Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Bill

Lord Beamish Excerpts

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.

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[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.

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[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.

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[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.

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

Can I begin by declaring an interest as a member of the Horizon compensation advisory board? It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully). When he was a Minister he grasped this issue and drove it forward, and I am sad to see that he is standing down at the next election. One thing he can claim great credit for is being the only Minister I have dealt with, apart from his successor, who had compassion and wanted to sort this out. Okay, we had some quite heated disagreements on occasions, but at least he was prepared to listen. He brought a unique set of skills, and when he leaves the House he can have this great achievement for the individuals affected as a great credit to his parliamentary record.

I welcome the Bill. It was a solution put forward by the Horizon compensation advisory board, and I want to pay tribute to Professor Chris Hodges, Lord Arbuthnot and Professor Richard Moorhead, who sit on the advisory board with us. When we came up with this plan, did we think that the Government would agree to it? No, we did not. Were we shocked when they did? We were. I will not say what Chris Hodges said privately at one meeting because it would be unparliamentary.

This was a difficult thing to do and it comes after years of heartache and a lot of campaigning by the sub-postmasters. Alan Bates has already been mentioned and I pay tribute to him and the 555. As the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam said, if they had not taken that court case, the dam would not have broken—this is down to those individuals who had the tenacity to do that. Over the years, has it been easy for those individuals? No, it has not. As someone who has been involved for many years, I can tell the House that we did sometimes doubt ourselves and ask whether we were missing something. We were not missing something; it was a complete injustice. But when the system and the state are against a person, it takes great courage and tenacity to continue. I know that some had self-doubt along the way, but all credit to them—they stuck with it.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

It is not just the Horizon case; it is also Hillsborough, Grenfell, Windrush and the contaminated blood scandal where people are still waiting for compensation. The state and the justice system, which are there to protect citizens, actually become the enemy of the citizen. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we need to find a way for people to get quicker redress and have their cases heard, rather than the state saying that it cannot be wrong in any circumstances and leaving these people to fight for such a long time to get justice?

[Mr Jones]

I agree totally with my hon. Friend and I pay tribute to him. In all these debates over the years, he has always been on my right hand side arguing for his constituents. I thank him for his work and his persistence.

My hon. Friend also raises a bigger point. When the state get things wrong—badly wrong in this case, but he mentions other cases as well—it goes into tortoise mode and says that it cannot be wrong. Well, it has been wrong. I am not making a party political point here, because is not one. Across the House we need to come up with a system of dealing with these cases, in terms of the transparency of information that we need to get out of the system and of having a swift compensation system for putting things right. We need to work on that in the next Parliament on a cross-party basis. As the Minister said earlier, he was involved in a number of cases that involved not the state but the private sector, but they were very similar. This is something I would certainly like to work with colleagues on.

I also want to thank the Minister for his work. I would not describe him as a show pony in politics; he is the steady shire horse of this place. He is solid and determined and he pushes on, even when obstacles are put in his way. I also give credit to him for the cross-party work he has done. He has not seen it as point scoring. He has worked closely with my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) and other Members across the House and I really appreciate that. I would just say to any new Ministers after the election: if you want two examples of how to do the job, the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam and the Minister are it and they should take credit for that.

Today’s Bill is historic. We are doing something very unusual and there is a delicate balancing act to be struck between this place and the judiciary. I understand that. I always respect the judiciary, but I also reflect on the fact that it has some questions to answer in this process. We had the trade union movement for the lawyers earlier on when the hon. and learned Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) and the right hon. and learned Member for South Swindon (Sir Robert Buckland) were on their feet—it would not be a debate without that lobby coming in—but the judiciary needs to ask the question: how did we get into this position? There was a pattern here, and robust questions were not asked. The hon. and learned Member for Bromley and Chislehurst said that we should not attack judges, but the conduct of certain judges in some of these cases was not very sympathetic to the victims, and we need to reflect on that. I do not think this place should interfere with the judiciary. The instant reaction that this is a fight between Parliament and the justiciary is wrong, but in this case the judiciary got it wrong.

The other area that desperately needs to be looked at is the use of computer evidence in court cases. At the moment, there is no reference to computer code in law. After the election, or sooner, we need an urgent review to reflect how computers are not static machines. They might be machines, but their software and code are ever changing. That is important.

I support the current approach, although I accept that some people are not comfortable with it. As the Minister said, only 103 cases have been dealt with so far, so I will explain why I am committed to this approach. Last year I had a phone call from an individual from the north-east—I do not want to identify him—who said that his friend’s wife had been prosecuted and that he thought it might be a Horizon case. I said, “Get him to speak to me, or I can go to see them.” It took quite a few months for him to persuade his wife to meet me.

It was only when I went to see the victim in her small council flat in the north-east of England that I understood why such people never come forward. This woman had run a successful sub-post office, but she was prosecuted by the Post Office. She should have a comfortable retirement and a highly respected name in the local community in which she still lives, but she does not. She is traumatised by her experience, and she was very reluctant to see me. She was terrified and kept asking, “My name won’t be in the paper again, will it?” I said, “No, no one will know what you have told me.” She would never have come forward to go into a court process. I have subsequently spoken to the family to reassure them that, if the Bill is enacted, the victim will not go to court. This woman is terrified. Her good name will be cleared, and she will have access to the compensation that she rightly deserves.

That is just one example, and there are numerous others. People ask whether the Bill is a messy way of doing it, but I do not think it is, because people like that victim would never have justice without it. Some people might be uncertain about what we are doing, but I am not. These are unique circumstances, and I do not think they set a precedent. We can ensure that these people have their good name restored.

When the newspapers have said that a sub-postmaster stole money that they did not steal, it takes a lot for them to stay in their small community. This happened 20 years ago and the victim is still traumatised, which is why this Bill is the right approach.

I welcome last week’s announcement that fixed awards will be offered through the Horizon shortfall scheme. The advisory board was pressing for this, and the Minister championed it too. These awards are a good way of ensuring that we deal with cases speedily. I read the Select Committee’s report, and I disagree on the time limit. We need to settle the straightforward cases—they are not all straightforward, but some are.

The Minister, like me, does not want to pay lawyers. It will be better if we can avoid paying lawyers by ensuring that the compensation goes to the victims, and fixed awards are the way to do it. I consider this to be like a bucket, and we need to take out the simpler cases. We then need to consider the more complex cases, which will take time. It is easy to say that officials are deliberately slowing down the system, but I do not believe that at all. Even the lawyers representing these people need time to do it. As the Minister knows, some cases will be very expensive, more than the £600,000 compensation award. This is the right approach.

[Matt Rodda]

My right hon. Friend is making an excellent and powerful speech, and I particularly concur with his description of the enormous challenges that many victims face. Does he agree that the nature of any review or policy development is particularly important? If we can find a way to speed up the compensation by dealing with the slightly less difficult cases first, it could benefit everyone and may reduce the costs to the Government and the public.

[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.

[Paul Scully]

That approach to the investigation and the presumption of guilt was what my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Katherine Fletcher) was referring to in relation to her constituents and Royal Mail, as it was before ownership had transferred. The case did not get as far as prosecution, but investigation officers, the same kind of people that we have seen at the public inquiry, made that presumption.

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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.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Let me just clarify that point. A total of 1,200 people have come forward since the TV dramatisation. Seven people have taken their case to the Court of Appeal and been heard, and six have been refused leave to appeal, which makes a total of 13 in that cohort.

[Mr Jones]

What a fine research assistant the Minister is! He is right: the number is in single figures. Let us look at those cases. Let us see whether we can move forward on this. I am not criticising the Government for not including those individuals. I understand why they are not in the Bill, but we need to look at them. There are things that came out of the inquiry that would have changed the outcome in some, but perhaps not all, of those cases. If we do not look at them, those people will be left outside the remit of the Bill.

On the territorial extent of the Bill, I think the case was made earlier in relation to Northern Ireland. I see no reason why the Bill should not include Northern Ireland. We have cross-party support for it in Northern Ireland, and, as I understand it, the Executive are on board as well. We need to recognise that in Committee. I have to say to the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) that I have less sympathy with the idea of including Scotland in the Bill. Not because those individuals should not get justice—they should—but because the issue is different in Scotland. There are, in fact, two issues. First, there is the legal position: the way things are prosecuted in Scotland is very different from how it is done in the UK. Furthermore, there is a mechanism to do it, so the Scottish Government just have to get on and do it. I accept what she is saying about waiting to see what we do, but they would need cross-party support in the Scottish Parliament if that were to go forward. I do hope, however, that some amendment on Northern Ireland is brought forward in Committee, and I would certainly support it.

Finally, let me talk about the notification of individuals. Reference was made earlier to record keeping, which was not brilliant at the Post Office. We have to try to find “reasonable steps”, as the Bill says, to notify individuals. We need to look at that, because, again, some of these cases will be legacy cases. Sadly, some people will have passed away before they were able to get justice. Perhaps we need to say how we get to those cases that are possibly more difficult to get to than others.

To conclude, the Bill is long overdue, which makes this a historic day. I think of the woman I sat in front of in her council flat in the north-east of England, whose life has been ruined for the past 20 years, and who has had daily trauma because of the injustice and financial heartache that she and her family have faced. With the Bill, she will finally get justice; if that is the one thing I do in my time in this House, it will make me very happy.

[Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con)]

It is a great honour to follow the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) and that poignant ending, with which we all empathise. He has done an enormous amount get us to this point, and I thank him for it. There is no doubt that today is a very good day. It has been brought about by the Secretary of State, Ministers past and present—they are not show ponies at all—the Prime Minister, particularly through his actions at the beginning of this year, and the chair of the APPG, the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows). I have worked with her many times, and I thank her for all her work.

All those people must take credit for where we are, but it has taken an awfully long time. The Minister was right that an awful lot of work has gone on behind the scenes to get to this moment. Equally, I have total empathy with the comments I receive from members of the public that it should not have taken the turbocharging of an ITV drama to put right this scandal when people across the United Kingdom knew that the situation was utterly wrong. I sometimes wish that there was as much palpable anger in our communities about other scandals as there is about what has happened to sub-postmasters, so that we could fix some of those problems.

Let us not be too critical, however. We should applaud today’s lifting of the barriers, by quashing convictions, to speed up the compensation that is due to people. As has rightly been said across the House, the judiciary will raise concerns. That is only to be expected, but I conceptualise this as an unprecedented situation that requires an unprecedented solution. The odd conviction that was warranted may slip through the net, but this has been going on for more than 15 years. As has also been said, we must not let perfection be the enemy of the good; that sums up the whole predicament and issue fairly well.

Being a new MP in this place—albeit not such a new MP any more—and being able, by quite some accident, to talk about the matter with a degree of personal feeling has been a great privilege. I never expected that in 2014 I would become a sub-postmaster for a company that had purchased a supermarket with a post office in the back of it, or that in 2015 Budgens of Aylsham, which was the post office that I was the sub-postmaster for, would become the best post office in the entire country. I am very proud of that, and it has meant that my speaking about this issue has picked up quite a lot of attention. It has been a real privilege to bring my voice to the campaigning. I suspect that I will probably be the only serving MP who has been a sub-postmaster for the foreseeable future.

What brings the debate home to me is that I could so easily have been caught up in this problem. Had we purchased that supermarket a couple of years beforehand, I could have been suffering the consequences faced by so many of the men and women we are representing this afternoon. I still remember my stepfather wandering into my office and saying, “Well, you’re the finance director, Duncan. You will be the nominated legal sub-postmaster.” We thought very little of it, other than when I was given a postman’s hat at the staff Christmas party. I remember going on the Post Office training courses. Without a shadow of a doubt, the people I met were always good, decent, law-abiding citizens—the sort of people we saw in the drama documentary and about whom we have spoken so often. Every single one of us in the Chamber this afternoon will have constituents who have been caught up in this matter.

The right hon. Member for North Durham talked about people being traumatised; that is absolutely true. In the past three or four weeks, I have sat with a lady who ran a post office in my constituency. She said, “Duncan, I have seen you on the television. Will you come round and talk to me? I was running a village post office. I haven’t been able to sleep for years because I lost money, and I want to know whether I could be recompensed.” The Minister was incredibly helpful. He immediately gave me all the links for where I could help that lady. She and I sat down and went through her books and records for the best part of an hour, totting up a few of her columns. At the end of that process, I said, “I want you to sleep better tonight. I do not think you have lost any money; I think that you are one of the lucky ones. You may have had some losses in one year but gains the next because the system just did not work.”

[Mr Jones]

We need to get that message out. I have quite a few cases in which people were not prosecuted, but they put money—a lot, in some cases—back in. The hon. Gentleman just spoke about ensuring that people come forward to get redress, and that is important. Some feel that they are not victims because they were not prosecuted or did not lose their livelihoods, but I have one case in which someone put in £80,000 over a period, and those people need redress.

[Duncan Baker]

The right hon. Member is absolutely right. The people watching this debate, or reading a report about it, must always remember that they can come forward, seek redress, and get help and support. If all else fails, contact your local MP. Most of us just want to help the communities and the people we are so privileged to represent. I entirely take his point.

I was very lucky in the case of the woman I was dealing with. I could say, “You can sleep easy tonight, because you are one of the lucky ones. The system did not work properly.” That closure—being told that—lifted a weight off her shoulders. We in this place often have the ability to open doors that people cannot open themselves. I was so pleased to be able to help.

That lady represents what we keep talking about. Sub-postmasters and mistresses were pillars of their community. Everybody in their village or town knows that those people were criminalised and simply not believed. That is where the whole of this sorry period started. In the business that I ran, I remember being incredibly worried, when the tills went down, that we had lost money. I knew one thing for sure: the staff were not taking money. I trusted them entirely.

The problem was the culture at the Post Office, which had become a corporate beast. It was losing its soul in the early 2010s, when there was an enormous push to be a stand-alone organisation, to not be reliant on the Government, and to sell, sell, sell financial products. I remember going to a 2016 Post Office conference and meeting Paula Vennells. The irony is that the conference was called “Together”, but while it was going on, hundreds of men and women up and down the country were being convicted for crimes that they had not committed. That is not very collegiate.

The legislation may not be perfect.There are Department for Work and Pensions convictions that I have taken up with the Minister that are not included in the Bill, and I know the reasons why—or his explanations. That does not mean that I do not support what we are doing today, but I certainly want to say this: we are not there yet. I think this whole situation is going to run and run for many years to come.

I do not say that light-heartedly, because I think that real closure for people up and down the country does not just mean compensation and convictions being quashed; it means criminal prosecutions of those within the Post Office who knew what had happened, but did not take the actions that they should have taken. I suspect we will see those prosecutions come forward in the years to come. I have probably said seven or so times in this place that Fujitsu needs to face some real questions. Of course, it will—it has already accepted that it will contribute compensation—but how on earth could a piece of software written by a multibillion-pound corporation have had a back door into it with no audit trail, through which somebody could simply alter figures? That is absolutely frightening. As I mentioned before, it prompts questions about the accounts of the Post Office and its auditors. So many problems will never be fixed.

As I have also said many times, I want a figure for how much money was stolen from all of those innocent sub-postmasters. Nobody has ever been able to tell me what that figure is.

[Mr Jones]

Or where it went.

[Duncan Baker]

Or even where it went. We could add up the figures that were taken off innocent men and women in the ITV drama alone, but across the country, I suspect it was tens of millions of pounds—possibly even more than £100 million. That figure needs to be identified, so that we understand the full scale of what happened here. Of course, the inquiry will conclude later this year, which will finally give us some real evidence of what went wrong.

Although I have summed up by saying there are still many questions to answer, we must remember that today is a very positive day for many, many people who are watching who were caught up in this situation. I say again, and place it on the record, that it is nice when the House comes together. There are a great number of people in the Chamber this afternoon who have done an enormous amount of good, and can hold their heads very high that we have got to this place today.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

First, I welcome this piece of legislation and thank the current Minister, the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake); the former Minister, the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully); and the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), who guided me through some of the issues when I first became involved in this matter. It has been a long battle, but the job of this House when it identifies an injustice is to ensure that that injustice is addressed, and this was an injustice.

I am still baffled by how we ever reached this stage—how Post Office officials, Ministers and judges did not question how people who had so much to lose suddenly turned into thieves in their tens and hundreds. This did not happen over a long period of time. It was identified over a short period of time, yet those people were prosecuted unquestioningly. Indeed, some who knew the facts felt that because they had started going down this route, they had to continue to justify it, even if that meant withholding information and pretending that it was only one or two people so that others were not alerted to what was happening. It was an injustice.

I have heard arguments today that we have to tread very carefully with this legislation—that it is very delicate, that it could annoy the judges, and everything else. As the right hon. Member for North Durham has pointed out, the judges were also responsible, because they heard evidence. Did they question it as rigorously as they ought to have done? I do not know—I do not know many of the individual cases—but it is quite clear that many similar cases were coming before the courts, and somebody should have asked, especially given that the people who were being brought before those courts had so much to lose. Their reputation was destroyed, and up until this point, they had not engaged in that kind of behaviour.

I am not all that sensitive about stepping on some judicial toes with this legislation. This House has on many occasions been quite happy to overlook some of the legal issues in the context of Northern Ireland—exonerating, or giving letters of comfort to, people who had been guilty of murder, and so on—so I do not really have a great deal of sympathy with the argument that we have to be very concerned to tread carefully in relation to this piece of legislation.

There are just two issues that I want to raise. The first is the issue of those who have gone through the Court of Appeal already or have had their leave to appeal rejected. Given that, in most cases, the evidence that was presented and the judgments that were made would have been made on the basis, or at least partly on the basis, of trust in technology—the very thing we are saying was wrong in the cases of those we are now seeking to exonerate—means that we should be looking at those cases. Whether or not they are dealt with on a one-to-one basis, they should not be ignored, because the same kind of evidence used in those appeal cases was used in the court cases. Again, it would be an injustice not look at those particular issues. Regardless of how that is dealt with, and whether we should include the appeal cases totally or they should be looked at individually, I think we cannot ignore that one.

Of course, the issue I really want to address is clause 9 on the territorial extent of this Bill. I have had conversations with the Minister, and I know he is sympathetic and understands the issues in relation to Northern Ireland. However, when I listen to the arguments, I really do not think there is a case for excluding Northern Ireland from the scope of the Bill. Yes, justice is a devolved issue, and the Minister has said on other occasions when I have raised this with him that we have to be very careful of the political sensitivities. However, I have to say that there was not much concern in this House about political sensitivities when we put through a list of Bills the length of my arm that were controversial. People in Northern Ireland did not want those Bills taken in this House, and the parties were divided on them.

In this particular case, there is no division and there will be no kickback from any party in the devolved Administration. In fact, the First Minister, the Deputy First Minister and the Justice Minister—the three Ministers who will be responsible for this—have all written to the Minister indicating that they would be fully supportive. They would be fully supportive because they believe that it would not be possible to keep in step with the timing of the legislation that will go through here, and the reason for that is quite clear. It is the way in which the Northern Ireland Assembly is obliged by law to consult on legislation.

I do not even know whether the legislation would first have to be included in the programme for government, which would be one step, and after it had been included in the programme for government, consulted on. However, even if it we only have it as stand-alone legislation outside the programme for government, there is a 12-week consultation period. As the Deputy First Minister and the First Minister have pointed out, that means legislation could not even be considered in the Northern Ireland Assembly this side of the summer recess, so we would be talking about the autumn. There is a compelling case not only because there is no opposition, but because, if it were to go down the route of the Northern Ireland Assembly, it would be delayed.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree with me that the number of cases is small—I have heard different figures, but we are talking about no more than 30 cases—but that cannot justify the delay, which he is eloquently describing, in keeping these people from their recourse to justice?

[Sammy Wilson]

I think that is right. Some people may, of course, turn that argument around and say, “It’s only a small number of cases, so why should we be concerned?” But although the number may be small, since this issue has become so public there is public outrage on behalf of those who have been unfairly treated. Many people who have spoken to me about this have not been affected personally by the Horizon scandal, but there is a sense of injustice that some people were affected in such a way—they lost their reputation, their money, their business, in some cases their families, and their peace of mind—and there is a need not to delay any longer if at all possible. One way of ensuring that there is no such delay is to include Northern Ireland in the Bill.

When the Secretary of State was asked about this issue she said that she wanted to avoid unintentional consequences. Those unintentional consequences were unspecified because we did not get any examples, but I do not see how there could be unintentional consequences from including Northern Ireland in the Bill. It is a tight piece of legislation. It specifies who is covered by it, what offences are covered, and the way that the exoneration would be implemented by having records removed and so on. I cannot see where the unintended consequences would be, and I find that argument fairly weak.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Employees generally are an issue, because they do not have a contractual relationship with the Post Office, which is required to enter the compensation scheme, but if the company itself did have one it could make a compensation claim that could then be passed on to that individual. I am very happy to discuss individual cases with the hon. Gentleman, or with other Members.

I pay tribute again to all the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam. I agree that this was a case of human failure as well as technological failure, and that the wheels of justice are moving too slowly. That is why we have stepped in in this way. I am always grateful for the work of the right hon. Member for North Durham, not least on the Horizon compensation advisory board. He has made some important recommendations, which we have adopted. He gave a four-legged analogy about the person I am: he called me more shire horse than show pony, which I take as a compliment. I would describe him in a four-legged way as well: he is a cross between a terrier and a rottweiler, and he is highly effective in the way he approaches this issue.

The right hon. Gentleman asked about convictions relating to pilot versions of Horizon. That is why we have set the date at 23 December 1996. That is the first point of the roll-out of an application called Pathway, which was a predecessor Horizon application. We think that the legislation, and therefore the redress schemes, capture—if I can use that word—cases that relate to the pilot schemes in clause 8.

As the right hon. Gentleman knows, we look at the Capture system slightly differently. Capture is a stand-alone spreadsheet rather than a network computer system. There is no remote access, for example. The key thing is that what we are doing here is exceptional and unprecedented. We have the body of evidence because it has been before a court. Part of the reason the court made its decision in 2019 was based on the Horizon issues, as it put it. We do not have that body of evidence with Capture. We are keen to talk to him to ensure that we look at the evidence. That conversation will continue.

The right hon. Gentleman talked about the power to make consequential provision. We do not see that as giving us the ability to include another group of people; there are different reasons why that power is in the Bill. It is for matters that are a consequence of the Bill, which we do not think is the right vehicle to include people, for example, who have been affected by the Capture system. As I say, we will continue to discuss that.

As I said earlier, we understand the arguments about Northern Ireland, and we will continue to engage, as we will with other Members of this House. In terms of reasonable steps, the process is in development. It is about marking the records and writing to individuals. When we have passed the legislation, we will write literally that day, or the next day, to those individuals to say, “You’re conviction has been quashed,” and we will give them details about how to claim compensation.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I know that the Minister is committed to ensuring that everyone is contacted. What about the legacy cases—when people have passed away? Will someone try to contact their estates, for example?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Those are challenging issues. The key thing—I hope the right hon. Gentleman takes this in the right way—is that what we are doing here to quash convictions does not require people to come forward. When the conviction has been quashed, we will contact the most relevant person in that context. Those people can take forward a claim in exactly the same way, and it will be considered in exactly the same way, as any other claim. The estate, the families, can claim compensation.

[Mr Jones]

I agree with the Minister, but I think this needs to be given some thought. Perhaps the advisory board might look at legacy cases in which people have passed away, because those entitled to compensation might not come forward. We might have further discussion about that.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I am very happy for us to look at that, and to work with the right hon. Gentleman and the advisory board. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to him, Lord Arbuthnot, Sir Chris Hodges, and Professor Richard Moorhead for their work in this area. We will continue to work closely alongside the right hon. Gentleman.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Duncan Baker) recognised the work of people other than me on this matter—not least the Secretary of State, the Prime Minister and the Chancellor. I recognise that he is the only serving postmaster in this place, so we always listen carefully to what he says. Like him, we encourage people to come forward to claim compensation.

The people not included in the legislation—those who have been convicted as a result of prosecution by the DWP—can still appeal in the normal way, and I encourage them to do so if they feel that there are grounds for that. My hon. Friend asked about Fujitsu and the quantum it is due to pay. Our view has always been that we should let the inquiry conclude and determine responsibility. We will then know the extent of the compensation bill, and that will be the right time to have a conversation about contributions, for which Fujitsu has already accept a moral responsibility; we welcome that. Although the Post Office has had a chequered past in this regard, I believe that it has a very bright future, and we are keen to ensure that it does. We should always keep that in mind.

I understand what the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) said about the territorial extent of the Bill. As I said, I met the First Minister, Deputy First Minister and the Minster of Justice for Northern Ireland yesterday, and I will continue to do so. We are determined to ensure that measures are brought forward as quickly as possible in all areas of the United Kingdom. The right hon. Member makes a compelling case about the need for public consultations in his jurisdiction. We are aware of that. There are 26 cases in Northern Ireland, and we are keen to ensure that they are overturned as quickly as possible. We will continue work to ensure that that happens.

The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland talked clearly about ensuring that prosecutors are accountable for their role. Decisions were taken in Scotland. He was right to say clearly that a legislative consent motion does not offer the same level of parliamentary accountability, and I think we should all reflect on that. His final words were “accountability makes a difference.”

The hon. Member for North Down (Stephen Farry) talked about his preference for the measures to be UK-wide. We understand that; we have had several conversations and will have many more, I am sure. I understand his point about the risks of judicial review and of delays to public consultation. He feels that he makes an overwhelming argument. We will keep those conversations going.

I concur with the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow, and echo her tribute to Alan Bates, Jo Hamilton, Lee Castleton, journalist Nick Wallis, campaigner Dan Neidle, another journalist Tom Witherow, Lord Arbuthnot, Karl Flinders and many others, including many Members of this House. We pay tribute to them for their work. We recognise the profound impacts that the Horizon scandal has had on those who were falsely accused. It has taken too long to get to this point, and our ambition is to get this legislation through both Houses by July and compensation paid to the victims by August. Through this Bill, we will exonerate those who were so unjustly convicted of crimes that they did not commit and provide fair redress as swiftly as possible. I commend it to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.