Post Office Legislation

Duncan Baker Excerpts

Wednesday 13th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his comments and collaboration. It is important that we listen to his Committee’s recommendations and its very informative evidence sessions—I sat through all five hours.

At this point, we believe the Post Office should continue its work on the 100 or so cases before it. We currently have no capacity in the Department to handle those claims, although we clearly will by the time the Bill comes into effect. We do not want to pause between the Bill coming into effect in July and compensation payments being made. We think we can get those payments to people in August using that route.

There may be some people left in the first tranche of overturned convictions, for people who have been through the Court of Appeal. We will certainly look at the Committee’s recommendations on whether we should bring those cases back in-house or leave them with the Post Office. We will keep an open mind on that.

We already have fixed timescales to respond to offers or service level agreements in the GLO scheme. We commit to responding to 90% of full claims within 40 days of submission. I am happy to look at how we might put some benchmarks in place to make sure the new scheme has a similar speed of response. I am sure the right hon. Gentleman heard what I said about our new pilots under which lawyers can submit claims without forensic accountants and medical reports. That may do something along the line he says, and I will happily have an ongoing conversation with him.

Thus far, 128 of the 490 claims have been submitted to the GLO scheme, and 110 of them have been settled. To my knowledge, only one claim has gone to independent dispute resolution before going to the independent panel, which hopefully indicates that, generally, the offers are fair and have been accepted almost straightaway.

I understand what Jo Hamilton says, and I met her to discuss some of the processes she had to go through to prove her claim. We are determined to reduce those frictions and evidence requirements, certainly for things that are not essentially material. There are three things that we have to get right in delivering compensation: we have to be fair to the individuals and families affected; we have to be fair to all the other sub-postmasters to make sure there is consistency across the scheme; and, of course, we have to be fair to the taxpayer. There is no cap on what we will pay people, as long as it is fair.

[Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for bringing this statement to the House, as it clearly moves things in the right direction for closure. I have talked many times in this House about similar issues. The Government have put £1 billion aside to deal with all this, despite the fact that the Post Office has taken millions upon millions off postmasters—innocent people. We have never had the figure of what was taken, although I have asked for it before. I want a second figure, because Fujitsu has said on the record that it would help to compensate victims as well, by adding to the remuneration pot. What progress have we made on making Fujitsu pay also for being culpable in this fiasco?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank my hon. Friend for his regular contributions in this area, as it is always good to have the views of the only former serving postmaster in this House. We are looking to try to identify the figure he refers to and we hope to come back to him at some point; it is complicated, as a lot of these records go back a long way. However, that is a body of work we are undertaking with the Post Office. The Secretary of State had a conversation yesterday with the global chief executive of Fujitsu; we are keen to make sure that Fujitsu contributes and it has already said that it will—it said it has a moral responsibility to contribute. My hon. Friend mentions a figure of £1 billion, but we do not know the final figure for compensation. However, we would expect a significant element of it to come from Fujitsu.