Post Office Board and Governance

Oliver Heald Excerpts

Wednesday 28th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

First, may I correct the record? In response to the Chair of the Business and Trade Committee, the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne), I said that the fixed sum award was £650,000; it is £600,000.

It would be wrong to disclose an investigation into somebody’s conduct before that investigation had concluded. It would be extraordinary to do that in any work context, be it in the public or private sector. I am happy to have a conversation with the hon. Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) about the hardship fund. If he is talking about the Post Office paying salaries to postmasters, most postmasters are self-employed, not paid a salary directly, and have a number of different streams of income into their business. These are businesses in their own right, of course, but there is a hardship fund for certain postmasters in certain situations.

[Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)]

I echo the comments about the Minister and his assiduous work on this issue, both as a Back Bencher and now as the Minister. Does he agree that perhaps it is necessary to look at how many people are working on the compensation scheme on the Post Office’s side? I have raised the matter with him before. A lot of it is expert work, but if anything can be done to build the resource, that would be helpful, particularly for my constituent, whom we have discussed before. On disciplinary and grievance procedures, is it not normal that they are private until the point when a decision is made?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

On the last point, my right hon. and learned Friend is absolutely right; he clearly understands these situations very well. They should of course be kept confidential, which is why it was highly unprofessional of Mr Staunton to say what he said yesterday. On my right hon. and learned Friend’s first point—I cannot remember what it was now.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Oliver Heald]

Resource—getting more lawyers in.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

We are absolutely committed to ensuring that we have the resources available to settle compensation claims quickly. Certainly, a file note that I took away from yesterday’s session was about the number of individuals looking after compensation from Addleshaw Goddard’s end, although it is turning around the offers increasingly quickly. Responses to full claims now happen within 40 days in 85% of cases. There has been an improvement. We are keen to ensure that every part of the process has the resources it needs to pay the compensation fairly and quickly.

Post Office Horizon Scandal

Oliver Heald Excerpts

Wednesday 10th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I am very much looking forward to appearing before the right hon. Gentleman’s Select Committee and hearing some challenging questions, which I would welcome. To be clear, 64% of all those affected by the scandal have received full and final compensation. He talks about the smaller cohort who have come forward in relation to convictions. Only 95 have had convictions overturned. In order to try to expedite the payment of compensation to those people, we have introduced the fixed-sum award route, which is proving very successful. I am not aware of his point about people not actually receiving the cash, but I am very happy to engage with him on that, because there is every intention that once a decision has been taken to go down the fixed-sum award route, the sum is paid pretty much instantly. I am very happy to find out what exactly is happening in those cases. Where people have gone down a full assessment route, that is understandably more complex, as various considerations about loss, financial forensic information, health and reputational loss—a key facet in most of these cases—will be taken into account.

The right hon. Gentleman asked for a date. We have always intended to deliver all the compensation by August this year, and that is still the case. We would like to do it more rapidly, and for many people we will do it more rapidly, but not everything within the timescales is in our gift, because people are required to go down a full assessment route in order to compile a claim to which we can then respond. However, we have set ourselves some criteria relating to time and service levels to enable us to respond to claims in a timely fashion.

[Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for engaging with the concept of trying something innovative in order to move this process on. I think it right for the senior judiciary to be consulted, but I also think it is probably the only way to make the process move speedily. I also thank him for meeting me to discuss my constituent Mrs Jasvinder Barang, whom I have been talking about for a long time. She was one of the first to have a conviction overturned, more than three years ago, but she is still waiting for her full, individually assessed compensation. Can anything more be done to enable her case finally to be dealt with, such as providing extra legal resources or assessors, and can the Minister give me any sort of timescale?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

It was a pleasure to meet my right hon. and learned Friend yesterday, and on other occasions, to talk about Mrs Jasvinder Barang. As he is aware, people whose convictions have been overturned can choose between two routes: the individual assessment of claim or the fixed-sum award, the latter being a much more rapid route because individual assessments can be complicated. While I cannot speak about the point that a specific case has reached, I will be happy to return to my right hon. and learned Friend on the issue.

One of the benefits of the fixed-sum award route is that those who choose it do not need either the resources required for their own legal representation or the resources to be used on our side, or the Post Office side, for the assessment of claims. I am happy to continue to work with my right hon. and learned Friend and with the advisory board to try to make the whole process more streamlined and more rapid, which is a challenge that we will go on trying to meet whenever we can.