Post Office Court of Appeal Judgment

Marion Fellows Excerpts

Tuesday 27th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

I thank the Father of the House for his comments. There is no sense that this inquiry is glossy in any sense. Sir Wyn will get the technical support that he needs to understand exactly the points that my hon. Friend makes, including the testimony in the court cases. In the call for evidence, there is an opportunity to listen to the magazines that he referred to, including Computer Weekly, and other journalists who have covered this.

[Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP) [V]]

I thank the Minister for advance sight of his statement. He will hear from both sides of the House, and we are all going to be beating the same drum, but I do not apologise for repetition in this important statement.

The Minister stated that the chair of Post Office Ltd has apologised, but I note with regret that there is no direct apology from this Government. Yet again, this Government are acting as though the Post Office has absolutely nothing to do with them. I remind the Minister that the Government are the single shareholder in Post Office Ltd and civil servants sit on the board, and therefore the Government must apologise—in fact, the Prime Minister should apologise.

The Court of Appeal’s decision shows that there has been a devastating failure by Post Office Ltd during Paula Vennells’ leadership. She should be stripped of any titles and any additional compensation received as a result of her inexplicable decision to continue legal proceedings in spite of what was known about Horizon at the time. However, I agree with the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) that it is much more important that a statutory, judge-led inquiry is launched, so that all who failed sub-postmasters are held to account. That would be meaningful progress in the pursuit of justice, rather than a token gesture. Sir Wyn Williams will do his best and will bring forward many things that need to be looked at, but we need a statutory inquiry. Will the Minister agree to that?

Horizon has united Members across the Chamber. Will the Minister therefore agree to meet the all-party parliamentary group on post offices, which I chair, to discuss in detail and agree a way forward that will ensure justice for sub-postmasters?

Finally, sub-postmasters deserve to be fully compensated for having their lives devastated by Horizon and the injustices that followed, without detriment to the current post office network. The Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance needs to be compensated. It has not been properly compensated yet, as its legal costs swallowed up any compensation that it received at the time. Will the Minister agree to cover the legal costs of the 555 sub-postmasters involved in civil action against Post Office Ltd and all costs accrued by Post Office Ltd in payment of compensation?

[Paul Scully]

The Department is indeed the single shareholder in the Post Office. This has been going on for so long that we have gone through various models of ownership of the Post Office and various names of the Department, but throughout, we have worked with Post Office management, who have reported back about how Horizon was believed to have been working. We will continue to make sure that these questions come out of the independent inquiry, led by Sir Wyn Williams.

In terms of a statutory inquiry, I have covered some of these areas, but it is important to make sure that we are driven by the outcomes for the sub-postmasters, although we differ in some ways on the process to get there. I will happily discuss this further with the APPG.

On compensation, the group litigants have had that money in the final settlement. It is incredibly frustrating and difficult for them that they have been pushed from both sides, with the extremely high costs of their litigation and the drive from the Post Office, but we will continue to work with the Post Office to make sure that postmasters have adequate justice and see their compensation discussed in full.