Post Office and Horizon Software

Debate between Lucy Allan and Jason McCartney

Thursday 5th March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Lucy Allan]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very important point, and it is absolutely right that those sub-postmasters who paid money they did not owe to the Post Office—simply on the basis of their tills not balancing, which was due to a flaw in the Horizon IT system—should be fully compensated for those losses, not to mention those they then suffered as consequence.

Actually, Fujitsu has a role to play in this process as well, because the judge made clear in his judgment that he doubted the veracity of some of the information he was given, and he subsequently made a referral to the Director of Public Prosecutions to query that information. There is a separate debate to be had on that issue, which we could have at a later stage.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

May I praise my hon. Friend for her campaign against this miscarriage of justice? I and many other MPs are here in Westminster Hall today on behalf of our constituents. I am here on behalf of just three of the victims of this scandal: Gillian and Graham Howard, and Maria Lockwood. There are other victims across the country. Will my hon. Friend continue to work with me and other MPs so that we get justice and full redress for the victims of this miscarriage of justice?

[Lucy Allan]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, and he is absolutely right that it is now down to us as parliamentarians to put right this miscarriage of justice. I am grateful for the support of many MPs from all parties, but I am also grateful, as I said earlier, for the incredible campaigning work that was done long before I came to this place.

I will make just one more point before I move on to the main issues I want to raise. I will put on the record that the judge handed down findings that confirmed that bugs, errors and defects did indeed exist in the Horizon IT accounting system, and that these defects had caused financial discrepancies, for which postmasters were held accountable. That is a very important finding and I am pleased to place it on the record.

The purpose of this debate, now that the litigation is complete, is to highlight the need to find a mechanism that will allow those Post Office workers affected by this scandal to put the nightmare behind them and move forward with their lives. Of course, until convictions are quashed and criminal records expunged, it is very hard to see how they can possibly do that.

So many of these decent people were pillars of their communities, working in a respected role in what was once a respected institution. They speak of the way that the wrongful allegations of theft and fraud, and their wrongful imprisonment, affected their reputations in their community, causing a deep sense of stigma, social isolation and shame for themselves and their families. For some of them, that was too much to bear.