Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Bill

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Robert Neill

Committee of the whole House
Monday 29th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) for their work. We take these matters and the independence of the judiciary very seriously. Where the Court of Appeal has upheld a conviction and declared it safe, we think that is a material concern. There will always be different opinions in these areas, but we think we are striking the right balance between overturning convictions that we believe to be unsafe in the main and ones that have been before a senior judge.

[Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

I, too, pay tribute to the Minister for the extremely constructive way in which he has engaged with everybody on this matter. My initial position was entirely supportive of the Government, but I must say that the evidence given to the Justice Committee causes me to think again. It is usually right to be very wary indeed about trespassing on decisions made by the courts. However, we have chosen to do that because it is thought desirable for the greater good in respect of the bulk of convictions.

The point that needs to be emphasised is that we have perhaps not appreciated that, in cases where convictions were upheld by the Court of Appeal, it applied a narrower test to the relevance of the Horizon evidence. In Hamilton and related cases, it said that the test was whether the Horizon evidence was essential to the conviction. We do not apply that test as a result of a policy decision. That could lead to a bizarre situation whereby someone who did not get to the Court of Appeal because the Criminal Cases Review Commission did not refer the case would have their conviction quashed, whereas someone who the commission thought had an arguable case and who went to the Court of Appeal but who was rejected on a narrower test than Parliament is now creating would not benefit from having their conviction quashed. That is the unfairness that we need to think a little more about, and it is the thrust of what the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) is getting at.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

There will, of course, always be different legal opinions on these matters. As my hon. and learned Friend expressed, he has had two different opinions on what we should do in this regard, and I know that his view is based on further submissions of evidence that he has received. Of course, we consider these matters very carefully. My right hon. and learned Friend the Justice Secretary is here and listening to my hon. and learned Friend’s comments. We will always continue to reflect on this legislation to make sure that we are getting to the right place, but I understand the points that he raises.

[Sir Robert Neill]

There were certainly differences of opinion as to the appropriateness of the measure as a whole, with Dr Quirk being in a minority of three who took a different view, but there was not a difference of opinion on the factual point that the test applied by the Court of Appeal in Hamilton is different from that which is in statute. That was a matter of unanimity.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I understand and accept that point, but a decision has to be taken on whether to include these cases. There is definitely a difference of legal opinion on that point, because I have had different representations made to me.

We recognise that this approach may leave a small number of individuals concerned about the way forward for their cases. In cases where the Court of Appeal has upheld a conviction, the usual routes of appeal remain available to them. Those affected can apply to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which can review their cases.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I will speak to amendment 70. I wrote back to my right hon. Friend about her case, and we are looking at this. I am sure that the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) will have something to say about this issue. We have agreed to instigate an independent review of that software. There are some fundamental differences. For example, it is not networked, so no remote access is possible, whereas that is a major feature of the issues with Horizon. I am happy to continue to engage with my right hon. Friend on the issue, and I congratulate her on the way she has dealt with it on behalf of her constituent.

My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst’s amendment 71 would also sunset other parts of the Bill. This would not give victims of the scandal the justice that they deserve. We are clear—there has been agreement across this House on this—that this exceptional legislation does not set a precedent, and I hope, especially with the reassurance provided by Government amendments 25 and 45, that he will withdraw amendment 71.

[Sir Robert Neill]

I understand where the Minister is coming from, and of course he has provided a deal of reassurance, but I want to test this a little. Are we really assuming that it will be necessary to leave open-ended people’s ability to come forward to have their conviction quashed? After all, if they cannot reasonably be traced, there is provision for the Secretary of State to notify an appropriate person. For example, if we cannot find the person—or their next of kin, if they are dead—there is a catch-all provision about notifying an appropriate person. Why could that not include the criminal records bodies? Would they not be notified anyway? I just wonder why we have to leave the provision open-ended to that extent. There will come a point when the provision has been exhausted. Also, I am interested in how my hon. Friend envisages a process working through which people can get a document that shows that their conviction is quashed—for example, if they need a visa or work permit, or have to undergo Disclosure and Barring Service checks.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

As I said, the legislation expires on the day that the provision is brought into effect. My hon. and learned Friend is talking about the ongoing marking of the records of people who may come forward at a future date. We do not know what that date would be. I am happy to have a conversation with him about what the cut-off would be, but the effect of this legislation, in terms of quashing convictions, expires on the day it receives Royal Assent.

[Sir Robert Neill]

I understand that, and I can see my hon. Friend’s point, hence the two amendments. My point is that he is praying in aid, as another reason for not having a sunset clause, the provisions for notifying people about applying to have their convictions quashed. What is the mechanism to make sure that does not hang around indefinitely? We will eventually want to bring things to a conclusion—not only getting convictions quashed, but, quite separately, paying out the compensation fund. One day, all the compensation that can be claimed will have been claimed. What do we do then? How do we wrap up the process? That is what it comes down to.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

As I said, I am happy to have a continuing conversation with my hon. and learned Friend on that point. I feel that it would be a serious injustice if we set, say, a three year cut-off period and somebody came along a day later. Those are the challenges that we have to meet.

Post Office Legislation

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Robert Neill

Wednesday 13th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank the hon. Lady again for all her work in this area. She has been a tireless campaigner. We would all like to be further along, but she has made an important contribution to our work.

The hon. Lady is right to say that victims should be front and centre when it comes to compensation, which must be delivered fairly and as quickly as possible. Some of the changes I have announced today, including in my statement, have been brought forward on the basis of feedback from victims and their legal representatives. We are listening to them, and we will make sure that we deliver any changes where we can.

I fully understand the hon. Lady’s point about Scotland and Northern Ireland, and she will understand the constitutional sensitivity of this area. These are tough decisions, and I understand that Scottish Ministers will have to make similar decisions. They can decide to do what we are doing and, if they do, we will support them in how they legislate. Given the sensitivities, we thought that, where justice is devolved, the devolved Administrations should make the decision. I again commit to making sure that we work across the piece, wherever we can, to deliver the consistent compensation that she requires, without forgetting that the redress schemes are UK-wide. As soon as people’s convictions are overturned, they will be able to access compensation, just as they can in England and Wales.

[Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

Everyone wants to see the sub-postmasters’ suffering brought to an end as swiftly as possible, and I welcome what the Minister has said about simplifying and speeding up the compensation scheme. He will know that claimant lawyers such as Neil Hudgell, who gave evidence to the Business and Trade Committee, have real expertise in this field, and I hope he will work very closely with the sector to maximise that expertise in designing the scheme.

I sound one note of caution. The Minister says this is exceptional, and it is constitutionally unprecedented to overturn, through legislation, convictions imposed by our courts in good faith, based on the evidence before them at the time. Frankly, it is most undesirable that we should ever go down that route.

Some of us will need to see the detail of the legislation and what evidence the Government have that it will be quicker and more comprehensive to quash convictions via this constitutionally unprecedented route, rather than leaving the courts to deal with it, with assistance. As the Minister knows, this could have been dealt with via a presumption in favour of sentences being quashed where they depended on Horizon evidence, rather than this wholesale measure. In particular, will he look at what impact it will have on rehabilitation of offenders legislation, and at whether convictions quashed by this Bill will be removed effectively so that people can, for example, travel to the United States or other foreign jurisdictions where they may need a visa, for which they need to show that they do not have an outstanding conviction?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question and all his work on this subject. Our engagement with him throughout the process has been very important. He has much expertise in this area.

We agree that this is unprecedented and undesirable, but we believe it is the least worst option. We want to see this delivered more quickly as, of the 790 or so sub-postmasters whom we believe this legislation will affect, only around 100 convictions have so far been overturned. We think that situation is untenable, which is why we decided to take this route. Of course, I will continue to work with him and listen to his wise advice.

I think I am right in saying that, for convictions overturned by the Court of Appeal, the record is marked “Overturned by the Court of Appeal”. We foresee these records being marked in a similar way—“Quashed by Parliament” or something along those lines. Again, I am happy to engage with my hon. Friend to make sure we get it right.

Post Office Horizon Scandal

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Robert Neill

Wednesday 10th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank the hon. Lady for her remarks. Although they were prosecuted under different authorities in Scotland and Northern Ireland, the cases were generally prepared by the Post Office itself, so I do not think we have any greater confidence about the status of those convictions than we have in those in the rest of the UK. We are therefore very keen to engage with the Scottish Administration on what we are doing. Hopefully, there will be a consistent scheme across the UK.

I agree entirely with the hon. Lady that we need to be proactive in our message to people about coming forward, and in our message from the House that we are working together and that this process is now much more streamlined. It will not even necessarily require sub-postmasters to make an application for their conviction to be overturned. That will happen much more quickly, and any access routes we have now for compensation will be made swifter and more rapid. I think those things alone will mean more people come forward. As I said, we have seen a good number of new people come forward. Hudgell, one of the solicitors involved in claims for some of the victims, have had, I think, 130 new people contact them on the basis of the TV programme and possibly because of the new actions we are taking to make sure compensation is more smoothly and easily available.

[Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

The Minister, and indeed all of us in this House, will recognise the desire to get the swiftest possible redress for the victims of this appalling injustice, but does he also accept that legislating to overturn convictions that were imposed by our independent courts is constitutionally quite exceptional? Therefore, in justifying that, will he set out in full what consideration was given to the practicality of going down the normal route of referring those convictions to the Court of Appeal before the legislative route was decided upon? What discussions were there with the senior judiciary about its practicality? Given the novel and constitutional nature of the legislation, will he seriously consider committing to the Committee stage of any Bill being taken on the Floor of the House and, because it is novel and constitutional, will he consider that it is appropriate for a draft Bill to be given swift pre-legislative scrutiny?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question and for his willingness to work with us. He and I have discussed the matter in the past few days, and I appreciate his expertise and advice. Yes, absolutely; this is a very significant step and not one that we would take lightly. We fully respect the independence of the courts. We set out very clearly the reasons why this is different—that is important. We are setting a precedent, but it is clear why we are doing so. The involvement of private prosecutions is very relevant, and that also relates to work that he has done on the Justice Committee. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Justice has engaged with the people he refers to in the judiciary, to ensure that they understood what we were doing and why we were doing it. Those conversations were constructive, rather than resisted, but I am very happy to take up my hon. Friend’s offer to continue that engagement and to discuss the draft Bill with him.

Horizon: Compensation and Convictions

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Robert Neill

Monday 8th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Absolutely. I think the programme not only captured the type of people we are talking about here, whom people who have met the sub-postmasters are already aware of, but perfectly highlighted the Post Office’s brutal and desensitised approach in these matters. That is part of the reason why the programme has created the situation we have today, and we welcome that, because we are keen to deliver the compensation scheme and get support for it across the House and across the nation.

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his work on the advisory board. I certainly hope to attend that advisory board meeting on Wednesday and share some of our thinking at that time about what measures we are proposing. He raised an important point about the pilot scheme and people affected by the pilot version of Horizon. We believe they are still covered by the compensation schemes—I think he agrees with that as well—but we want to make sure that those people have been reached out to. As I said when we spoke about it this morning, if he shares the details of those people with me, we will find out whether they have been contacted, and if not, why not, because other people might be in a similar circumstance.

[Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

I welcome the sense of urgency that there now is on both sides of the House about this situation. Will my hon. Friend bear in mind two points in taking this process forward? First, although it is critical that we speed up the means by which these improper convictions are overturned, will he bear in mind that that will place exceptional and unprecedented strains on the appeal system and the criminal justice system, and that that would, if we followed the normal route, require unprecedented resources to be put in? Will he work closely with the Lord Chancellor to take on board the judiciary’s ability to cope with that volume of cases being put forward?

Secondly, on private prosecutions, can I ask him perhaps to revisit the Justice Committee’s recommendations from 2021—for example, that all private prosecutors should be subject to the oversight of His Majesty’s chief inspector of the Crown Prosecution Service, to ensure proper standards of independence and objectivity in dealing with cases, which were clearly lacking in this situation?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank my hon. Friend for his work. Yes, we share the ambition to speed up the whole process. I also thank my hon. Friend for what he has done with the Lord Chancellor, who mentioned my hon. Friend’s work during our meeting earlier today. We are aware of the resources issue and the time scales around looking at individual cases; we are very much taking those into account in terms of the solution that we will hopefully arrive at. The Lord Chancellor is equally concerned about private prosecutions. I thank my hon. Friend for his work on that issue; again, our conversations today very much centred around his work on the Select Committee and its recommendations.

Economic Crime: Law Enforcement

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Robert Neill

Thursday 7th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The hon. Gentleman is right. The regulations are there but the penalties are not sufficient. The people within Danske Bank knew that they were doing wrong when they moved €200 billion out of Russia and into other parts of the world, but there was no incentive to do anything about it because they made a huge amount of money as it flew through their systems. A local manager, a mid-tier manager or even a senior executive would think, “Well, we’re making money and nobody’s going to find out, and if we are found out there will be a fine down the line and I will have gone by then anyway.” So where is the incentive to clamp down if they are going to make lots of money out of it? After all, everybody has budgets and targets to hit, and bonuses on the back of them. That is the problem: the penalties and enforcement need to be different.

Another key reason why money is washed through the UK is that we have the overseas territories, tax havens that work on the same basis of common law—Jersey, the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands. Money launderers do not want to pay tax on their money, so they put it through a jurisdiction with low or zero taxation. That is why the UK plays a major role in facilitating this, and also why it must play a major role in clamping down on it.

We do not do clamping down very well here, however. Our enforcement agencies have success in some regards, but they are nowhere near as successful as other jurisdictions, for example the USA, which is far more focused on this. The US has similar bribery laws to the UK, introduced in 2011. In 2020 the US fined organisations in the US £1.85 billion for bribery offences, which is more than the UK has fined in 10 years. The situation for money laundering sanctions is very similar: in 2019 the UK fined our banks £260 million in the entire year for money laundering offences, while the US fined £7.5 billion, including £2.5 billion of criminal sanctions. Almost every one of our agencies is underfunded and under-resourced in tackling this problem.

What do we need to do? My colleague the right hon. Member for Barking will talk about some of the measures, but I will focus on the key things that I think we need. We must ringfence a budget for tackling economic crime right across the piece in the UK, to see exactly how much we are spending on tackling organised crime. We need fewer agencies, too; the effort must be more consolidated so the lines of reporting are less fragmented and more direct.

Action Fraud must not just be a rebadged enterprise. It needs to be meaningful, and people need to have confidence that the offences reported to it will be dealt with. I was recently nearly scammed through WhatsApp when I thought my son had contacted me, but it was another person. I wondered whether to report it to Action Fraud, but I thought, “What’s the point? It’s not going to do anything about it.” That is why people do not report such incidents. Clearly, therefore, there are many more offences than the number reported.

The No. 1 thing we need to do is something the Government have talked about. We already have a failure to prevent offence. There is corporate criminal liability in the UK if people fail to prevent bribery in their organisation—that offence was introduced some years ago, I think in 2011—and also an offence of failure to prevent tax evasion. People cannot just stop that happening; they have to put the rules in place to stop it happening. The key thing is what they can do to stop this. They therefore put systems in their organisation to alert them to certain things happening, and they train staff that they cannot get involved in bribery or facilitate tax evasion. We need to extend that to failure to prevent economic crime.

The Government have been talking about this for some time, and the Law Commission has reported on it. It said we should introduce such an offence but probably for fraud alone, not for money laundering or things like false accounting. I think that is a big mistake. It is also very mealy-mouthed on including personal liability for directors; it says it could be added if they have the mental something—what is the word?

[Sir Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

Mens rea.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Thank you; that is right, whatever it means in English.

[Sir Robert Neill]

A guilty mind.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Thank you. On that basis, only if it can be proven that the directors had a guilty mind and were actually participating in the fraud can they go to jail. That is the wrong approach, and is not what the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 said. The Act said that those who fail to prevent accidents in their workplace could go to jail, and construction deaths dropped in the following year by 90%. We need to put in place an offence such that those who fail to take reasonable steps to prevent and clamp down on fraud can go to jail, without it also being necessary to prove that they deliberately facilitated the fraud. That would make a fundamental difference.

We must support whistleblowers, too. Most of the information on these offences will come not from our enforcement agencies or investigations by regulators, but from people within the organisations. Currently, those people are not protected—

Local Government Finance

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Robert Neill

Wednesday 22nd February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Robert Neill]

The right hon. Gentleman is right. He and I both experienced that approach when we were Ministers in the same Government. What he has suggested is precisely the objective that we should work towards, but we need a steer from the top.

Let me make two more brief points. The first is about the fair funding review, which I also welcome, but it will need to be bold and comprehensive. When I was a local government Minister, we had to go through about 275 bits of regression analysis to establish the formula, but we had knocked it down from about 400. Such material is not comprehensible; it is extremely opaque, and it produces consequences that are often difficult to reconcile with what any of us in local government see on the ground.

May I make a plea for one particular factor to be taken into account? I understand that, inevitably, there will be a “needs versus resource” matrix, but thus far it has proved almost impossible to build into the system a proper weighting for historically efficient authorities. A local authority that has historically been efficient and run its services well at low cost receives no credit for that. If anything, such authorities tend to be penalised. Bromley, for example, is a comparatively low council tax authority, the second lowest in outer London, but it is also the lowest in terms of the cost per head—the unit costs—of its service delivery. The system has never taken account of that, and we ought to incentivise it within the system.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

My hon. Friend said earlier that his local authority area contained the highest percentage of the London population. Bromley’s total spending power is £795 a head, whereas Camden’s is £1,171 a head. How can that be right?

[Robert Neill]

The simple truth is that it cannot, although we have broken down some of the artificial barriers. The idea that there is a major distinction between costs in inner and outer London has gone. Many of the outer London boroughs now have much more in common with the inner London boroughs, socially and economically, than used to be the case.

My second point is about the business rates. I welcome what has been said about the review, and especially what has been said about transitional reliefs. I think that the Secretary of State has hit upon the key issue of businesses in high-cost areas such as mine. May I suggest that he considers putting the multiplier on to the consumer prices index rather than the retail prices index? That would be more logical. In the long term, we need to think about how we can capture businesses that do not have a large physical footfall, such as online competitors. We need to deal with the issue of out-of-town supermarkets being treated much more favourably than shops because of the way in which land values come into the equation. When it comes to transitional relief, perhaps we could move from the current sledging to something akin to the sliding scale that we apply to stamp duty land tax.

I hope that those are constructive suggestions that can be implemented in the future.