mechanism—an independent body tasked with collating, analysing and following up the conclusions and recommendations made in the course of inquests and inquiries. I will also add my support to amendments relating to the role of the Independent Public Advocate and its information-gathering powers, and to the extension of the duty of candour to subcontractors, who are used by the vast majority of service provides, including Fujitsu during the Horizon scandal. I look forward to the Bill returning so that these issues can be considered in more detail. The national oversight mechanism, championed by the charity Inquest, is getting considerable traction. The Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee and the Liaison Committee are discussing what may be the best method of ensuring that the recommendations of inquiries are implemented, and the Justice Committee also has an interest in this matter. We are also exploring the wider issue of how information from inquests can be collated and presented to prevent future deaths, whether or not there is a formal prevention of future deaths report. To that end, I am tabling amendments to the Bill that would establish a national coronial database.

Thirdly, I turn to the immigration and asylum Bill. The Justice Committee has been engaging with the Government’s proposal, since it was made last August, for a new independent appeals body to speed up decision making on asylum appeal cases, which is to be implemented via the Bill. In February, we visited the Taylor House tribunal hearing centre in London and spoke to senior judges to try to understand the causes of the current high appeal backlog. From speaking to them, it was clear that the failures in the current system, which have led to high appeal backlogs, are operational. They include: a shortage of administrative officers to check validity and collect papers; a shortage of court lawyers to issue directions and prepare cases for hearing; inadequate legal aid provision, causing essential legal and evidential groundwork to be performed far too late or not at all; poor or absent Home Office representation at hearings; and failure to comply with tribunal directions on both sides. Replacing judges with adjudicators will not solve those problems. Operational investment in the tribunal infrastructure is clearly required.

The Committee will endeavour to shine a light on that as the Bill goes through the House, but our initial thoughts are that replacing or supplementing judicial decision making by the first-tier tribunal with Home Office administrators will complicate rather than speed up the process, and simply move contentious cases to the upper tribunal or administrative court. In addition to scrutinising that significant legislation over the coming months, the Justice Committee will be concluding and reporting on its inquiries on the rehabilitation and resettlement of offenders and access to justice, and progressing its inquiry on children and young adults in the secure estate.

It was good news earlier to see the Government launch the White Paper on youth justice. The Committee will be holding individual sessions with senior office holders, including the Attorney General, the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Lord Chancellor. We will expand our work on tribunals by launching an inquiry on delays in employment tribunals, which currently have a backlog of over half a million active claims. We will also want to scrutinise the impact of the reforms contained in the Sentencing Act 2026 both on the prison population and the Probation Service, and on offender rehabilitation and public safety.

There are omissions from the Gracious Speech that are a matter for regret. Despite broad consensus, there is no measure to reverse the Supreme Court’s ruling in PACCAR. The Committee heard in its access to justice inquiry how that is adversely affecting litigation funding. There is also no proposal for anti-SLAPP—strategic lawsuits against public participation—legislation, despite substantial evidence of the use of litigation to stifle free speech, nor is there anything to help the victims of press harassment.

It is disappointing that calls to introduce a legal right to consular assistance for British nationals arbitrarily detained or abused by foreign Governments have been ignored, and that proposals mooted to reform the position of cohabiting couples are absent. None the less, this is a substantial King’s Speech with a full programme that includes full, wholesale reform of leasehold and commonhold, social housing renewal, closer ties with the EU, and nationalisation of the steel industry. It is to be commended and supported in all those aspects, which are firmly based on sound Labour principles. Who can argue with that?

Budget Resolutions

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Wednesday 6th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith and Chiswick) (Lab)]

In the time allowed, I will confine myself to a few comments on the Budget’s financial settlement for the Ministry of Justice.

The MOJ is one of the smaller Departments in budgetary terms but has suffered the largest cuts in proportion to its size. Given its role in keeping us safe, providing a high-quality judicial and court system, and offering access to justice that is not dependent on means, the previous Government’s actions were not just regrettable, but reckless. I was, therefore, pleased to see substantial real-terms investment for the first time in 14 years. It is not enough to resolve all the crises, but it is a start in turning things around.

Total MOJ spending will rise from £11.9 billion in the last financial year to £13.8 billion in the next—an average real-terms increase of 5.6% a year—and the Law Officers’ budget will increase by 7.5% a year over the same period. Some of that funding has rightly been directed at prisons and probation, with £2.3 billion to be spent on new prisons, half a billion pounds on maintenance and security budgets, and the same on recruiting new staff. However, the Budget made no mention of civil and criminal legal aid, or of additional money to address the unsustainably large courts backlog. This year’s settlement funds 106,500 Crown court sitting days—not enough to address the backlog, which grows ever larger. Trials are being listed for 2027, and there are similar logjams in the civil and family courts and tribunals.

As of 4 November, the prison population was 85,794. Prisons are running at almost full capacity and the prison population is projected to increase to 94,000 by March 2025, and up to 106,000 by March 2027. Prisons are in a dire state. Prisoners are being held in unsafe, crowded conditions on an estate plagued by widespread disrepair and severe maintenance backlogs. Fire safety standards on the prison estate are woefully poor, and we have to ensure that there is a plan for probation to grow in response to measures to reduce prisoner numbers.

Legal aid is another area of acute pressure. Will any of the new money allocated to the Department be spent on legal aid? Failure to invest will deny access to justice, and it would not be possible to tackle the growing court backlog without further investment in criminal and civil legal aid. I was pleased that the Minister said yesterday, in replying to a question from me in the House, that there will be announcements in the next few weeks on legal aid. This is an excellent start, but there is a long way to go to repair our broken justice system.

Post Office Management Culture

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Thursday 8th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Marion Fellows]

I really thank the Minister for his intervention because hearing direct from the Minister that he will not be pursued will provide my constituent with some element of comfort. However, people are still traumatised years later because of the treatment they have had and it is hard for them to believe that people will not pursue them. I will show my constituent a clip of what the Minister just said.

I have met recently with Christopher Head, who is in the Gallery today. He is a Horizon victim and campaigner who, out of his own good will, helps others in applying for compensation. I do not want anyone else to add to Christopher’s burden because he is doing such a good job. He has told me of the difficulties people face and that he himself received an offer that was only a minuscule fraction of his estimated Horizon losses. Alan Bates recently talked about his offer as well.

Many sub-postmasters I have spoken to recently told me that they plugged shortfalls out of their own pocket for years. The Minister has advised those people to apply for the Horizon shortfall scheme, and I sincerely hope that many more people will take advantage of that. Will the Minister ask Post Office management to make their records of those payments available to individuals? Have Post Office management let the Minister know when they will give an estimate of the excess claimed in Horizon shortfalls, from the introduction of the system to the end of financial year 2019-20? That is important because all that excess money, which was not owed, was put into Post Office Ltd and management bonuses were paid on profits.

The Post Office network is in disarray. Sub-postmasters have no faith in the current management of Post Office Ltd to turn things around. What they see is an organisation that is top-heavy, with multiple layers of management and directors, who have self-interest at heart.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady is making an excellent speech. For obvious reasons, she has focused on the Horizon scandal, which has horrified the country, but the malaise within the Post Office management goes much further than that. Over the last 10 years, I have noticed the so-called temporary closure of many sub-offices that never reopen, and the loss of town centre post offices, some of which have been there for a century or more. Does she agree that the fundamental duty of the Post Office to run a viable network across the countries of the UK is simply not being fulfilled, and that lies at the door of Post Office management?

[Marion Fellows]

I could not agree with the hon. Gentleman more. I have lost three post offices in the last year, but not one vacancy has been filled. As we all know, it is the poorest and most vulnerable who regularly use post offices. I will be applying to the Backbench Business Committee for another debate on the continuation of the network. The network also includes pick-up and drop-off offices—PUDOs, in the vernacular—that are not real post offices. Those who work there are not under Post Office terms and conditions, as they work for Payzone, which Post Office Ltd owns. The post office network is in disarray and postmasters have absolutely no faith in the current management. All the while, as the hon. Gentleman says, the network is crumbling, post offices are closing, and sub-postmasters are being asked to take on additional work for less pay, being punished for reducing hours as they try to keep overheads down in the middle of an economic crisis, and seeing their life investment lose value with each subsequent scandal that is uncovered. Lack of sub-postmaster support continues to this day, in stark contrast to the postmaster support policies championed by POL in the briefing that it gave me for this debate.

I have heard evidence of a recently widowed postmaster, who was told by a senior manager that Post Office Ltd

“does not have a roadmap for bereavement”,

meaning that people were left alone without support, except from their fellow sub-postmasters. In the same briefing, Post Office Ltd outlined that it had increased fees for banking deposits by 20%. As Richard Trinder, chair of Voice of the Postmaster, put it:

“20% of not a lot, is still not a lot.”

Communities are losing a vital social asset, and the post offices that remain are being powered by the altruistic nature of hard-working sub-postmasters, pillars of the community, who are running out of energy. In 2012, the societal value of POL was estimated to be £2 billion. Does the Minister have an updated figure? I do not expect an answer on that today.

The Minister’s announcement that the Government will legislate to exonerate convicted sub-postmasters is welcome. Lord Arbuthnot said that

“a mass problem requires a mass solution.”

Will the Minister commit to changing the governance format, which clearly has not worked for decades? It is high time for the Government to adopt a new approach, as the current arm’s length governance arrangement has allowed scandal after scandal to fester under the watch of successive Labour, Conservative and coalition Governments. Essentially, sub-postmasters find themselves subsidising a Government-owned network at significant personal cost. Moreover, when issues arise, they are left to navigate the path to justice on their own. The pressing need for genuine support for those on the frontline is evident. Will the Minister elaborate on the Government’s plan for the post office network, excluding PUDO services?

Government oversight has not solved any of the issues of the past, including Horizon. It is the hard work and tireless campaigning of sub-postmasters themselves, journalists such as Nick Wallis, and campaigners such as Alan Bates and Christopher Head, the Justice For Subpostmasters Alliance, Eleanor Shaikh, Dan Neidle, Tim McCormack, the CWU, Voice of the Postmaster, the National Federation of SubPostmasters, and many Members in this place past and present, that has continued to push the Government on the issue. Will the Minister, on record, please confirm that sub-postmaster organisations, such as Voice of the Postmaster and the CWU, will no longer be excluded from discussions with Post Office Ltd? It is essential that those who power the post office network are front and centre of any decision-making process that will carry the Post Office forward. For those who are not aware of this, the NFSP is financed by Post Office Ltd. I am making no judgment on how it performs in respect of its members, but we need a wider range of postmasters who will be consulted on and worked with if we are to change things going forward.

I have seen a rather large list of 23 directors in the senior leadership team at Post Office Ltd, not one of whom is a postmaster national executive director or a postmaster experience director, so when Nick Read speaks of putting

“postmasters right at the centre of the business”,

are the postmaster director roles simply window dressing?

Until postmasters have a say in all levels of the business, the culture will not change. Only recently, a communications director at POL, Richard Taylor, was suspended for saying that

“some of them were guilty.”

It says so much that he felt able to say that publicly.

As Bates v. Post Office Ltd has shown the nation, it was the hard-working community sub-postmasters who built the trusted reputation and social value of the Post Office over centuries, and it was those within management who pulled it down. If it is to be rebuilt, then the rebuild must be led by those community pillars once again.

Mr Deputy Speaker, the speech I had written was twice as long as this. I know that I have probably overrun my time, but I still have so much more to say. Change must happen. The fact that there will be a general election this year—that is without doubt—must not stand in the way of change that is so, so needed.

Post Office Ltd

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Monday 29th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I am very happy to take that point up with the right hon. Lady, and to meet her to discuss it. It is very important that our citizens—our consumers—have confidence in the Post Office. That has certainly been the experience in my patch: people have been outraged when there is a closure, so the general public definitely have some confidence in the service. The Horizon system is being replaced. As far as I know, there has never been a case of a customer losing out because of the Horizon system, but I am very happy to meet the right hon. Lady to discuss her case in Nefyn.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

Shepherd’s Bush Crown office closed in 2017, and Hammersmith Crown office closed in 2020 after 100 years. Four sub-offices in my constituency have been temporarily closed for up to 10 years. With queues at the remaining offices stretching around the block at times, and a lack of competition thanks to multiple bank closures, will the Minister investigate why Post Office Ltd lacks commercial sense as well as integrity?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I am happy to look into any cases that the hon. Gentleman refers to. There are clear set criteria: the Post Office has to maintain 11,500 branches nationwide, and 99% of the population has to be within three miles of a post office. The Post Office is maintaining its requirements under those criteria, but I am very happy to talk to the hon. Gentleman about the issue. Of course, we are looking at how to ensure that the network of individual post offices is sustained over the long term with new revenue streams, including through the access to cash legislation that the Government have put in place and things like parcel hubs. We think there is a bright future for the Post Office, but I am very keen to work with the hon. Gentleman to make sure of that in his particular cases.