Post Office and Horizon Software

Debate between Duncan Baker and Andrew Bridgen

Thursday 5th March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (Lucy Allan) for bringing this debate forward. I declare that I was a sub-postmaster for two post offices before I became an MP. I have resigned as a director of the company that runs those post offices. I have no interests anymore and none of the staff I employed were affected by this issue. My only interest is that of my constituents who are affected.

I wonder if anyone else in this room has been a sub-postmaster. It is important because, having done the job, although admittedly not every day, I have used the Horizon system. I have heard about and seen at first hand the experience of making up the losses, and I thoroughly empathise with the utterly awful situation that hundreds of innocent victims have found themselves in.

Many of the individuals who worked tirelessly running post offices were as honest and trustworthy as the day is long. They have had their careers and livelihoods wrecked. Indeed, as we have heard, people have been made bankrupt because of a flawed system that accused them of theft. As we all here agree, that is a true miscarriage of justice. People have lost their life savings; even worse than that, young women have been jailed and have struggled to rebuild their lives because of a criminal record.

I have constituents in North Norfolk who have gone through such a trauma. Their story will be similar to more than 500 other cases, each as harrowing and as appalling. I do not want to reveal the names of my constituents because they still struggle to talk about these issues.

Accused of stealing thousands, suspended from their role and then charged, one of my constituents found themselves in the Crown court and was offered a deal to plead guilty to false accounting to enable the theft charges to be dropped. Why would they accept that? This lady was a grandmother and she told me that she was not prepared to look her grandchildren in the eye and say that granny was going to jail. That is not right—we all know that. In my constituent’s case, the amount was reduced to £12,000. Interest and legal costs of a further £9,000 meant a debt of £21,000. That is lower than some of the costs we have heard about, but we should just imagine being levelled with £21,000 to pay, when it is not our fault.

[Andrew Bridgen]

I appreciate the experience that my hon. Friend brings to this debate. Through our investigations years ago, we discovered that the Horizon system had a suspense account in it. It was a flawless system, yet it had a suspense account, where unallocated funds ended up throughout the whole system. The surplus—and it was a surplus—ran to hundreds of thousands of pounds a year, and after three years it was returned to the profit and loss account.

[Steve McCabe (in the Chair)]

Order. Come on, Mr Bridgen. I call Duncan Baker.