Horizon Settlement: Future Governance of Post Office Ltd

Kevin Hollinrake Excerpts

Thursday 19th March 2020 Commons Chamber

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

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Horizon settlement and future governance of Post Office Ltd.

Innocent people jailed; individuals having their good name and livelihoods taken away from them; the full use of the state and its finances to persecute individuals. Those are all characteristics of a totalitarian or police state. But that is exactly what we have seen in the 21st century in the way the Government and the Post Office have dealt with sub-postmasters and their use of the Horizon system. The Horizon system was the biggest non-military IT project in Europe. It cost over £1 billion to install and affected 18,000 post offices throughout the UK.

Before I go on, I would like to pay tribute to some individuals who I have been working long and hard with on this campaign. The first is the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen), who cannot be here today because, unfortunately, a family member is ill and he has had to self-isolate. He has been with me from the start in trying to get justice for sub-postmasters, and I will refer to some of his work later. He would like to have been here and sends his apologies; that he is not here does not mean that he is not interested in the outcome. I also thank James Arbuthnot, the former Member for North East Hampshire, who, despite being moved to God’s waiting room further along the corridor, has still consistently pressed the case for justice for sub-postmasters. I pay tribute to the work that he has done in the past and is doing now.

I want to mention two other individuals. Alan Bates is the lead claimant in the class action. Alan has been a stalwart and stuck by his principles—knowing, as he said, that “I am right and I am going to make sure we get the truth out.” The other person is someone who has very helpfully shone a spotlight on the issue, and has spent many hours sitting through long court cases: Nick Wallis is a journalist who has kept this story in the public domain. Alan and Nick both deserve credit for their continued actions now and their work in the past.

I first came to be involved in the issue when a constituent came to see me in my surgery. That constituent was Tom Brown. Tom, like many other thousands of sub-postmasters, was a hard-working and well-respected individual. He had won awards from the Post Office for fighting off an armed robber in his post office, but because of the introduction of the Horizon system, he was accused of stealing £84,000 from the Post Office. Even though he said and demonstrated that that was not the case, the Post Office took him to court, and he went through the agony of being publicly shamed in his local community—we must remember that a lot of these individuals are the stalwarts of their local communities.

Tom went to Newcastle Crown court, and on the day of the trial the Post Office withdrew the case, but the damage had already been done. His good name had been ruined, and he had lost—because he had had to go bankrupt—in excess of nearly half a million pounds in the form of his business, the bungalow that he had bought for his retirement and some investment properties. He now lives with his son in social housing in South Stanley. The man who should have had a nice retirement, and who was well respected in his community, has been completely ruined and is destitute. Despite that—he came to see me last week—he is an individual who still has integrity, because he has always insisted that he is innocent of what he was accused of, and he has not been alone.  Despite that—he came to see me last week— he is an individual who still has integrity, because he has always insisted that he is innocent of what he was accused of, and he has not been alone. The estimate from the class action that has been taken is 555, and there are many others, some unfortunately who have died since the case was taken forward.

The scandal of this—what makes me so angry and why I have persistently hung on to the campaign—is that the Post Office knew all along that the Horizon system was flawed.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on securing this important debate. Is not the other scandal in this that the courts time and again failed the victims? In the prosecutions that were taken forward by the Post Office, the courts found in favour of the Post Office, despite it being unable to properly evidence its case. It is absolutely wrong. We must stand up for David versus Goliath in our courts.

[Mr Jones]

I will come back to that, which is something that I think my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner) will refer to in his contribution.

The board minutes from 1999 show that the Post Office knew there were bugs in the system and software problems. It denied all the way through that, for example, the amounts that sub-postmasters inputted could be changed. That was just not true. It could be remotely done, and the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire and his constituent Mr Rudkin, who visited the headquarters where the data was being stored, proved that. In classic style, when he raised that the Post Office denied that he had ever visited the data centre in the first place, until he proved that he had. It was just one cover-up after another. The denial culture in the Post Office was described by Judge Fraser, in what I thought was a very good his judgment, as

“the 21st century equivalent of maintaining that the earth is flat”,

because the evidence was there all the way through. There is no way that anyone who took an objective look at the system, in terms of the Post Office or Fujitsu, the contractor, could argue that it was perfect.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this important debate, and I am grateful to the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) for bringing it forward and for his excellent speech.

One thing that we do well across this House is to stand up for David against Goliath. As many Members know, I have worked quite hard on similar issues in the banking sector, where, again, we see that David and Goliath issue. Members on both sides of the House stand up very well against Goliath on these occasions. I wonder whether our system does the same.

The issues that post offices face and the disgraceful treatment of sub-postmasters and mistresses have been highlighted very well here today. My question is: why have the courts not stood up for these people through these past 10 or 20 years? These matters have been before the court hundreds of times, yet the court has not found in favour of people who have been demonstrably innocent of the charges. That is not just what I think, but what Paul Marshall, a barrister at Cornerstone Chambers, says. He looked at these issues across the banking sector and in these cases and he finds that the courts are structurally biased in favour of large, trusted brands. That cannot be right. I was always brought up to believe that everybody could get justice. The rules of court require the courts to maintain a fair and level playing field, yet, as we know, the courts are open to all, just like the Ritz hotel. There is a structural imbalance between a sub-postmaster or mistress when they go to the courts and the phalanx of lawyers provided by the Post Office. The courts are used to suppress the truth, and that cannot be right. There have been 110 prosecutions. Back in 2007, in the case of the Post Office Ltd v. Lee Castleton, Judge Havery found that there was irrefutable evidence against Mr Castleton, despite the fact that there was no evidence. That was just his statement; there was no evidence that the Post Office was in the right.

We know that the Post Office knew that this was going on after the Second Sight report. The prosecutions stopped at one point, but of course they then carried on. We have seen similar issues at Lloyds bank, which knew back in 2007 that this stuff was going on, yet did nothing and carried on as if it was in the right until the case came to court 10 years later. It tried to discredit a whistleblower and the victims. The same happened at Royal Bank of Scotland.

We must ask questions of the system: of the Post Office, of course, about who knew what and when—I support the calls for a public inquiry and proper compensation—and of the solicitors who acted for the Post Office. There are some ethical issues here. The Solicitors Regulation Authority should look into the actions of Womble Bond Dickinson, which represented the Post Office in 2007. It knew about the Second Sight report yet continued to support the Post Office’s case. The same happened at Lloyds with Herbert Smith Freehills.

We must examine the system. The justice system—the judiciary, the Justice Secretary, the Civil Procedure Rule Committee—must learn lessons from this. Why should it take 12 years and £40 million in legal fees to get justice? That cannot be right. We must have a justice system that works for all.