Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Bill

Debate between Kemi Badenoch and Lord Beamish

2nd reading
Wednesday 20th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kemi Badenoch]

I thank my hon. Friend for all the work she does in chairing the all-party parliamentary group for whistleblowing. She is right that this issue needs consideration, and we are going to look again at the whistleblowing framework—it is something that comes up time and time again in many respects. I will not comment yet on her private Member’s Bill, because I have not seen it, but I thank her for all her work on this issue.

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

I welcome this Bill. I know that it is groundbreaking and possibly sets some nerves off with the judiciary, but I think the judiciary need to look at themselves and how they have dealt with some of these cases.

On the point that my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) raised, a small number of cases are not within the scope of the Bill. I perfectly understand why, but we have to get those cases looked at again, because evidence has come out in the Sir Wyn Williams inquiry that was not available at the time. Will the Secretary of State commit to at least sit down with the judiciary to look at these cases and emphasise the fact that there is new information, and that responsibility for some of this injustice has got to lie with the justice system?

[Kemi Badenoch]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. The courts dealt very swiftly with the cases before them—perhaps a bit too swiftly. That is why the sub-postmasters suffered so many miscarriages of justice, and it is right that we make their exoneration as simple and quick as possible, so while my priority is passing this Bill for the bulk of the people who have suffered, that does not mean we will not be able to look at other scenarios later and see if we can find solutions where we genuinely believe that there has been a miscarriage of justice. That is not for me to do at the Dispatch Box—it will not be up to Ministers. There will be caseworkers who will carry out that work, but we have to be careful to make sure that we are exonerating the right cohort.

[Mr Jones]

I hear what the Secretary of State says, but I would just say to her that this is a small number of people and they have to be looked at. Can I ask that she shows the same zeal that her hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) has shown in his approach to this process? We need a commitment, not to get these cases sorted today—I accept that the Secretary of State cannot do that—but that the Department will look at them. I think that will send quite a strong message out to people.

[Kemi Badenoch]

The Department can always do that. This is something that we believe is so critical in order to make sure everybody gets the justice they deserve, and we need to make sure that we carry out the process in such a way that everyone has confidence in it. We can continue to look at cases and see if there are other solutions, but as the right hon. Gentleman has rightly said, that will be outside the scope of this Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kemi Badenoch]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman. I know that is a recommendation from his report, and it is something we are actively looking at and considering. As the Bill progresses through the House, there will be many suggestions that we will be able to look at to see whether it can be improved in any way. However, we must make sure that we do so in a way that does not jeopardise any of the objectives of the Bill—any of them at all.

As I was saying, further details will be set out in due course, and there will be a process for anyone to come forward where their convictions meet the criteria but we have been unable to identify them. The new primary legislation will be followed by a route to rapid financial redress on a basis similar to the overturned convictions scheme, which is currently administered by the Post Office, so we do not need provisions in the Bill to deliver that scheme. My Department, not the Post Office, will be responsible for the delivery of redress related to the quashing of these convictions. The Minister for postal affairs will return to the House at a later date to provide details on how we intend to deliver that redress.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I welcome the changes that have been made in the compensation. Some of the proposals—for example, for fixed sums—are going to make a lot of cases easier to sort out. I do not feel comfortable having the Post Office anywhere near this, frankly, and neither do the sub-postmasters. Will the Secretary of State think about a system of compensation that in practice cuts out the Post Office? There is no trust there among the sub-postmasters. Do I personally have any faith in the Post Office? No, I do not.

[Kemi Badenoch]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman. That is one reason why my Department will be looking after the redress delivered by the scheme.

Post Office Governance and Horizon Compensation Schemes

Debate between Kemi Badenoch and Lord Beamish

Monday 19th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kemi Badenoch]

That is one of the reasons why we have been making personnel changes in this area. It goes back to the point I was making in the statement: Post Office needs an effective chair. Until the day I had the conversation dismissing him, I never had any correspondence from Mr Staunton about difficulties that he was having with UKGI. If he was having difficulties, he should have told me, rather than give an interview to The Sunday Times effectively stating that he had no control over the organisation that he had been appointed to run.

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

The Secretary of State says we have to accept that Henry Staunton’s accusations are completely false. The letter that Nick Read wrote to the Lord Chancellor about overturning convictions mentioned that about 300 people are possibly going to be “guilty”. She has just told the House that the investment body did not instruct him to do that. Henry Staunton said he did not tell Post Office to write the letter, and the board did not know about it, so who did? For the sake of openness and transparency, she should produce all correspondence between UKGI and Post Office. The Secretary of State has accused Henry Staunton of lying in public. The only way we can judge whether she is telling the truth is if we have all the information out there.

Can I just say to the Secretary of State, in relation to her obsession with tweeting, that although she says that people are jumping “on the bandwagon”, some of us have been involved in this for many years on a cross-party basis, including through work with her colleague the Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade, the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake), so that is quite insulting. What message will the Secretary of State’s tone today send to sub-postmasters? I will tell her: more cover-up and obfuscation. Get the information out there and explain what is going on. Otherwise, she will not have their trust. It will just be more of the same that we have seen over many, many years.

[Kemi Badenoch]

I completely reject the right hon. Gentleman’s assertions. This is the political point scoring that I talked about earlier, which we just need to stop. Rather than focusing on the issue, he is talking about my tweeting. Maybe he should get off Twitter and actually listen to what I am saying at the Dispatch Box. He is talking about a letter that UKGI says it did not ask Nick Read to write. The only possible answer is that Nick Read himself decided to write that letter. I did not ask him to write it, the Post Office says that it did not, and UKGI did not. These are the sorts of things I am talking about—continuing to make aspersions about Ministers. We have made the Post Office an independent body, we have an independent inquiry, and the information will come out in due course.