Horizon: Compensation and Convictions

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Toby Perkins

Monday 8th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank my hon. Friend for all his work as one of my predecessors. He was an excellent postal affairs Minister—for all too brief a time, I think it is fair to say, but he did a great job, and I know some of the things he put in place in this area are important to the whole process. Of course we are working at the highest level: the Prime Minister is taking a personal interest in these matters, so I see no barrier in terms of willingness to right these wrongs from anywhere in Government, right to the highest possible level. I had a meeting with the Justice Secretary today, who offered some positive ways forward in the next few days.

I completely agree with my hon. Friend that we should all watch that programme to learn lessons about not only this particular scandal, but the potential for future scandals based on the same kind of motivations. He mentions the “The Great Post Office Scandal”, written by the excellent journalist Nick Wallis, who has been such an important part of uncovering the truth of this horrendous scandal.

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

Harjinder Singh Butoy, my constituent, not only lost his business, lost his home and was bankrupted, but had the agony of being sentenced to 18 months in prison for something he knew he had never done. Justice, for Mr Singh Butoy, is not just getting him the compensation he still waits for; it is seeing those who sat by, knowing that he was the victim of an injustice, and watched him go to prison face justice themselves. While it is absolutely crucial that the statutory inquiry takes on all the information it needs to, it is important that we get justice as quickly as possible. What can the Minister say about how we can ensure that the importance of getting all the information does not mean that this process goes on for years and years, as with other miscarriages of justice we have seen in the past?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

It is tragic to hear about what happened to Mr Singh Butoy; I thank the hon. Gentleman for his work in drawing awareness to that case. As I said, people in these situations want two things: rapid compensation and the holding to account of the people responsible. We are keen to deliver on those two key things. We want to make it easier to overturn convictions and, once that has happened—from what the hon. Gentleman has said, it seems that Mr Singh Butoy’s conviction has been overturned—we want there to be access to rapid compensation, which we can deliver through the fixed-sum award or the full assessment route.

We also want to make sure that we hold people to account. Sir Wyn Williams’s inquiry is responsible for identifying exactly what went wrong and who was responsible. It is due to report later this year; we do not want it to carry on for years, but we want to give it the time and breathing space to do its job properly and we do not want to put any artificial limits on its ability to do that. We hope that the inquiry will end this year and report shortly after. We are keen that any actions against organisations or individuals can be taken at that time.

Better Jobs and a Fair Deal at Work

Debate between Kevin Hollinrake and Toby Perkins

Wednesday 12th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

It is very interesting to follow the hon. Member for Clacton (Giles Watling), who appears to have made it all the way from Clacton to Portcullis House but not quite managed to get over the final 200 yards, which is quite an interesting metaphor for the Government’s Queen’s Speech. It promises so much, as the Government have over the last 11 years, yet, as is so often the case, there is less to it than originally meets the eye.

This is an entirely incoherent Government, and, most importantly, it is a Government who do not do what they say and who do not mean what they say. We had the stunning statistic from the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake)—I thought this was very interesting—that the gap between London and the south and the north of England is bigger than the gap between West Germany and East Germany before unification. What a stunning demonstration of the failure of the northern powerhouse, which we were all told to celebrate seven or eight years ago.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The point is that we need to put political differences aside on this issue. Decades of underinvestment have brought us here. The hon. Gentleman is trying to make a cheap political point, but that is not at all what I was saying.

[Mr Perkins]

I am making a political point because we have had a Conservative Government for 11 years and I see videos on television showing people who have decided to vote Conservative because they are fed up about the health service or about ports closing, not realising that it is the policies of a Conservative Government, which Government Members have been voting for all these years, that have caused these problems.

When we look at what is in front of us, we see, for example, the lifetime skills guarantee. The lifetime skills guarantee existed under a Labour Government. In 2013, this Government got rid of it and now they want us to celebrate their bringing back, in a less ambitious form, exactly what existed previously under Labour. We have the apprenticeships levy. Since the introduction of the apprenticeships levy, apprenticeship numbers have fallen. We have a Prime Minister who, two years ago, stood on the steps of Downing Street and said, “On social care, trust me—I’ve got a plan.” The reality is that he is now coming back and saying, “Well, let’s have a chat about it because I’d like to work together on it.” The reality is that this Government have said one thing and done another.

The Government are talking about a revolution in skills. We have had 11 years of funding cuts. We have had cuts to adult education of over 50%. They are absolutely monumental, and now the Government have the audacity to stand there and suggest that they are the way that we solve the skills crisis. Hon. Members have spoken in this debate about the productivity gap between Britain and some of our European competitors. When we have had the cuts that we have seen to work-based learning and adult education—not just to funding, but to the numbers—and the impact that the introduction of the trebling of tuition fees has had on work-based learning and on people bettering themselves, is it any wonder that we have this productivity failure in front of us?

The Queen’s Speech talks about infrastructure. HS2 is an important infrastructure project, which was envisaged under the Labour Government. Never before has there been a Government spending as much money as they are on HS2 yet simultaneously looking so unenthusiastic and so incompetent in delivering it. I firmly believe in HS2 but I wish that we had a Government who believed in it as much as I do, and they are the ones actually spending the money.

The Government have abandoned smaller businesses. The Queen’s Speech talks about increasing the amount of trade that we do with the Gulf, Africa and the Indo-Pacific. I entirely agree with that, but the reality is that we have a large market on our doorsteps and the current arrangements that we have as a result of Brexit prevent small manufacturers from being able to trade with those companies. Companies in the UK say to me that if they do not have enough for an entire lorryload to export, it is impossible for them to do so. Recently, Sir David Frost, the architect of the UK-Northern Ireland protocol, said that the protocol is not “sustainable for long”. This is a Government who in every regard are telling us one thing, failing to deliver, and then coming back and suggesting that they are the solution to the very problems they have created.

Small businesses have been left in a very difficult situation. We have seen the number of apprenticeships that small businesses are able to get involved in completely reduced as a result of the complexity of the apprenticeships system. Many small businesses have really struggled through the pandemic because their directors were excluded from the self-employment support scheme.

The self-employment scheme was great for those who qualified, but the reality is that there were many people in many sectors who carried on working right through the pandemic and were also able to pocket a very generous pay-out from the Government, but there were also 3 million people who, for a variety of different reasons, were excluded. The Government spent huge amounts of money on a scheme that missed many people for different reasons, and which simultaneously gave a huge amount of money to some people who were gratefully able to receive it, but who, it could be argued, were not necessarily the right people.

We have a Government who do not mean what they say and who do not deliver what they say they will. This Queen’s Speech is an incoherent example of all their failings.