Post Office Horizon: Redress

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Jonathan Reynolds)]

With your permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to update the House on the Government’s response to the Horizon scandal. How appropriate it is to see you, a former Business and Trade Minister, in the Chair.

My priority as the new Secretary of State is to ensure that victims of the scandal receive the redress that they deserve. Over the past few weeks, I have begun meeting with some of the postmasters whose lives have been so badly damaged by those events. Their stories are harrowing, but their resilience and steadfastness in seeking justice are inspiring. I am also grateful for their candour in sharing insights on how the various compensation schemes can be improved.

May I make a personal point, Madam Deputy Speaker? I know I speak for hon. Members across the House when I say that it fills me with sadness to have to stand here today and address such a significant failure of the state. The role of Government must be to do right, seek justice and defend the oppressed, yet Governments have too often had to be forced into action by brave, tireless and resilient campaigning. Once again, I pay tribute to the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance, and to campaigners such as Jo Hamilton, Lee Castleton and Sir Alan Bates—incidentally, I add my personal congratulations to Sir Alan on his recent wedding. Without their tireless efforts, justice may well never have been done in this case. As we stand here today, in the shadow not just of this scandal but those of Grenfell, infected blood and several more, I know that it is the firm conviction of everyone in this House that we must do better. This is an issue not of politics but of justice.

In that spirit, I cannot speak of the new Government’s work to address this wrong without again acknowledging and appreciating the work of Lord Arbuthnot and the new Lord Beamish—formerly the Member for North Durham—as well as that of my friend the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) as Minister. The announcements that we make today are built on their efforts to hasten redress payments and quash wrongful convictions.

Earlier in the summer, the new Government announced the launch of the Horizon conviction redress scheme. I am pleased to report that the first payments have been issued and good progress made on processing the claims received to date. As was the case for the group litigation order compensation scheme, the Department will be setting a target to make, within 40 working days, the first offer to 90% of those who have submitted a full claim. Additionally, the Post Office has now settled over 50% of cases on the overturned convictions scheme, with 57 out of 111 cases fully settled. The Department has also now received over 50% of GLO claims and settled over 200 of them.

Progress has also been made on implementing the £75,000 fixed-sum awards on the Horizon shortfall scheme. As of 30 August, over 1,350 claimants who had previously settled below the £75,000 threshold have been offered top-ups to bring them to that amount, and the Post Office will shortly begin making fixed-sum offers to new claimants. Those interventions will have a significant impact on ensuring that postmasters can access redress swiftly and simply. However, we recognise that this option will not suit everyone and does not address all the concerns raised by postmasters and their representatives. That is why we are taking further action today.

The Horizon compensation advisory board recommended last year that we introduce an independent appeals process for the Horizon shortfall scheme. Today I am pleased to announce that we have accepted that recommendation. That appeals process will enable claimants who have settled their claim under the HSS to have their case reassessed, with the benefit of any new information that they were not able to include in the original application. It will be delivered in-house by my Department, and we will apply the lessons learned from redress schemes to date to ensure that the process is easy for postmasters to engage with and that outcomes are delivered at pace. We will announce further details in the coming months.

There will be no obligation for postmasters to appeal their settlement, and no doubt many will be content that their claims have been resolved fairly. I know that financial redress will never fully compensate victims for their suffering, but we want to help bring some closure to postmasters as soon as we can, which is why we will establish the new appeals process as quickly as possible.

In summary, the new Government will do everything in our power to deliver justice for postmasters, to bring them closure and to ensure that such a national tragedy is never allowed to happen again. I commend this statement to the House.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

No doubt that statement will mean a lot to many constituents, including those in my constituency of Sussex Weald. I call the shadow Secretary of State.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for his response, and for the tone and collaboration that we tried to model when we were sitting in opposite places in this Chamber. I believe that helped advance what was a difficult piece of legislation to put on the statute book, particularly during a wash-up process, but was the only real vehicle for delivering what we all wanted to see. He has asked me a number of questions; all are absolutely reasonable, and I am happy to respond to them.

In a situation where someone has already received a top-up to £75,000, the hon. Member is right to say that the appeals scheme would not be available. It is a choice between the two best methods of redress and satisfaction for the postmaster. I recognise what the hon. Member has said—that, given the issues with the speed of delivering redress, having that system clogged up would not be satisfactory to anyone—but I think that both options represent reasonable ways forward for people who are in that position.

The hon. Member asked specifically about the remit of the appeals scheme, and I have listened to what he said. The reason we are announcing today that we will take this scheme forward, but will then consult with postmasters to make sure the eligibility criteria are correct—he asked about the timeline, which is just a matter of months—is to make sure that we do not have to revisit the scheme, and can all be satisfied that crucially, postmasters themselves have confidence in it. That is the intention, so I am grateful to the hon. Member for his comments about the remit of the scheme.

The hon. Member asked about legal representation. Yes, that is part of the scheme, again learning lessons from where we have been in the past. As he knows, most of the schemes have now been adjusted to reflect that, but I absolutely take his point about new announcements.

I want to be clear about the difficulty that has existed with the Horizon convictions redress scheme. To update the House, I will give the hon. Member the figures: so far, 180 letters have gone out from the Ministry of Justice. Including those letters and the people who have registered with the Government who perhaps have not all received a letter yet, there are now 276 claimants. I will make the appeal again: while we are doing everything we can with Ministry of Justice colleagues to make sure those letters go out, people can proactively register with the Government. To be frank, this has been a frustration. When the hon. Member and I were having our conversations when we sat in different places in the Chamber, neither of us perhaps knew the state of the database and the records, and—having passed the legislation—the frustrations we would face in getting to people. However, doing so is clearly integral to sorting this out.

Finally, the hon. Member asked about the scheme reviewer. If I may, I will come back to him on that; I will write to him to tell him the up-to-date situation.

In summary, I say again that we will work with all parties and all postmasters to get redress at pace, and to learn the lessons from where things have not gone well in the past, to make sure new announcements carry the confidence of the people who really need to have confidence in them.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Members should continue to bob if they want to be called. I am going to call everybody, as I know the Secretary of State also wants to respond to everybody. I call the previous Chair of the Business and Trade Committee.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North) (Lab)]

I add my congratulations to Sir Alan Bates and Lady Suzanne on what looked like a very happy day.

I welcome what the Secretary of State has set out for the House this afternoon. When our Select Committee reported back in March, we said that trust in the Post Office was fundamentally broken and that the appeals scheme needed to be independent. This is an important step in that direction, but sub-postmasters have told me this morning that there is still a problem with the time it takes to get offers back when an offer is contested. The claimant’s lawyers have a fixed amount of time to put in a claim; when that claim is contested, it is taking far too long for Addleshaws, in particular, to come back and provide a second offer. What comfort can sub-postmasters take from the Secretary of State’s announcement today? This whole House agrees that justice delayed is justice denied.

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, who will, I hope, see his work as Chair of the Select Committee reflected in this announcement—specifically, that we are setting the target to issue initial offers to 90% of claims within 40 working days of receiving a full claim. On the point of how that is defined, a full claim is one where, following legal assessment, it is deemed that it does not require any further evidence to assess the claim further. Once that is in, the targets, which his Select Committee rightly called for to make sure redress is delivered at speed, are part of this process.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the Liberal Democrats spokesperson.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I thank the Secretary of State for sight of the statement and, indeed, for his decision to come to the House at this early stage to update us on progress.

I think it is worth saying that we are dealing with a catastrophic injustice that has affected hundreds upon hundreds of families—people who have paid with their livelihoods and, in some cases, tragically, with their lives. There is a complete lack of trust in Government, of whatever political colour, over the last 20 or so years because of this. That is why his answer to the questions raised already about the number of sub-postmasters who have been paid interim payments—only six, on the last data available, under the Horizon convictions redress scheme—is such a key issue. Likewise, as we have heard, the latest data show that fewer than one in six wrongly accused sub-postmasters have received letters confirming the quashing of their convictions.

Given this lack of trust—this mistrust—in Governments of whatever kind and in the Post Office management as a whole, would the Secretary of State also turn his thoughts to rebuilding trust in the Post Office management and in the network in the long term? In the eyes of the public, the brand of the post office is solid, but in the eyes of those who work in the industry and those who may come in as sub-postmasters, it is far less so. We were delighted in my constituency recently to see the reopening of post offices in Shap and Kirby Stephen. It was wonderful to see those two reopenings, but in Grasmere, Hawkshead and Stavely we are without post offices. In all three of those cases, it is in part because the former sub-postmaster, while not always directly affected by the Horizon scandal, but with disgust at the Post Office management, has left the industry and left those villages without a post office.

What can the Secretary of State say to this House and to the current cadre of sub-postmasters, and those who may want to join that cadre, to encourage them? Will he focus on pastoral care, financial support and other things that will bring about a package of inducements and enticements, so that those people who have felt let down so badly by Post Office Ltd management over the last 20 years will feel that the Post Office is something they can commit their lives to for the good of our communities and country as a whole?