Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Bill

Debate between Jonathan Reynolds and Lord Beamish

2nd reading
Wednesday 20th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am pleased to be at the Dispatch Box to welcome the Bill; in doing so, I candidly recognise the difficult legal and constitutional position it represents. I will outline why I believe it is required, and the exceptional nature and caveats that we should all realise on Second Reading.

The Horizon scandal is, quite simply, one of the most egregious miscarriages of justice in British history. It robbed people of their lives, their liberty and their livelihoods. As we now know, driven by a misguided belief that technology was infallible and workers dishonest, the Post Office prosecuted innocent people. Indeed, they were the very people in whom the Post Office should have had the most faith—those who delivered vital services in all our communities.

Those prosecutions caused unimaginable pain and suffering, which no amount of compensation can ever alleviate. To add insult to injury, the journey to justice for the sub-postmasters has been mired in a great many delays and barriers. Some of the people affected have, tragically, passed away before having had the chance to see justice.

The Bill will free hundreds of innocent people of their wrongful convictions, and it affords us the chance to make a huge stride in righting the wrongs of the past. That is why Labour will give it our support. However, this must be just one of several steps still to come if amends are ever to be made for this most insidious of injustices. The convictions must be overturned, compensation must be delivered at pace, and justice must be sought from the independent inquiry.

We must recognise today for what it is: a victory for the sub-postmasters. To have the strength of character to lose everything, and then to get back up and fight is truly humbling, and the recognition and admiration that those people have earned is absolutely right. Nevertheless, Members across the House will be acutely aware of the unprecedented nature of this legislative action. We all recognise that we should not have needed to get to this point, and it is important to explain why we are taking this step, why we believe this is an exceptional case, and why therefore this should never be repeated in future. I hope in this speech to do that.

I wish to recognise the work of the many people who have got us to this landmark occasion. First, no Member could deny that we would not be where we are today, pursuing this particular route, were it not for the recent ITV drama “Mr Bates vs the Post Office.” Although the Horizon Post Office failure is a scandal to which the House has been responding for some time, the drama brought the story to a wider audience and reinvigorated the campaign. It is a powerful reminder of the way that art and culture can be used to tackle injustice and raise public awareness. I thank everyone who was involved in that project, including my constituent Julie Hesmondhalgh.

Secondly, I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) and Lord Arbuthnot in the other place, and all those colleagues who championed constituency cases from the beginning. Their tireless campaigning has been instrumental in getting us here to today.

Thirdly, I want to recognise the attention that the Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade, the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake), has given this matter and the progress he has achieved so far. I thank him for working cross-party on the design of this legislation, and for keeping me and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) regularly updated. I also note that the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), who is in his place, was the first to get to grips with this scandal in the way that was required. He will be leaving this place in the coming months, and I hope that will do so with a sense of pride in the work he did, and I thank him very much for it.

However, today must be a moment when, above all else, credit and recognition go to the sub-postmasters and their courageous search for justice. They have been unrelenting and undeterred, and we owe them a great deal. To be jailed or bankrupted because of faulty IT, and to have no one believe that their character mattered more than numbers on a spreadsheet, is why the scandal struck such a nerve with the public. Without the bravery of the sub-postmasters, we might never have known that this injustice took place—it is worth taking a moment to reflect on that.

The Bill will overturn 690 cases that were prosecuted by the Post Office and Crown Prosecution Service. We know it is a vital step in the course for justice for sub-postmasters, but we also recognise that doing so undermines a fundamental principle of our democracy: the separation of the judiciary and the legislature. Overruling the courts in this way could set an incredibly dangerous precedent, and one that I hope we will never use again. In an era of ever-creeping populism, there is a real threat that the well-intentioned actions we take today could be abused in future for completely unwarranted purposes.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I concur with my hon. Friend’s statement about the separation of powers. Does he agree that it is time for the courts and judicial system to reflect on their role in the scandal, and on why they did not raise red flags when they should have done? The hon. and learned Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) said that we should not criticise individual judges, but some of them acted in a way that, frankly—I say this knowing some of the cases as I do—did not reflect the best of our judiciary.

[Jonathan Reynolds]

My right hon. Friend makes a powerful contribution. Many things go beyond the Bill and the independent inquiry that we are currently looking at, regarding the role and experience of our constituents in the legal system, how Government and Executive agencies function, and the evidence given to Ministers and the accountability we seek from that. A great deal has to change as a result of this. I understand his point.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I thank my right hon. Friend for those remarks and for all the work the Select Committee has done to assist this process. He is right to say that while it is one thing to pass the Bill, what everyone wants is for it to be a route to speedy compensation as soon as possible. I welcome some of the changes we have seen, such as the optional £600,000 up-front payment available to people to get through some of the complexity of the cases. When the Select Committee published its report, it looked at the recommendation to include in the Bill deadlines for the Government to pay compensation, but we have since received useful information about how binding limits might restrict the most complex cases in an undesirable way. In his closing remarks, will the postal affairs Minister undertake on behalf of the Government to reflect on that point, because everyone will want to be able to say, “We care, and we have pushed forward the need for compensation payments to flow smoothly.”

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I have to say to my good friend the shadow Minister that this is where I depart from the Select Committee. The advisory board has been very clear that we need to make the system simple. To be fair to the Government, they have listened on the lump-sum payments. What we need is to get those simple cases out of the system—I am not sure they are “simple”—and concentrate on the complex cases. Knowing the nature of some of those cases, they will be complex. It is not just the Government or the advisory board saying that. Talk to the lawyers who are putting cases in. There is a lot of work to be done on those cases; they are not straightforward and they will take time. Putting an arbitrary deadline on them might lead to their not being properly addressed, and some cases will be about more than £600,000. Although it is a good idea to try to speed up the system, some of the steps already taken by the Government will do so.

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that. The work of the advisory board on all this has been invaluable and is very much appreciated. We can all accept that a number of cases may seek compensation payments well in excess of £600,000 because of the scale of the loss and the complexity. No one would want or seek to do anything to prevent those cases from concluding in the way that is necessary. I simply ask the Minister to reflect on how the Government can give assurances on the best way to do that.

I come back to the issue raised by colleagues from Northern Ireland about the territorial extent of the Bill’s provisions and the desire to overturn the convictions of the small but significant number of affected sub-postmasters in Northern Ireland, who would otherwise fall beyond the scope of the legislation. I can tell colleagues that the Labour party supports the calls made. I understand that this would be a complex constitutional undertaking, but given that every party in Northern Ireland and, I believe, every Minister in the new Assembly are calling for inclusion in the Bill, we must recognise that.

Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Bill

Debate between Jonathan Reynolds and Lord Beamish

2nd reading
Monday 7th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Reynolds]

The right hon. Member pre-empts my comments about the timescale for implementation and the worries relating to that, and there have been some very interesting and valid speeches from all sides pointing out such dangers.

However, I want to address the fact—we have not actually heard about it in the debate today, such is the seriousness of the issues—that there is, and we should acknowledge this, an argument against the transparency that all of us are seeking. It is that there are some celebrities or people of high net worth who will cite concerns about privacy in relation to this measure. They would say that they are worried there will be potential risks to them from this register coming into effect.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

On transparency, and I raised this with the Home Secretary when she was here, there is the issue of Companies House. It was only because of Caroline Wheeler from The Sunday Times that we actually found out who the other shareholder is in Aquind, a company that has donated tens of thousands of pounds to individual Members of this House. That was because, strangely enough, the Luxembourg register is more open than ours. Does my hon. Friend think that, if Members wish to accept donations, this would be helpful to them, because at least they could then discover where the money actually came from originally?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

My right hon. Friend’s point about donations is absolutely well made. His earlier point was about how some of the things we are seeking to address with this legislation we know about because of whistleblowers and investigative journalists. It is only because of them that we have been able to get some sense of the scale of the problem, and that is what should worry us, because we have to decide, as British Members of Parliament, about the proportionality of the concerns about this. I would ask those people who have such concerns to understand that the lack of transparency in the UK, as things currently operate, does not just open us up to risks of criminal activity, but is now a threat to our national security.

Like many people, I once believed that, as countries developed and became wealthier, that created an irresistible pressure for political reforms—for strong institutions, independent courts and the rule of law—but the fact is that that has not happened in many parts of the world. We are all too familiar with stories of people who have looted the national wealth of their countries, and then stashed those assets safely here in the west. There are examples from Nigeria, Kenya, Indonesia, China, Afghanistan, Russia and many others, and I would like to thank Transparency International for its campaigning and advocacy on these matters. Ukraine itself was once a major victim of this under the corrupt presidency of Viktor Yanukovych. Such corruption often leaves behind countries that are poor and dysfunctional, where the state is starved of the resources and legitimacy it needs to function properly, and where millions are denied the path to prosperity that they deserve. In that space, extremism and terrorism can thrive, so we simply cannot allow this to go on.

Tackling this properly clearly requires international co-operation, but when it comes to registers of beneficial ownership, that co-operation does now exist. That is why there is clear consensus on this happening in relation to property in the UK. This debate has shown that the principal difference of view between ourselves and the Government, which we will obviously discuss in Committee, is what length of time is reasonable to give people to register the beneficial ownership of the near 100,000 properties that will be affected. I think people know that we want 28 days. The Government originally proposed 18 months, and I do acknowledge that they have moved some way in reducing that to six months. I also acknowledge that this is a significant change for some people in relation to their property rights.

However, I would say that this change was announced in 2016 by David Cameron. The pre-legislative scrutiny took place in 2018, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) outlined some of the history of that. So this change has been a long time coming, and people have known it was coming. It is not really the 28-day implementation period we are seeking, but the six years and 28 days that that adds up to. That is why I believe it is reasonable, proportionate and necessary to ask the Government to act at speed.

The second part of the Bill proposes changes to unexplained wealth orders. I raised the problems with these orders when we had the urgent question. I am pleased to see them included as part of this Bill, and I again acknowledge that the Government have already accepted several Labour amendments on this matter. The problems with these orders relate to issues with implementation that have occurred in the courts, so it is clearly good to see those addressed. However, many Members went further in their speeches because there are concerns, because of the way that Russia operated in the 1990s, that it can be hard to use unexplained wealth orders to take the action required now. Several Members have proposed a new set of powers that could freeze relevant assets while cases are made, and again we can deal with those amendments in Committee, but I am sympathetic to the arguments put forward.

The third part of the Bill relates to sanctions and their application. People are asking us as Members of Parliament why those who have been subject to sanction by the US and the EU are not currently sanctioned by the UK. The debate today recognises that the regime laid out in the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018 is not sufficient. There is clearly a widespread desire to see this improved, and proposals in this area are welcome. However, I would also say, separate to this, that there are the issues of resources and enforcement. My right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) and the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) made that point in detail. My understanding is that, as a country, we are under-powered in the resources and capacity we devote to this. Just last month, the former Leader of the House—now the Minister for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency —said he wanted to cut 65,000 civil servants over the next three years. However, this is a clear example of an area where we need more capacity, as well as the right legal regime, to do what is required. The seriousness of these matters means that the Government must devote the resources required to do that.

Postmasters with Overturned Convictions: Settlement Funds

Debate between Jonathan Reynolds and Lord Beamish

Wednesday 15th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Reynolds]

It is. My hon. Friend for North Durham—

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

Right honourable Friend.

[Jonathan Reynolds]

My right hon. Friend—it has been a busy week—did, of course, play a major role in the postmasters’ campaign. He was quite right to object to my failure to mention him, and I would like to apologise to him for that.

Finance (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Jonathan Reynolds and Lord Beamish

Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Monday 18th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Reynolds]

Members have become accustomed to the fact that the number of homes that the Government claim to build is not always the actual number that are built. I will get to some of that record of failure later in my speech.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend think it is a bit ironic that when a similar measure was proposed in 2015, it was derided as a gimmick by the then Chancellor?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

My hon. Friend is entirely correct. As we know, sometimes the situation in the Government means that they tend to look around for ideas, and they often find best practice in the Labour party.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Reynolds]

My right hon. Friend identifies another feature of a dysfunctional market. That will be corrected only by a change in Government policy, but we have not seen one in the Bill.

Conservative Ministers’ review of a previous stamp duty cut concluded that the tax relief, in itself, had

“not had a significant impact on improving affordability for first time buyers”.

That is why Labour has tabled an amendment calling for the publication of a review prior to the 2018 Budget on the impact of the relief on first-time buyers, including its effect on house prices and the supply of houses.

The Minister, as usual, talked an extremely good game on funding for new housing, which he said would help to ameliorate the supply issue. On further scrutiny, however, we find that no measures in the 2017 Budget will directly increase house building. Only one third of the £44 billion announced in the Budget is genuinely new, and there is no extra Government investment in new affordable homes. That builds on a legacy of failure. Let us remind ourselves that not one of the 200,000 starter homes promised by the Tories three years ago has yet been built. That lack of action is having a serious impact across every part of our society. During the Government’s seven years in power, homelessness has doubled. Shockingly, recent statistics from the Department for Communities and Local Government show that nearly 80,000 households were homeless in September; that includes 120,000 children. The situation is extraordinarily urgent.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the mistakes that former Chancellor Osborne made was the cap on rents, which threw into complete chaos the planning of social landlords and housing associations in budgeting for building new houses? It had the effect of reducing the supply, rather than increasing it.

[Jonathan Reynolds]

Absolutely. A combination of policy measures—not just the failure on new housing completions, but a range of other measures—has contributed to this toxic situation. We see it perhaps most visibly in Greater Manchester—I live there and represent part of it—than in any other part of the country, and thank goodness that we in Greater Manchester have a Labour Mayor in Andy Burnham who is so determined to make a difference on this matter. If Labour was in power, we would set up a taskforce, led by the Prime Minister, to end this, and we would start by setting out plans to make available at least 4,000 homes for people with a history of rough sleeping.

The homelessness statistics obviously include the hundreds of families who tragically lost their homes in the Grenfell Tower disaster in June, four-fifths of whom are still living in temporary accommodation. Although Labour welcomes the additional funding for mental health services for those affected by Grenfell, we have profound concerns about the fact that no new money has been allocated for fire safety throughout the country. The Government ignored calls to fit sprinklers to all social housing tower blocks in 2013, after the disastrous and fatal events that happened at Lakanal House and Shirley Towers, so it remains the case that only 2% of tower blocks in the UK have sprinklers installed. That figure should be of serious concern to us all.

We can see that the measures included in the Bill fall far short of what is needed to fix the housing crisis in Britain. We want in particular to discuss one measure that the Opposition are concerned may be being used as a fig leaf for just another cut. This is in regard to clause 8, the income tax exemption for the armed forces accommodation allowance, which the Minister mentioned. The explanatory note to the clause states that this is

“to allow members of the armed forces to give up their entitlement to accommodation in exchange for an allowance to be used to rent or maintain accommodation in the private market.”

Labour is concerned that this manoeuvre is designed to force more servicemen and women into the private rental sector, as part of a Government shift towards selling off the military housing stock in which armed forces personnel would ordinarily be housed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Reynolds]

Absolutely. There have been 13 consecutive cuts to housing association budgets, the cumulative impact of which is exactly as my hon. Friend describes. As constituency MPs, we are left requesting our local housing association simply to try to absorb the costs of this Government policy failure. In many cases, the housing association does so, but there is ultimately a cost. The cost is taking away available resources to build further houses, thus getting us into a situation in which the problem is never truly resolved.

I will return to the armed forces accommodation allowance. The Ministry of Defence has a target in the 2015 national security strategy and strategic defence and security review to sell off 30% of its estate by 2040, but the Conservatives have a track record of making poor decisions on selling off service family housing in the name of short-term savings. Annington Homes bought most of the service family accommodation from the Ministry of Defence for £1.6 billion in 1996. A 999-year lease was granted back to the Ministry of Defence at a discount, with the stipulations that the MOD would be responsible for maintenance and that Annington Homes could terminate individual leases and had the right to include five-yearly rental reviews and a breakpoint at 25 years. The National Audit Office has said that the MOD has therefore not benefited from the rise in house prices since the agreement and, in fact, has paid higher rental costs to Annington Homes. In 2016, Annington’s annual statement estimated its property portfolio to be worth £6.7 billion.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Having tried to get out of the Annington Homes contract when I was responsible for armed forces housing, may I say that the situation is worse than my hon. Friend describes? The MOD is still paying not only for empty houses, but for houses that have been demolished. It was the worst deal possible for the taxpayer.

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for sharing his expertise with the Committee. It truly is an appalling record of failure.

As every Member knows, there are enormous problems in the private rented sector in respect of affordability, quality and security of tenure. By forcing service families into the private rented sector, we risk reducing the quality of their accommodation and their quality of life. It might therefore impact on recruitment and retention rates.

The Government have so far offered little detail on which members of the armed forces will be entitled to the new allowance or what the rate will be and have not said whether the Treasury has done an impact assessment on local housing supply. The proposal ignores the fact that there is not a supply of affordable housing to buy or rent near many military bases.

It seems clear that the Government are attempting to rush the proposal through to make short-term savings, without considering the potential repercussions. Labour is demanding more consultation with armed forces personnel and a full and robust impact assessment of any proposed changes. Clear communication with armed forces families must be a top priority throughout this process and their long-term interest must be considered, as well as the long-term value for money for the taxpayer. Committing to sell this Government-owned housing risks shackling the public purse to ever-rising rents, as well as poor outcomes for armed forces personnel.

Given Labour’s concerns over the lack of detail over the armed forces allowance and any potential safeguards for members of the armed services in the private rental sector, Her Majesty’s Opposition have tabled an amendment that calls on the Government to publish a review of the measure to Parliament before it is enacted.

Overall, the measure forms part of a housing package that barely scratches the surface in addressing the country’s housing crisis. All the measures are too minimal to make a serious difference to the housing pressures that people face and too late to make up for the Government’s lack of action over the past seven years.