Post Office Legislation

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Duncan Baker

Wednesday 13th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his comments and collaboration. It is important that we listen to his Committee’s recommendations and its very informative evidence sessions—I sat through all five hours.

At this point, we believe the Post Office should continue its work on the 100 or so cases before it. We currently have no capacity in the Department to handle those claims, although we clearly will by the time the Bill comes into effect. We do not want to pause between the Bill coming into effect in July and compensation payments being made. We think we can get those payments to people in August using that route.

There may be some people left in the first tranche of overturned convictions, for people who have been through the Court of Appeal. We will certainly look at the Committee’s recommendations on whether we should bring those cases back in-house or leave them with the Post Office. We will keep an open mind on that.

We already have fixed timescales to respond to offers or service level agreements in the GLO scheme. We commit to responding to 90% of full claims within 40 days of submission. I am happy to look at how we might put some benchmarks in place to make sure the new scheme has a similar speed of response. I am sure the right hon. Gentleman heard what I said about our new pilots under which lawyers can submit claims without forensic accountants and medical reports. That may do something along the line he says, and I will happily have an ongoing conversation with him.

Thus far, 128 of the 490 claims have been submitted to the GLO scheme, and 110 of them have been settled. To my knowledge, only one claim has gone to independent dispute resolution before going to the independent panel, which hopefully indicates that, generally, the offers are fair and have been accepted almost straightaway.

I understand what Jo Hamilton says, and I met her to discuss some of the processes she had to go through to prove her claim. We are determined to reduce those frictions and evidence requirements, certainly for things that are not essentially material. There are three things that we have to get right in delivering compensation: we have to be fair to the individuals and families affected; we have to be fair to all the other sub-postmasters to make sure there is consistency across the scheme; and, of course, we have to be fair to the taxpayer. There is no cap on what we will pay people, as long as it is fair.

[Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for bringing this statement to the House, as it clearly moves things in the right direction for closure. I have talked many times in this House about similar issues. The Government have put £1 billion aside to deal with all this, despite the fact that the Post Office has taken millions upon millions off postmasters—innocent people. We have never had the figure of what was taken, although I have asked for it before. I want a second figure, because Fujitsu has said on the record that it would help to compensate victims as well, by adding to the remuneration pot. What progress have we made on making Fujitsu pay also for being culpable in this fiasco?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank my hon. Friend for his regular contributions in this area, as it is always good to have the views of the only former serving postmaster in this House. We are looking to try to identify the figure he refers to and we hope to come back to him at some point; it is complicated, as a lot of these records go back a long way. However, that is a body of work we are undertaking with the Post Office. The Secretary of State had a conversation yesterday with the global chief executive of Fujitsu; we are keen to make sure that Fujitsu contributes and it has already said that it will—it said it has a moral responsibility to contribute. My hon. Friend mentions a figure of £1 billion, but we do not know the final figure for compensation. However, we would expect a significant element of it to come from Fujitsu.

Post Office Horizon: Compensation and Legislation

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Duncan Baker

Monday 26th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. Full and fair compensation lies at the heart of this matter, and we do not want people to feel that the £600,000 is the only option for getting compensation in quick time. It is there for those who want to take the money, walk away and draw a line under the matter, particularly where they think their claim is below that figure. As the hon. Gentleman might have heard me say earlier, on the recommendation of the advisory board and others involved in the process, as soon as a full claim is received, individuals in the overturned conviction cohort will get their interim compensation of £163,000 topped up immediately to £450,000. That will ease the financial pressure and reduce what he suggests might be an incentive for people to take a lower amount than they deserve. A significant amount of money will be paid forward on that basis while the remainder of the compensation claim can be properly assessed.

[Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con)]

I echo some of the words of the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali). I had an email overnight from a lady in Australia whose father was prosecuted by the DWP. He had been extremely ill, and he was given a six-month prison sentence for a crime he did not commit. From the statement this afternoon it is clear that the scope of the Bill will apply only to prosecutions from the CPS and Post Office Ltd. Those who received a sentence from the DWP will therefore be outside the scope of the new law. That cannot be right, Minister.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

We have looked at this very carefully. In all the appeals based on DWP cases, the convictions have been upheld thus far. Clearly it is rare that we take the kind of route that we are taking now, in summarily overturning convictions. We see that the evidence bar was much higher in those cases. As I said earlier, there was surveillance of suspects and collation and examination of cash orders from stolen benefit books and girocheques, so there is a significant evidence base for these convictions. I would point out that people can still technically appeal their convictions. They can go through the normal Court of Appeal route. I would be happy to have a discussion with my hon. Friend afterwards to discuss this further if that would be helpful.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Duncan Baker

Thursday 25th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con)]

T2. With many banks closing on high streets, the post office is picking up so much slack, but in rural areas the limits placed on the amount of cash that can be paid in at the post office is having a real impact on businesses. For instance, pubs have a lot of cash but cannot pay it in because of the limits. Can the Minister review that and ensure that the post office can take far greater volumes of cash from rural businesses?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Kevin Hollinrake)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his work on this matter, which he and I have discussed on many occasions. The limits are there to try to prevent money laundering, but it is important that the checks are proportionate. I have raised their impact on a number of occasions with the Financial Conduct Authority and UK Finance. There is more transparency now and they are working more effectively. I know that the wonderful Ingham’s fish and chip shop in Filey now experiences fewer problems when it pays in money at its local post office. There is a great opportunity not just for Inghams fish and chip shop but for the post office banking framework to make that relationship more lucrative.

Post Office Horizon Scandal

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Duncan Baker

Wednesday 10th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question and, once again, for her work in the all-party parliamentary group for post offices. I am sorry that I was not able to share a statement with her, and I appreciate her welcoming what we have done today.

I am very happy to term this “redress”; it is only about putting people back where they would have been, and trying to make good what has happened to them. I understand what she says about compensation, but this is there to compensate people financially for losses and impacts on their lives.

I could not agree more that, as well as delivering compensation more quickly and fairly, the No. 1 thing we would like to happen is for more people to come forward. A simplified process that does not require postmasters themselves to file an appeal will mean that this is done more quickly. The routes to compensation have been simplified, and we very much hope that people will come forward. That seems to be our experience right now. We will continue to engage with the devolved Administrations to ensure that they have everything they need, as they may want to adopt similar measures.

[Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con)]

I welcome this legislation, and I thank the Minister for the amount of work he has done at such great speed. We are still at a midway point in the journey. There are still criminal prosecutions to come. One question that has never been answered is just how much money was taken unlawfully from thousands of innocent men and women. The Post Office took that money, and we have never known that figure. Even the most basic accountant knows that it will run into hundreds of millions of pounds. Could the Minister force the Post Office to publish the grand scale of the money it stole from people?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank my hon. Friend for contributing to these important debates in the House once again. He brings first-hand experience, as the only postmaster serving in the House. He is quite right to say that money was taken, and someone must have noticed it. One would think that the finance departments or auditors would have noticed it, as it would have appeared in some kind of suspense account and was presumably transferred out at some point. I will endeavour to find out the number, as I do not have it. We do know that prior to Horizon being installed in the post office network, there were around five prosecutions a year. That suddenly jumped to about 60 a year. We know that there were significant numbers of prosecutions, and the fact that there are around 3,500 postmasters in the various compensation schemes illustrates the scale of the problem. I will endeavour to find out a number for him.

Horizon: Compensation and Convictions

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Duncan Baker

Monday 8th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Again, I share the hon. Member’s ambitions in every part of his remarks. We, too, are disappointed that we have not had more people coming forward to have their convictions overturned, for a number of different reasons. Those people have been written to several times by different bodies, including the CCRC. We are keen to get the message out, but we do not think that that is the whole problem. We think there is a confidence issue for some of those people in coming forward after so many years, after what has happened to them, so we are very keen to say to them, “You will be treated fairly and dealt with as quickly as possible.”

A mass exoneration scheme, as the hon. Member described it, is something we are looking at. I cannot confirm that today on the Floor of the House, but we certainly think that that kind of blanket overturning of convictions, together with a rapid compensation scheme, will mean that more people get access to justice more quickly. That is something we are very keen on, and to deliver it UK-wide would absolutely be the right thing to do.

[Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con)]

As a former sub-postmaster, last week’s drama brought up many emotions from my time serving from 2014 to 2019. I have mentioned Fujitsu five times in this Chamber, asking five times about its involvement. We now know, finally, that it had a back door into the live system. Minister, when will Fujitsu face justice for its utter incompetence in all of this? How can it be made to contribute compensation for the many postmasters with claims, instead of that being done the taxpayer, who is not responsible for this scandal?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank my hon. Friend for being a constant contributor to these debates. He brings real-life experience of these matters, which we very much value and appreciate. I would be very happy to keep up our regular engagement on these issues. He is not shy of informing me of different things that I need to be aware of and I appreciate that engagement.

Of course, the back door into the sub-postmasters account seems to have been a key contributor to this scandal, and Fujitsu seems to have had that back door. We are yet to establish how much of that was Fujitsu doing it unilaterally or whether it was being done on the instruction of the Post Office. The inquiry is there to give us those kinds of answers. The inquiry is committed to concluding by the end of this year and reporting shortly after. At that point, we will know who was responsible for what, and we should then be able to identify who can be made responsible through potential financial contributions, rather than the taxpayer alone having to pick up the tab for this very significant compensation package. I am just as ambitious as my hon. Friend is to make sure that those who are responsible pay for what they have done.

Post Office (Horizon System) Compensation Bill

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Duncan Baker

2nd reading
Tuesday 19th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con)]

The Minister is right when he says that this is a miscarriage of justice. As I have often said in this place, I was formerly a postmaster, and I can remember when the tills did not balance. Unlike the Post Office, I believed my staff that it was not their fault—that there was an error. Luckily, those errors were not significant, and we just wrote them off. I thank the Minister for all he has done, as well as my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), who has equally done an enormous amount.

The Post Office did not believe those innocent postmasters who were simply doing their job, but equally, Fujitsu supplied the software that did not work properly, yet I never hear about whether that company is culpable. Can the Minister tell me what Fujitsu has ever had to suffer from what has happened to everybody else?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank my hon. Friend for his work on this issue, as well as his direct experience—he is one of the few people in this House who has that experience. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) for all the work he did as my predecessor; his comments about Fujitsu, and about making sure that it is not the taxpayer alone who picks up the tab, are clearly on the record. Again, where responsibility can be assigned, there should be accountability, perhaps in the form of compensation paid by those companies. It is right, though, that the Sir Wyn Williams inquiry is allowed to take the time it needs to report and to identify blame where it exists. Those matters can then be dealt with at that time.

Alongside introducing this Bill, my Department published a revised version of the documents for the group litigation order scheme, which make clearer than ever that the scheme exists to pay full, fair and timely compensation. If compensation cannot be agreed with my Department, a decision will be made by a panel of independent experts. Any GLO postmaster who believes that the panel’s award fails that fairness test can ask the scheme’s independent reviewer, Sir Ross Cranston, to look at their case. Between them, those arrangements provide powerful and independent assurance that compensation is fair.

Turning to compensation amounts, to date, around £138 million has been paid out to over 2,700 claimants across the three compensation schemes established by the Post Office and the Government. Those figures are regularly updated on the dedicated gov.uk page. So far, 93 convictions have been overturned. We have seen positive progress since my previous statement to the House on 18 September, which announced that postmasters who have had convictions on the basis of Horizon evidence overturned are entitled to up-front offers of £600,000 as a fixed sum in full and final settlement of their claim. I can confirm that following that announcement, the first 22 claimants have now settled their claims with the Post Office, taking the total to 27 full and final settlements—I hope this will encourage other postmasters to submit claims. I should add that a significant proportion of those claimants followed the fixed sum award route.

The GLO scheme, administered by my Department for the 500 trailblazing postmasters who took the Post Office to court and exposed the Horizon scandal, has already paid out roughly £27 million across 475 claimants. Postmasters who were neither convicted nor members of the GLO can apply to the Post Office-run Horizon shortfall scheme. I am pleased to say that every last one of the 2,417 people who applied before the scheme’s original deadline have now received initial offers of compensation, and some £87 million has been paid out. The Post Office is now dealing with late applications and with those cases where the initial offer was not accepted.

I turn now to the provisions of the Bill before us. The Post Office (Horizon System) Compensation Bill, a small Bill of just two clauses, provides a continuing legal basis for the payments of compensation to victims of this appalling scandal. Principally, it will enable the Government to continue to pay compensation under the GLO scheme that my Department is currently administering. Compensation payments made under the scheme are currently paid under the sole authority of the successive Appropriation Acts, and Parliament requires all such payments to be made within a two-year period. The first payment of interim compensation was made on 8 August 2022, meaning that, with the law as it stands, no GLO payments can be made beyond 7 August 2024. This Bill removes that deadline.

This certainly does not mean we are taking our foot off the gas. We will still want to be able to pay compensation as quickly as possible. My Department is now committed to making an initial offer of compensation in 90% of cases within 40 working days of receiving a fully completed GLO claim, and many claims will be dealt with much more quickly. However, as Sir Wyn Williams has noted, the resolution of compensation claims requires actions by postmasters, their advisers and third parties, as well as by the Government.

In his interim report, which he provided to Parliament in July, Sir Wyn expressed concern that the August deadline could leave some postmasters timed out of compensation or rushed into making decisions. The Government agree that this must not happen, and the Bill ensures that it will not happen. All GLO postmasters will get full and fair compensation, and they will get it promptly without being unduly rushed.

In conclusion, until everyone has fair compensation, the truth is known and the guilty are held accountable, Members of this House and others will rightly continue to raise issues about this scandal. In the meantime, the House should know that this Government are on the side of the postmasters, and we will continue to give these issues our full attention and do our best to resolve them. This Bill is a further example of that, and I commend it to the House.

Post Office Compensation

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Duncan Baker

Monday 18th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his kind words and for his campaigning on this issue, about which he has spoken often. He describes some of the horrendous experiences that people have had following the prosecutions and dismissals, and he is absolutely right that no amount of compensation could really make up for the destruction of lives. He talks about people lying, or lying by omission. The biggest part of this scandal is that people in the Post Office realised what was going on 10 years ago but said nothing, despite the fact that some people were in jail and they must have known that those convictions were unsafe. It is absolutely unacceptable; it is scandalous; and I absolutely join his call for people, when identified as responsible, to be held to account.

[Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con)]

This whole episode has shown very clearly just how beloved the institution of our post office network is—I can say that as a former postmaster. The banks will not stop what they are doing; their trend is to remove as many branches as possible from our high streets up and down the land. Of course, that puts enormous pressure on the post office network, which has to pick up the slack—I have talked to the Minister about that before. Can he assure me that he will put every effort into ensuring that post offices are invested in properly so that they can be the future dealer of authorised financial services on our high streets, perhaps making them the pinnacle of banking hubs in the future?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank my hon. Friend for all his work in this area. He, too, has been a consistent campaigner on this matter, and, as the only Member of Parliament who was previously a postmaster, he understands it well. I could not agree more with his comments: the post office network is held in such high regard across the country. This scandal has not in any shape or form affected the brand itself, which is still highly regarded around the country and has a very bright future as long as it is properly remunerated. He raises an interesting point—one that I have raised with banks, with UK Finance and others, and with fellow Ministers, including the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, who is on exactly the same page as me—that if banks want to save money by closing branches up and down the country, that is a commercial choice for them, but they have to leave behind provision for access to cash and deposits. If that means that they have to pay the Post Office and postmasters more for that service, so be it. I very much encourage the Post Office to take a robust line in negotiations to ensure that we get the best possible deal.

Post Office: Horizon Compensation

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Duncan Baker

Thursday 23rd March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his work, including on the advisory board, which is much appreciated. He is right to reference Alan Bates, as I did. I spoke to Alan this morning, and he is pleased with the steps we have taken, as I think the right hon. Gentleman is, but the proof of the pudding is in the tasting. We need to make sure these schemes work properly. When he and Lord Arbuthnot asked to expand the board’s remit to the other two schemes, I was pleased to support that wish. He is right to point to tax and bankruptcy. We need to make sure these people are treated fairly across all three schemes. We will leave no stone unturned—and I know he will not either—in making sure that happens.

[Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con)]

I thank the Minister, who has followed in his predecessor’s footsteps in following this up. It is right that wrongly convicted postmasters get the justice and the compensation they deserve. I echo the wise words of my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh). As a former postmaster, I ask the Minister to turn his attention to a decent investment in the branch network and a decent remuneration and commission package for postmasters, who, operating a stand-alone post office, cannot make it work at the moment because the package is not good enough. Slightly cheekily, may I also ask the Minister to wish my constituents Jigen and Nisha Patel all the best for tomorrow, when I will formally open the new post office in Sheringham on the north Norfolk coast?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

My hon. Friend speaks as one of the few experienced sub-postmasters who have taken a seat in this place, and I appreciate his work in this area. We are looking at the future sustainability of the Post Office, and that will require investment. It is important that we get to a position where there is a bright future for the network and for the sub-postmasters who work in it and they have sustainable businesses. I am keen to liaise with him as we move towards that position. Of course, I congratulate the Patels on their new post office and hope the launch goes well.