Oral Answers to Questions

David Davis Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I remind Members that these are topical questions, so can we have short questions and short answers?

[Sir David Davis (Goole and Pocklington) (Con)]

T2. Can I bring the Secretary of State back to the issue of the postmasters who have not received their letters? There have been battles across this House, but those on all sides support fast responses to the postmasters. Kevan Jones, the erstwhile Member for North Durham, is no longer with us in the House, but he and I and many others fought this battle. I am sorry to say to the Secretary of State that in saying, “It is another Department,” he says what we have heard too many times. We hear it is another Department, another piece of the organisation or another set of lawyers, but it is his job to make this happen. Can he please do so quickly?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I thank the right hon. Member for his role, which I have referred to in the past and has been important in these matters. I am not passing the buck to anyone; I am simply saying that it is the Ministry of Justice, rather than me, that sends those letters out. As of 30 August, 130 letters have been sent out, quashing more than 370 convictions. I think that is real progress since the election. It is not fast enough for me, and we will continue to push that. We are working closely with the Northern Irish and Scottish Administrations, because of the devolved nature of justice, exactly as he would expect. I can assure him that this matter was a priority for me in opposition, and it will continue to be a priority for me in government.

Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Bill

David Davis Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 20th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kemi Badenoch]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that point. That is also something that we considered carefully. It is part of the trade-off that we had to make in doing something unprecedented: Parliament overturning convictions. We respect the judgment of the Court of Appeal—it has gone to an appellate judge. We are willing to consider some of those cases individually just to ensure that nothing has been missed, but the Bill has been drafted in consultation with the Crown Prosecution Service and the judiciary. We want to ensure that we are bringing everyone with us. Concerns such as his have been raised, but this is more or less the consensus that we think will get the Bill done, and allow redress, as quickly as possible.

[Sir David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

I will elaborate on this point further when I speak—hopefully, if I catch Mr Deputy Speaker’s eye—but there is already data about the cases that the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) referred to, those that are outside the Horizon case itself but were attempting to get themselves exonerated on the basis of other data. As far as I can see, they failed precisely because they were not part of the Horizon case, so I ask the Secretary of State to return to this issue before Report and look at whether we can solve that problem.

[Kemi Badenoch]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. That is something we can look at again at further stages of the Bill. We understand the issue that hon. Members are trying to resolve, and agree with them that we need to make sure that everybody who deserves justice gets justice, but we also have to be careful to make sure that we are not exonerating people who we know for a fact have committed crimes.

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[Sir David Davis]

Let me reinforce the point made by the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones). There are people writing to me this week about the current handling of their cases by the Post Office and Post Office lawyers; frankly, it is barbaric. The Post Office needs to be taken out of it.

[Kemi Badenoch]

I reassure my right hon. Friend that this is something I am looking at in great detail. The Post Office has clearly been a dysfunctional organisation for a very long time, and that is one reason why I have been actively taking steps to look at the management and processes in place, which, as he rightly says, many of the sub-postmasters have lost faith in.

It goes without saying that work to offer prompt financial redress alongside the Bill continues. As of 1 March, 102 convictions have been overturned through the courts. Of those 102 cases, 45 people have claimed full and final redress, and of those 35 have reached settlement. The Post Office has paid out financial redress totalling £38 million to postmasters with overturned convictions. Under the Horizon shortfall scheme, as of 1 March, 2,864 eligible claims have been submitted, the vast majority of which have been settled by the Post Office, and £102 million has been paid out in financial redress, including full and final settlements and interim payments.

Finally, under the group litigation order scheme, working from the same date, 132 claims have been submitted, 110 have been settled by my Department, and £34 million has been paid out in financial redress, including full and final settlements and interim payments. Officials in my Department are working hard to get those cases settled quickly, and we have made offers within 40 working days in response to 87% of complete claims.

In summary, the Bill amounts to an exceptional response to a scandal that was wholly exceptional in nature, and has shaken the nation’s faith in the core principles of fairness that underpin our legal system. We recognise the constitutional sensitivity and unprecedented nature of the Bill, but I believe it is essential for us to rise to the scale of the challenge. The hundreds of postmasters caught up in this scandal deserve nothing less. Of course, no amount of legislation can fully restore what the Post Office so cruelly took from them, but I hope the Bill at least begins to offer the closure and justice that postmasters have so bravely campaigned for over many years, and that it affords them the ability to rebuild their lives. For that reason, I commend the Bill to the House.

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[Jonathan Reynolds]

I am always keen to hear from the Minister. I thought I was fair in making the point he raises in my introductory remarks. I simply make the point that the constitutional significance of legislation like this requires a level of public consent. The statement that the Prime Minister made in January, just after Prime Minister’s questions, would not have been possible without the sheer breakthrough in public consent and the demand for change and for justice that came from that. I will always be fair to the Government’s Ministers, and I point out even to some of their critics that we were dealing with things. We had the legislation that colleagues had worked on. It is fair to say there was less interest in some of that in the Chamber before we had the television programme, but let us be frank that we had the impasse of people not wanting to go back to the process. The estimate we had at the time was 10 to 15 years. That is what brought us to that point, and we have to recognise that, as well as paying tribute to the role that arts and culture can play in bringing things to an audience, which we should welcome.

Finally, I think I speak for everyone in the Chamber when I say that in no way does anyone take lightly what we are proposing to do today. This action is unprecedented, and we should make every effort possible to ensure that such action never again has to be considered.

[Sir David Davis]

This legislation is not totally the first precedent. There have been cases relating to people who were shot in the first world war for cowardice and then exonerated after the event, and so on. Does the shadow Secretary of State agree with the notion that we should put a sunset clause on this provision, to ensure that it in no way becomes a precedent?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

When we look at the precedents, it is interesting to note that there is clearly a legal difference between quashing a conviction and a pardon after an event has taken place, which is the precedent we are more familiar with. I am receptive to what colleagues are saying about a sunset clause from a judicial or safeguarding point of view. Clearly we want to capture as many people as possible who deserve to have their convictions quashed. When we get to Committee, which I assume will be on the Floor of the House, I am sure there will be an attempt to do that.

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[Sir David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

I hope the Secretary of State will not take this amiss and will understand that I mean no criticism of her or her Minister of State, or indeed his predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), when I say that the Bill represents the best of a bad job. Everybody has said it already; there is a difficult trade-off between natural justice and a fast, low-stress solution for the postmasters. That is what this Bill attempts to achieve.

That being said, it is not the way I would have done it. It is not what I would have proposed. The courts should and could have considered all the cases in which the convictions were based on Horizon evidence in one set of proceedings. I took senior legal advice on this; it would have been perfectly possible to take three or more former Supreme Court justices out of retirement, give them a courtroom and task them to deal with this in three months. They could have bracketed very similar cases together—there would have been hundreds in those categories—and then they could have focused on the ones that were really difficult. Regrettably, it is rumoured that the judiciary itself rebuffed that course of action, which I think was unwise and plain wrong. As the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) pointed out, the judiciary has a responsibility, too. That is why we have gone this route, and I have every sympathy with what Ministers are trying to do.

Even so, the Bill still risks lumping the genuinely innocent majority with a very small potentially guilty minority. Each difficult case could have been dealt with on its individual merits rather than abandoning due process in the rush to bring this disgraceful episode to a close. We got into this situation by failing to follow proper processes, and I am wary that the Government, almost by default, are again failing to follow proper process to extricate themselves from this historic mess.

Despite my misgivings, I will not stand in the way of the Bill, because it will serve the vast majority of postmasters to secure justice for them. For that reason, I will support the Bill. However, that is not to say that the legislation will not continue to create problems of its own. I recommend that Members read some of the early reports before Report stage. The BAE Systems Detica report, which everyone should read, is a six-month review of the Post Office’s fraud and non-compliance issues in 2013. It paints a picture of complete chaos in the Post Office’s accounting systems—not just Horizon but all the accounting systems. Over a decade ago it was known that:

“Post Office systems are not fit for purpose in a modern retail and financial environment”.

Note that it refers to “systems”—plural—not just Horizon. The report goes on to say that ATM—cashpoint—accounting was clearly flawed and that

“removing the ATM reduces the risk of SPMR being suspended”.

By SPMR the report means sub-postmasters, and I am afraid that suspended means persecuted, as that was outcome. That was not Horizon related.

That matters because dozens have come forward to raise concerns over a second IT system used by the Post Office, called Capture. Again, documents show that Capture was known by the Post Office to have issues early on. The culture of denial in the Post Office over the decades is truly extraordinary. The Bill will exclude people who have already had their appeal cases heard and rejected. Those rejections may well have occurred because the evidence that the appeals were based on was not Horizon but some other failure of the accounting systems. We must be careful not to give up once we pass the Bill, but to see if we can also absolve people who are not guilty because of the wholesale chaos that existed.

[Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con)]

rose—

[Sir David Davis]

I give way to probably the best-informed man in the House on this matter,.

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[Duncan Baker]

My apologies. The debtors would have said that those innocent sub-postmasters owed the Post Office corporate accounts what we now know to be tens of millions of pounds. But they were wrong—that was fictious and they were not owed that money. Will we ever get to the bottom of that and restate the Post Office’s accounts, which must have been materially wrong year after year throughout that period from 2010?

[Sir David Davis]

My hon. Friend has more experience of this issue than anyone, and he reinforces my point. Frankly, if I had a magic wand I would force the Post Office to re-audit every set of accounts for the last 20 years and give back the money, but that will not happen: it would drag on forever, and we know the stress that it is causing postmasters even today. My worry is that we may feel at the end of this process that we have solved the problem, but there will be some—perhaps only dozens or hundreds, not thousands—who will be left not absolved or exonerated, but who deserve to be. That is the risk of this approach.

[Liam Byrne]

Given the right hon. Gentleman’s argument, will he reflect on whether we should include in the scope of the Bill those who went to the Court of Appeal initially but lost, or those who were not given leave to appeal, on the basis that we simply did not know then what we know now? Should we provide for that handful of cases—perhaps under 40—in the Bill rather than exclude them?

[Sir David Davis]

Those are precisely the cases I am focusing on; there may be others that we do not know about but they are the most obvious ones. I agree but, again, if I had a magic wand, I would use the mechanism that I mentioned of unretiring a few Supreme Court justices and saying, “These are more complicated and require a bit more insight. You can’t deal with these en bloc. Will you please reconsider them?” On the one hand, I want to exonerate people who are truly innocent but, on the other, postmasters still call me up and say, “Whatever you do, don’t exonerate the guilty.” It seems to me that the best way is a judicial or quasi-judicial route over and above what we are doing here. No doubt we will debate that at some length on Report.

I will still support the Bill because, at the end of the day, it is the difficult compromise that the Government have found. They have got to where they are by talking to everyone, including the right hon. Member for North Durham, who is not in his place just now, and taking all the expert advice. The Bill is necessary.

I had a telephone call just yesterday from a victim of the scandal, which I mentioned in my earlier intervention. Her name is Janet Skinner, and she is not my constituent but she called me anyway. She told me that 15 years later, she is still going through misery and, despite having promised me that they would not, Post Office management are putting her through an inquisition, demanding documents from her from 15 years ago. During that time she was in prison and had to sell her house, so she probably has no documents, given the disruption of all that. The Post Office itself will have those documents somewhere, and if it does not, it ought to have them.

That barbaric mindset is still going on from, frankly, a sickeningly inadequate and self-absorbed Post Office management, as we saw when they gave evidence to the Committee of the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne). That is a problem, and we have to get the Bill under way as fast as possible. I pay enormous credit to both the junior Ministers who have dealt with this, my hon. Friends the Members for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) and for Sutton and Cheam. They were both formidably good at their job at a time when the whole Whitehall and Post Office system was desperately trying to ignore the issue. They did a heroic job of dragging it back up the priority list. The Minister needs to force the Post Office to solve the problem, or, as the right hon. Member for North Durham said, force someone else in its place to put this right quickly, easily, gracefully and with minimum stress for the postmasters.

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

I have been listening intently to everything that has been said today. I would like to reflect on the number of times I have stood here and talked about the Horizon business. I do not want to repeat my previous remarks, but I agree with everything that the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) said, which has been repeated in this Chamber many times.

We are coming close to a point where we may see movement towards justice for sub-postmasters. The exoneration Bill is vital to that. I am deeply disappointed that Scotland has been left out of the Bill. I have been working hard with the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson), and I have had many meetings with Northern Ireland MPs from all parties. If Northern Ireland is to be included in the Bill, I can see no reason why Scotland cannot be.

[Sir David Davis]

I have every sympathy with the hon. Lady and in particular with Northern Irish Members on this matter. Northern Ireland is a very special case in so many ways, for reasons we all know. Is there a reason why the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government could not simply replicate the Bill and carry it through?

[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.

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[Paul Scully]

For sure. We cannot do enough for these people. They have been cast out as pariahs in their communities. They have been charged, they have been put in prison, they have lost houses, families and health, because of a body that is ultimately owned by the state. We, as a collective body, have destroyed these people’s lives. There is not enough that we can do for them.

We are looking at what is in the Bill and at all the other compensation schemes as well, but we have to act. We are having to conduct this mass exoneration in the first place not just that the wheels of justice turn slowly, but because these people are so triggered, whether by PTSD or simply by total mistrust of the system, that they do not want to go through another process with someone in authority saying kind words, warm words, and then letting them down for the second time—or worse. It is actions, not words, on which we will be judged. When I stood up at that Dispatch Box, I knew that whatever I talked about, I could not expect the postmasters to trust me. I knew that they would trust me on the basis of my actions, and I know that my hon. Friend the current Minister feels the same way.

I welcome the Bill. It is important for us not to let perfection be the enemy of the good. Let us get this done, because we cannot come on to the second Bill and these people’s compensation until they have been exonerated—not pardoned, for they have done nothing wrong. Let us make sure that we accentuate that as well. That is why I am keen for us to rush this legislation through. Yes, we need to scrutinise it, but it is a short Bill, so we can do that quickly, and then we can get on to that life-changing money that I—that we—keep talking about, and try to restore some semblance of their lives to those whose lives have been destroyed.

This is Second Reading, and we will get into the specifics in Committee and on Report, but let me offer a few possible solutions. The solution that my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Sir David Davis) talked about earlier—bringing back judges—would at least add capacity to the system. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), who is no longer in his place, previously said something similar when he said that we do not necessarily need this kind of law, which is, frankly, trampling quite a lot on the independence of the judiciary. That is why the Government had to move really carefully, which is one reason for some of the concerns raised by the Business and Trade Committee about the people who have not been able to go to appeal, or who will not be included because they have been refused leave to appeal or have failed in their appeal.

There is still more that we can do for victims of this scandal. They will be able to appeal at another time, but maybe there is something we can do, in the way that my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst suggested in their contributions, to accelerate their cases and not just let them have to go through the same situation that they would otherwise have done. May I respectfully suggest that that may be the case for Scotland and, indeed, Northern Ireland? I am not an expert or a lawyer, and it is not for me to give advice, but it occurs to me that if the proposed amendment does not go through and the territorial extent stays as it is—that is for this place to judge in other stages of the Bill—perhaps there are other methods that we can use to make sure that postmasters in Scotland and Northern Ireland do not receive compensation more slowly.

We all want this to be done as quickly as possible. The postal affairs Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton, has talked about getting the majority of the compensation delivered by August. Clearly, that is not going to happen, because we have only just got this Bill through, so we will have to exonerate the postmasters. However, if we can get the Horizon shortfall scheme and the rest of the GLO largely done by that time, and restore these people’s lives to some sense of normality, then we can do the rest of it. We still have not finished, because we have to get Sir Wyn Williams’s report back and get the investigation done.

Some previous contributors to the debate said that it might take weeks or months to deliver the compensation, and that there might be complications. I remember speaking to the solicitors who represented the 555 people involved the GLO. I said, “If we gave you lots and lots of money and you distributed it, how long would it take?” The answer was about 18 months. It is about how we apportion the money and work it through—the same kinds of things that the advisory committee has been wrestling with—and the solicitors would have to do that internally. It is not a matter of giving people life-changing sums of money in one block and then everybody is okay; it is about making sure that we can work through the system, which will inevitably take time.

When I made Sir Wyn Williams’s investigation non-statutory, it was to get speed into the system to make sure that we did not have to “lawyer up”, as it was described. I always wanted money to go to the victims, not to lawyers talking about the same things again. As I say, if we can get the compensation out, we have to get the answers. We keep on talking in this place about the Horizon scandal, the infected blood scandal and any number of scandals, and I keep hearing people say that it must never happen again. Do you know what? It usually does. Why? Because we talk and talk about it, but we do not learn the true lessons or get the answers.

[Sir David Davis]

One of the things we need to consider, both now and later, is how we stop this happening again. I reiterate the point I made in my speech: when the inquiry looked at it, there was systemic failure right across the board. My hon. Friend is right to say it was a human failure, a system failure and an organisational failure. The Post Office is an arm’s length department. What we are finding with this and other cases is that arm’s length departments are disasters when it comes to correcting mistakes and delivering accountability. Does he agree that we should think about that when we are doing this?

[Paul Scully]

As usual, my right hon. Friend is absolutely on point. In our Department, we had a number of arm’s length organisations, which is true of other Government Departments as well. They are representatives of the Government, and we elected politicians or the Government will inevitably be held accountable; if there is no direct relationship, it is very difficult to speak from the Dispatch Box with enough authority and information to be able to take that accountability.

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[Mr Jones]

I think it is. In fairness, the Minister wants to get these cases done quickly, as does the advisory board. One controversial thing is that some people will get a little more money than they lost. I am comfortable with that, because I would sooner they get the money than it go to the lawyers or the process be dragged out. If we can get those cases dealt with speedily—some progress has been made on that—we can then get the effort and force put into sorting out the more complex ones.

[Sir David Davis]

The right hon. Gentleman rightly says that some people may get a little more money than perhaps come out of the arithmetic, but would most of us not pay anything to avoid what they have gone through?

[Mr Jones]

Exactly. If somebody gets more money out of this than they have in quantum lost, I am comfortable with that, as I believe is the Minister. It is better putting it into their pockets than into the pockets of lawyers, who will take their time, with this adding to the trauma that these people will have in dealing with these cases over many years.

Let me turn to the Bill’s Horizon pilot scheme provisions, because we have to address not only the Horizon scheme but the pilots that came before it. Condition E for overturning a conviction in the Bill is that the “Horizon system” was being used at the time of the offence. Clause 8 makes provision in respect of

“any version of the computer system known as Horizon (and sometimes referred to as Legacy Horizon, Horizon Online or HNG-X) used by the Post Office”.

We know that there is a difference between those pilot schemes and the actual Horizon scheme that took over—I know that, having been able to recite some of these things in my sleep.

People used a Horizon pilot scheme in the north-east as early as 1996—one went on to be convicted and others lost their livelihoods and were made bankrupt. I recognise that 1996 is the start date in the Bill, but I checked the Post Office’s website again this morning and it says that the roll-out and pilots of the Legacy Horizon system, as referred to in the Bill as part of condition E, started in 1999. So what systems were people piloting in 1996? Were they piloting Legacy Horizon? If they were, that would be at odds with what is on the Post Office’s website. I would like the Minister to refer to that and provide clarification in his wind-up, as a lot of those cases were in the north-east of England, in the area I represent.

Let me turn to another system, one that was pre-Horizon: the Capture system. As I understand it, it was software developed by the Post Office itself. I came across it through a case that had been referred to me. Given all the publicity about the Horizon scheme, it amazed me that the Post Office did not come clean and say, “Oh, by the way, we had Horizon, pre-Horizon and the Capture system beforehand.” If we look at the cases, we see that this was very much because of the attitude of the Post Office towards the prosecutions. We had sub-postmasters who were accused of stealing money and their contracts were terminated. In some cases, they were prosecuted. There was a ridiculous situation in Coventry, where a woman was taken to court and prosecuted. The judge threw out the case on the first day, saying there was no case to answer, but lo and behold, what did the Post Office do? It took a private prosecution against her to recover the £30,000 it claimed she had stolen, which bankrupted her. That shows the mentality of those in the Post Office.

A lot of those cases mirror Horizon cases. I have referred 10 cases to the Minister, five of which relate to individuals who went to prison. As I have done before, I put on record the excellent reporting by Karl Flinders of Computer Weekly and Steve Robson of the i newspaper on those cases. It has been down to me, those two and others to do the detective work, so we need the Post Office to turn up the heat and ensure we get answers. Will the Minister tell the Post Office that it is not a good idea to threaten legal action against journalists? This week, after his latest story, Steve received a phone call threatening him with legal action. That is not very bright, especially as he had all the evidence to back up his story. If that is still the attitude of the Post Office, that shows why the current management need to go.

I understand why the Government cannot include Capture in this legislation, but we need a mechanism to deal with those cases because Capture is important. I have 10 cases, but there are clearly more out there. Clause 7 gives the Secretary of State powers to make “further consequential provision” by regulation. Will that provide a potential way to include Capture cases? The Minister has all the information and he is on top of the brief. I raise the issue today and I will propose an amendment in Committee to see whether we can flesh out the matter, but we need a way to deal with those cases. I have 10 cases, but there are certainly more out there.

[Sir David Davis]

I am delighted that the right hon. Gentleman has raised that point. I referred in my speech to the 2013 BAE study that highlighted Capture, ATM cash management and a variety of other issues associated with audit failure, and basically described a chaotic management system. Earlier postmasters may not have been exonerated by subsequent analysis because people were looking at Horizon and nothing else, but we owe it to them to get this right, even if that is after this Bill has moved through the House.

[Mr Jones]

People might think that because the system is not Horizon, the Bill does not apply to them, but the cases I am dealing with show that there was an injustice. I have spoken to individuals who went to prison. The computer systems were not same, but the Post Office showed the same attitude in the way it went at individuals. It did not believe the postmasters—they were going to be found guilty, come what may.

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[Mr Jones]

I have seen some of those individuals at first hand at the public inquiry. People have said that everyone who is going to make a case has come out of the woodwork already, but that is not true. People are still coming forward. I am hearing about cases on a weekly cases. I thank right hon. and hon. Members from across the House who are keeping me busy by referring cases to me. Please send them to me—I am quite happy to help deal with them. I noticed this morning that there are another three cases in my inbox. The hon. Gentleman makes the key point that we need to look at those individuals to ensure we get some type of justice for them. I have to say that I was surprised by this, but, following the television programme, nearly 1,000 new cases came forward on the Horizon shortfall scheme alone. We may wonder what these people were doing all this time. Well, in some cases, they were not aware of what was happening. In other cases—

[Sir David Davis]

They were hiding.

[Mr Jones]

They were hiding, yes, because of shame and things such as that. It is only now that we realise what a massive miscarriage of justice this was that people have had the confidence to come forward. This Bill will help with that.

I shall come off Capture, because I think the Minister has got my point, but I return to those cases that have already gone to appeal. I do not criticise the Government on this, but we must find a system for dealing with those few cases that have gone through. It is no good the Court of Appeal hiding behind the fact that they have gone through, because, as the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam has said, new evidence has come out of the inquiry that was not available to the courts at the time. We cannot just leave those people hanging—I cannot remember off the top of my head how many individuals there are, but there are not that many.

Budget Resolutions

David Davis Excerpts

Wednesday 6th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sir David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

It is rather sad to follow that speech from the hon. Gentleman. I remind him that a one-in-75-year financial crisis, a one-in-a-century health crisis and a one-in-75-year international crisis in Europe, all contributed dramatically to the problems he outlined. Although I may be on the same side as him when dealing with the public school tendency in my party, I do not blame them.

[Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

On that point, will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Sir David Davis]

Of course, absolutely. Every opposition has its day.

[Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I would just like to say that we are not all that bad.

[Sir David Davis]

I might return to that shortly.

The truth is, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) said, the Chancellor has done a skilful job in dealing with an extraordinarily difficult backdrop. I think there are more things he could do—I will talk about that in a second—although much of that is down to the structure of Government decision making, rather than his fault. For example, as the Leader of the Opposition said, we are dealing with a world in which Putin has weaponised supply chains and destroyed the economic basis of our anti-inflation policy that has worked for the previous 10 years.

I understand the Chancellor’s caution and his desire to retain the confidence of the markets. Against that, it is remarkable that he has taken £20 billion out of national insurance, at about £900 a head for 27 million people and for another 2 million self-employed people. Frankly, people are underestimating the success the Government have had with inflation reduction and employment. For most of my time in this House, the idea of 800 new jobs a day, every day, for an entire Government’s tenure, would be extraordinary—that certainly did not happen under the previous Labour Government—so we have quite a lot to be happy about.

That said, if I had my way, I would not have gone for national insurance; I would have reduced income tax. Why? A lot of assertions have been made in the public domain, probably in relation to the Treasury, that national insurance is less inflationary than income tax. That is bogus nonsense. The only argument to support that is that cutting national insurance will pull tens of thousands more people into the employment pool, but so will cutting income tax. Because income tax applies to people above the age of 65, cutting it would also keep highly skilled and capable people, who we do not want to retire, in the workforce. I would have preferred an income tax cut rather than a national insurance cut, but that is what we have got and it is probably much better than we would have got from the Opposition.

While I am talking about income tax, I want to make one point en passant. At every Budget, I have raised the question of IR35, which is oppressive on small businesses and the self-employed. It drives people out of the country; the Public Accounts Committee is looking into that issue and I hope it will come up with a conclusion some time soon. I will keep at the Government to deal with IR35 and the related issue of the loan charge. Frankly, His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs is behaving in a barbaric manner, reminiscent of the Post Office, so I will continue to raise that issue.

I want to raise a number of structural matters. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) made the point I was going to make about the Bank of England. The current structure of the Bank of England, its guidelines and its rules, are flawed in a big way. They handicap the way Government can operate on fiscal policy and on inflation. We need to address that and my right hon. Friend made a good point about that.

There is also the issue of the OBR. George Osborne created the circumstance under which the OBR almost sets the guidelines and the fiscal rules for the Government. The Government are then terrified of what the markets will do if they do not follow the OBR’s attitude. I understand the Prime Minister has a picture of Nigel Lawson in his study. He ought to read Lawson, because Lawson’s view on economic forecasts of any sort was that they are pseudo-technical nonsense. He did not believe in forecasts and we would do well to learn from him. The whole British establishment is suffering from a collective delusion about the amount of authority that rests with OBR forecasts—in fact, with all Government forecasts.

Let me give the House an example. The Bank of England’s forecasts failed to predict the worst inflation crisis in modern times. In 2022, the OBR’s UK borrowing forecast was more than £100 billion—I repeat £100 billion—off the mark. Last year, the Office for National Statistics—not in forecasting, but just in measuring—announced revisions that added £50 billion to the size of the British economy. Panmure Gordon turned round and said that it had completely rewritten the story of post-covid Britain, which it had. A new report on the OBR has suggested that, since 2010, the combined total of the OBR’s errors in growth forecasts aggregates to over £500 billion, and its errors in forecasting public sector debt accumulate to more than £600 billion: this is the mechanism that Chancellors are using to decide how much tax they can afford to cut. To remind people, the fiscal rule is that there should be a reduction in the percentage in 2029—that is the difference between two guesses. It is not a rational way to run an economy.

[Chris Grayling]

I was particularly struck by the change to capital gains tax and the reference to the Laffer curve. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is disappointing that the OBR in particular still does not appear to look at dynamic impacts of tax changes in a way that is essential for the future?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. Interventions are absolutely marvellous, but can those who have already spoken be conscious that we are trying to get everybody in with equal time? My advice remains six minutes per speaker. Sir David Davis will notice that he is already slightly over that.

[Sir David Davis]

I have one last thing to say, as I will cut what I was going to say about productivity.

One rule that used to apply in this House was something called a general amendment arrangement, which came after the Budget. That disappeared in 2017, which means that we cannot change the Budget except in a very, very narrow way—this probably should be a point of order rather than part of a speech. I plead with Members on the Front Bench to ask the Chancellor whether we can have a general amendment arrangement at the end of this Budget.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson), and particularly my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Sir David Davis), who made an important speech, particularly as regards the OBR. It was telling that the Chancellor started his speech by pointing out, at least inadvertently—it was not a deliberate attack—how many things the OBR has got wrong. That is a real problem for policymaking, because we treat the forecasts as if they were holy writ, authoritative and right. We make decisions on comparatively small amounts, assuming that the forecasts are fundamentally right, and that everything will add up—but of course it does not.

Let us look at the increase from £85,000 to £90,000 in the VAT threshold. That is an absolutely splendid and fundamentally good policy. It makes life easier for small businesses, is thoroughly welcome, and costs £150 million, or 0.01% of a Budget of £1.216 trillion. The cost is utterly trivial, yet the Government do not go further, saying that they cannot afford to. Of course they can. That amount is a rounding error, when we consider the total of what the Government do.

Unfortunately, that is the problem with the whole approach. As far as it goes, it is perfectly good. The economic circumstances have been tricky, and we spent £400 billion on support during covid, which was the right thing to do; but rather than nickel and diming, as is happening, we need to look at the fundamentals of our tax and spend policy. That £1.216 trillion is 44.5% of GDP that we are spending. That is too much. It is more than the country can afford; that is the starting point. It means that we are taxing too much.

A report in The Daily Telegraph states that we will not quite reach the figure for tax as a percentage of GDP that we did in 1948. We will just swerve having our highest level of tax in the post-war period, but that figure shows that we are spending too much. We need to get spending under control, so it was a pity that the Chancellor stuck with the 1% real-terms increase in public expenditure. We should be making public expenditure flat in real terms, and we need to recognise that the best way to afford public expenditure is through economic growth.

A matter for rejoicing—I know that the people in North East Somerset will be delighted, and the Chancellor mentioned this—is that at least the OBR and the Treasury have been willing to look at a particular tax to see if cutting it makes things better: the tax cut from 28% to 24% on property. I own property—I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests—so the change may be beneficial to me, but moreover it shows that Laffer works when even the Treasury and the OBR come round to thinking about it.

Where else could that be done? The hon. Member for Solihull (Julian Knight) mentioned the tourist tax. It is the easiest tax for the Government to have got rid of. We know—all the evidence is there—that it costs the economy and the Treasury money, yet the Treasury ploughs ahead with the obstinate view that a tax rate produces a set amount of tax, which we know to be false. Go back to 1979, when 98% tax rates raised much less money than 40% tax rates ultimately did. That is why I am not at all keen on the attack on non-doms.

The OBR forecast expects 350,000 immigrants, net, to come to this country every year up to 2028-29. That is built into its forecasts. We need to get control of that. On the one hand, we need to get control of people coming in and undercutting the British workforce, lowering wages in areas such as social care. On the other hand, we want as many billionaires as are willing to come, because they are small in number yet contribute very largely to the economy. Attacking them, and making things harder for them, might be a means of stealing the Labour party’s clothes, but it is not good economic policy.

[Sir David Davis]

Doubly so, because post Brexit, other countries—France in particular—have actively set out to drag those billionaires into their country.

[Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg]

France, Italy and Portugal, our oldest ally. Yes, absolutely, other countries are competing for the very rich, who will go to those countries, rather than coming here.

I am also not in favour of the extra tax on oil companies. We need more oil and gas. One of the reasons why our productivity has been low and our economy stagnant, compared with the United States, is our much higher energy prices. We need to wean ourselves from the green ideology, which is making us cold and poor, and is one of the biggest factors to undermine economic growth in the past 15 years. We should not be attacking the oil companies; we should be welcoming and encouraging them.

The time limit is very tight, but there is good news that Members will like: time on the Finance Bill is unlimited, so I look forward to resuming my comments on Second Reading.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Davis Excerpts

Thursday 25th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sir David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

For the legislation to work, postmasters have to come forward. When I asked one of my constituents this weekend why they had not come to me sooner, they said it was because they had signed a non-disclosure agreement, but also because they had had to sign the Official Secrets Act. I thought that was so bonkers that I did not believe it, until I read page 26 of Nick Wallis’s book, which says that postmasters do have to sign the Official Secrets Act. If that mad policy is still going on, will the Minister bring it to an end? Will he tell postmasters all over the country that they are completely at liberty to talk to their MPs about any aspect of the Post Office?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank my right hon. Friend for all the work he has done in this area. I understand that the requirement to sign the Official Secrets Act relates to the confidentiality of mail; it does not relate to the confidentiality of issues regarding mistreatment by Post Office Ltd. My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise that point, and I will certainly raise it with Post Office Ltd, but I can confirm that that would not prevent somebody from speaking out, including to their Member of Parliament.

Post Office Horizon Scandal

David Davis Excerpts

Wednesday 10th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sir David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade if she will make a statement on compensation and outstanding matters relating to the Post Office Horizon scandal.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Kevin Hollinrake)]

As the Prime Minister indicated a few minutes ago, I will inform the House about the further steps the Government are taking to address the Horizon scandal.

The Government are taking measures to speed up the flow of compensation. We have already set a target of issuing initial offers for 90% of group litigation order cases within 40 days of receiving a completed application. I announced in November that we would be introducing a £600,000 up-front offer for claims with overturned convictions, which people could choose to take rather than going through the detailed assessment process. This has already made a real difference. Before my announcement, only five of the relevant people had reached full and final settlements; I can now report that, with the help of the minimum payments, we have finalised 30 cases. This has obviously speeded matters along for those who have taken this up-front offer. It has also helped those who have chosen individual assessment, because resources can be concentrated on those cases.

I can announce today that we are taking similar measures in respect of the group litigation order scheme. We will now make people in that scheme an up-front offer of £75,000, which will save them having to go through a full assessment. However, as with overturned convictions, if they believe they are entitled to more, they are welcome to continue with the full assessment. Not only will this allow the Department to focus its resources on the larger cases, but it will allow claimants’ lawyers to do the same. The pace at which we can get claims into the scheme is the key constraint on how quickly we can settle them. The up-front offer is smaller for the GLO scheme than for the overturned convictions because the claims tend to be smaller. We estimate that perhaps a third of GLO claimants may want to consider this route. I am sure the House will welcome this measure.

When I made my statement on Monday, I heard Members from all parts of the House share my desire to ensure justice for postmasters who have been convicted of offences as part of the scandal. The whole House is united on this, and in the light of last week’s excellent ITV series, I believe the whole nation is united on it, too. We have all been moved by the stories of postmasters who have been unjustly convicted and the terrible effects over the period of two decades on their finances, health and relationships. Indeed, we have seen whole lives ruined by this brutal and arbitrary exercise of power.

Hundreds of convictions remain extant. Some of those convictions will have relied on evidence from the discredited Horizon system; others will have been the result of appalling failures of the Post Office’s investigation and prosecution functions. The evidence already emerging from Sir Wyn Williams’s inquiry has shown not only incompetence, but malevolence in many of their actions. This evidence was not available to the courts when they made their decisions on individual cases. So far, 95 out of more than 900 convictions have been overturned. We know that postmasters have been reluctant to apply to have their convictions overturned—many of them have decided that they have been through enough and cannot face further engagement with authority. Many fear having their hopes raised, only for them to be dashed yet again.

The Horizon compensation advisory board has recommended that we should overturn all the convictions of the postmasters who were prosecuted in the Horizon scandal. I think its motivation for doing so is absolutely right, and we will work with it to speed up the process. May I put on the record my thanks to Lord Arbuthnot, who is in the Gallery today, and the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) for their work on the campaign generally and on that advisory board?

Following the recommendation would involve unprecedented action by Parliament to overturn specific verdicts of the courts. The Government completely recognise the importance of an independent court system and judiciary, so the recommendation raises important issues of constitutional principle. This is therefore not a decision we can take lightly. It also creates the risks of a different sort of injustice.

I am sure that a great many people were wrongly convicted in the scandal, but I cannot tell the House that all of those prosecuted were innocent or even that it was 90%, or 80%, or 70%. Without retrying every case, we cannot know. The risk is that instead of unjust convictions, we end up with unjust acquittals, and we just would not know how many. The only way we could tell would be to put all cases through the courts, further dragging out the distress for many innocent people.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

I will extend the time. It was so important to get all of that on the record. I believe that the Minister wanted to make a statement but was overruled. At least we have certainly had that statement now.

[Sir David Davis]

As the Minister said, earlier this week many of us across the Chamber called for this appalling injustice to be solved in months, not years. It looks as though the Government have responded correctly to that call, ensuring swift justice. But there are undoubtedly difficult constitutional and legal issues involved, as he laid out in detail.

Some of the victims that I have spoken to say they need an individual exoneration rather than a grand pardon because they are understandably concerned about being bracketed with the very small number of people who will actually not be innocent. Will the Minister undertake to continue looking into this matter and address the quite proper concerns of the legitimate victims?

I would also welcome further elaboration on compensation. Fujitsu, which has played a central role in the scandal, is still at the heart of Government IT systems. Will Fujitsu will be required to meet some of the costs of the undoubtedly enormously expensive compensation that we are paying out? Finally, will the Government accelerate the investigations to convict those who are really guilty of causing the scandal by perverting the course of justice?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank my right hon. Friend for the urgent question and for his collaboration with us on these matters. We have looked carefully at the issue of individual exonerations and did not see any way possible to do that without an exhaustive and time-consuming administrative process, which would add further burdens to those that people have already suffered.

The other issue is getting people to come forward again, which has been one of the major problems in getting people to appeal their convictions. We see the solution that we have adopted as very much the lesser of two evils. Nevertheless, we are keen to discuss mitigations and safeguards with other Members of the House. I set out one earlier on—the requirement to sign a statement of innocence—and I am keen to work with him to look at other mechanisms that we can use to ensure that those people who get their convictions overturned and access compensation are actually innocent of the charges.

My right hon. Friend made the important point about Fujitsu, which has been raised many times. As he knows, part of what the Government did was to put in place a statutory inquiry, chaired by Sir Wyn Williams. It is due to complete by the end of the year, and, hopefully, it will report soon after. At that point in time, we will be able to assess more clearly who is actually responsible. Many people may have already formed a view on that, but we think it right that we follow a process to identify individuals or organisations who are responsible for the scandal. Of course, we would expect those organisations to financially contribute. There are financial and legal measures that we can take.

As regards individuals, it may be that there is sufficient evidence for the authorities to take forward individual prosecutions, and I think many in the House would welcome that.

Horizon: Compensation and Convictions

David Davis Excerpts

Monday 8th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank the hon. Lady for her questions and, indeed, for her work on the all-party group on post offices. In terms of the case she raises of the postmasters who have suffered financially and in which there will be difficulty in providing information because of lack of evidence, the benefit of the doubt should clearly be with the postmasters in this situation. The Horizon shortfall scheme is there to compensate people in that situation. If she needs any help with any of those cases I am very happy to assist.

On whether people repay bonuses or whatever else people might be held accountable for, in order to be fair we should wait for the results of the inquiry. We believe in process in this House and it is right that people have a right to reply and give their own evidence. I agree with the hon. Lady’s confidence in Sir Wyn Williams, who is doing a tremendous job.

I am sorry that I cannot be more precise on the timescales, but I will be very disappointed if we go past the end of this week without giving more information to the House. I entirely agree with the hon. Lady about the accountability of individuals both for all reasons of justice and to act as a deterrent to anybody else who is ever tempted to do the wrong thing in such circumstances. These corporate failures and corporate abuses cannot continue and we need to make sure people realise that if it happens, they will be held to account.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

I congratulate the Minister and his immediate predecessor for the sterling work they have done in attempting to bring justice to this problem. However, the Government need to do four things: to stop the Post Office unnecessarily challenging the victims’ appeals and find a more rapid method to exonerate all the innocent victims; to instruct the Post Office to stop hiring expensive lawyers to challenge the compensation claims and therefore to accelerate the payment mechanism; to strip away the Post Office’s right to police its own cases; and to accelerate the investigatory procedures prior to criminal prosecutions of the real villains in this case—we know who they are. Does the Minister believe that he can achieve those four aims in months rather than years?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his kind words and for all his work in the campaign for justice for postmasters. I also congratulate him on his recent knighthood; the whole of Yorkshire was rejoicing at his award.

I can assure my right hon. Friend on all four counts. Yes, we want a more rapid means of overturning convictions. Yes, we want to make sure that the Post Office does not challenge unfairly any attempt to overturn those convictions. Yes, too, on making sure that the investigatory process happens more quickly. Of course, some of these matters are outside our control, as he is fully aware, because of the separation of powers, but in terms of the policing of cases I am happy to talk to him after this statement about what precisely he means by that. There is an independent element to the way all the compensation schemes are running. They are not being policed or restricted by the Post Office; there are independent panels and independent assessments as part of all those processes, but I am happy to talk to my right hon. Friend in detail about what we can do in those areas.

Post Office (Horizon System) Compensation Bill

David Davis Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 19th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, and I particularly thank Mr and Mrs Simpson for their work—of course, a number of people campaigned so strongly on this tragedy. I pay tribute to his constituents and to many others like them who made sure we are here today, delivering justice and, indeed, compensation for those postmasters.

Alan Bates’s case is one individual tragedy, but he is only one among many: over 3,000 people have suffered in some way as a result of this scandal. For some, that meant paying the Post Office money they did not owe. For others, it meant the loss of their livelihood, their home, their mental or physical health, or their family relationships. Too many have died before getting justice; saddest of all, some of those deaths were suicides. Each Horizon victim is a personal tragedy, and it is imperative that each and every one gets the justice and compensation for which they have waited too long.

This Government are committed to delivering justice for all Horizon victims. Part of that justice will come from making sure that everyone knows the truth about what happened, which is why the Government set up the statutory inquiry into the scandal chaired by Sir Wyn Williams. The work of that inquiry to date is commendable—it is doing important work in exposing the truth. From that truth will follow corporate and individual accountability, for which there is a strong appetite in this House and beyond. I sympathise with hon. Members’ desire to see accountability right now, but we must let justice take its course.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

On the Minister’s point about corporate responsibility, I had the chief executive of the Post Office come and apologise to one of the people I have represented in this exercise. The point I made to him, which I hope the Minister will also take on board, is that the corporate behaviour of the Post Office has not been above criticism: it has employed very expensive lawyers to make this process much more difficult for the victims than it needs to be. I hope the Government will continue to encourage the Post Office not to do that.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Absolutely—we want to make it as easy as possible. I thank my right hon. Friend for his campaigning on this matter, too: he is one of a number of parliamentarians who has done fantastic work to make sure we are here today. I have referred to both corporate and individual responsibility. Corporate accountability is not enough: where we find that individuals are to blame, they should be held to account too.

Any compensation must be fair and just, and we have created a Horizon compensation advisory board to help us make sure that happens. I am very grateful to the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), both for his campaigning on this matter and his work on the advisory board. He sits on the board alongside Lord Arbuthnot, who is another great campaigner on this matter, and two academics. Its reports, which are published on gov.uk, have been invaluable in helping us ensure that the schemes are working properly and delivering fairness. As part of the Post Office’s process for compensation for overturned convictions, it is —by agreement with claimants’ lawyers—appointing an independent assessor for the process, whose role will be to ensure that fair compensation is paid.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Davis Excerpts

Thursday 30th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Kemi Badenoch]

I am quite surprised that there is not a word of condemnation, and the implication that the UK is complicit is really not the sort of thing we would expect from a British Member of Parliament in this House. I completely disagree with the premise of the hon. Gentleman’s question. The Government take our defence export responsibilities extremely seriously and operate some of the most robust and transparent export controls in the world.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

14. What recent progress she has made on negotiating a trade deal with India.

[The Minister of State, Department for Business and Trade (Greg Hands)]

I am pleased to confirm that advanced talks with India are ongoing. We are in round 13, with discussions currently focused on goods, market access, services and investment. We remain clear that we will not sign until we have a free trade agreement that fully benefits the UK people and economy. We are focused on the deal, not the date.

[Mr Davis]

Total trade in goods and services between the UK and India was £36.3 billion in the year to March 2023. An FTA with the fifth-largest economy in the world, and one of the fastest-growing, would be a massive boost to the UK economy and put UK businesses at the front of the queue to supply India’s growing middle class, which is expected to be a quarter of a billion consumers by 2050. This is an important exploitation of Brexit, so will the Minister do all he can to bring this deal over the line as soon as possible for Britain?

[Greg Hands]

My right hon. Friend of course has a lot of experience in complex negotiations and I can say that we, like him, will not be satisfied until we have the right deal. He is right that a deal with India would be a big step forward in the UK’s post-Brexit strategy to refocus UK trade on the Indo-Pacific region, which represents one third of global GDP. My negotiators and I continue to work at pace and we will negotiate until we have secured the right deal. I warmly welcome his interest in doing more trade with India.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kemi Badenoch]

I have been working with the Federation of Small Businesses and others on late payments. The hon. Gentleman will have heard the measures announced in the autumn statement; this is an issue that the Government take very seriously. I disagree that we are implementing our plans in a partial way. We will resolve this issue, but I am afraid that I completely disagree with the Opposition: have done quite a lot on this, and many businesses have praised the measures that we announced in the autumn statement.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

T4. On 14 November, the Government signed a memorandum of understanding with the US state of Florida. This is the seventh such agreement that the Government have signed with a state in the US, and I understand that there are ongoing discussions with other states. Obviously, that is welcome. Will the Secretary of State give us an assessment of the effect of this approach, and tell us what the next steps are to getting a more general trade agreement with the United States?

[Kemi Badenoch]

We are ready to have a free trade agreement with the US, but it is not undertaking free trade agreements with any country. That is, of course, disappointing, but it knows that we stand ready. That is why we have the state MOU programme. The latest figures show that UK-US trade has reached £310 billion. We are the biggest investor in Florida. I was pleased to meet Governor DeSantis earlier this month, and I also met the California Governor, Gavin Newsom, who wanted to be even faster in signing an MOU with the UK. They believe that this country has a lot of opportunity, and they want to do business with us.

Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill

David Davis Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Wednesday 13th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dame Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)]

Mr Deputy Speaker, I am conscious that we must vote in five minutes to remain in order, so I will simply say that economic crime is a national security issue and should not be a partisan issue in this House. I urge the Minister to set aside the party political views that he is expressing and to go with the consensus that has been built, not just in the House of Commons but in the House of Lords and in the non-governmental organisation sector outside.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

The right hon. Lady is right. It is not just the parties but the different sides of the natural arguments over authority, libertarianism and civil rights that are not divided. I am a strong defender of the right to be presumed innocent, but there needs to be a rebalancing in this area, where the criminals we are up against are very sophisticated and will use smaller companies to get around this if they need to.

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

In the interest of trying to get to the vote on time I will close my speech, but I urge all Members to please support the amendments proposed by Conservatives in the House of Lords, which are eminently sensible, rational and pragmatic.

Post Office: Horizon Compensation

David Davis Excerpts

Thursday 23rd March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his words, and for welcoming the statement and the opening of the scheme. I absolutely concur that we should all be grateful for the work of my predecessors—not least, as he said, my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully).

The hon. Gentleman is right to say that we want to do this as quickly as possible. I am very pleased with the work of the advisory board, which is helping with the scheme. The scheme is based on a set of principles that should mean that compensation is delivered more rapidly and that there is a clear route to claims being settled quickly. We very much hope that that is the case—we want to get those payments out of the door at the earliest possible opportunity.

Again, we are working at pace on the tax issue. Clearly that is a matter of law as well as of tax policy, so getting that right is key. We have to work with the Treasury and HMRC to ensure that we get it right, but that is a determination and a commitment that I am very happy to make. We hope to make a further announcement on that work shortly.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

At last. I remind the House that 27 people have died in the wait for justice. That said, I commend the Minister and his processor for their fabulous compassion, energy and drive in delivering what we are seeing today. However, there are people I represent among the 555 who have still not received any compensation for a variety of reasons, so can the Minister tell the House whether the scheme, under its brilliant advisory board—some of whom are in the Chamber—will cover all 555 claimants?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his words. He is absolutely right that it has taken too long and people have died waiting for compensation. That is totally unacceptable, and the worst part of that delay was the obfuscation and denials of the Post Office when clear evidence that something was sadly amiss was brought to light by parliamentarians. Yes, it is absolutely the case that we want every single person of the 555 who merit compensation to get it so that it is fair across the board—so that, between them, the three schemes deliver fair outcomes and there is parity across them. I am determined to make sure that that happens, as is the advisory board. We will report back to Parliament regularly to ensure that Members are aware that that is the case.