Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Bill

Paul Scully Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 20th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully (Sutton and Cheam) (Con)]

It has been a privilege to sit here listening to the amazing contributions from the Secretary of State, the shadow Secretary of State—I thank the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) for his kind words—and all the other Members whom we have heard from and will hear from after my own short contribution.

As we have just been reminded by the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows), we have been coming here time and again for years and years, often repeating ourselves—but we have to repeat ourselves: that is the point. The shadow Secretary of State talked about that powerful ITV drama, “Mr Bates vs the Post Office”, and how it prompted a public outcry. I became a Minister in February 2020, shortly after the group litigation order case that was featured towards the end of that drama, and I am pretty sure that the email Alan Bates was typing to send to the postal affairs Minister was sent to me. He was sending quite a large invoice, which I politely declined to pay at the time.

I had pages and pages of Mr Justice Fraser’s judgment to look at and reflect on. I was in a different position from my predecessors, who maybe should or maybe should not have sat there and read the runes and seen what was going on—why there were so many people involved, and why the number of prosecutions was going up and up over 20 years. What I did have were those pages of damning judgment from Mr Justice Fraser.

I think that the public outcry that arose from the ITV programme has given power to the current postal affairs Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake), who has been working tirelessly. He has read out a timetable showing the incredible amount of work that he has been doing since I left that role. I know that he is a man who understands what justice and fairness look like following his experience of financial scandals such as the miscarriage of justice at HBOS Reading. He was a constant “come to me” in that role. If anyone was going to delve into this work, it was always going to be my hon. Friend. I think that the documentary helped him to pull some of the levers that junior Ministers sometimes need to pull in order to be heard, and to enable us to swim through the treacle in other Departments in order to get things done, so more power to his elbow.

That brings me to why we are doing this in the first place. The central issue is often seen as a software failure. Even in the documentary it was a deliberate dramatic plot device to show a computer sitting in the corner of the post office, blinking away like a slightly alien life force that was draining the money away. But it was not a software failure; it was a human failure. We all know that software goes wrong—we remember the millennium bug—but the problem here was group-think and people doubling down for reputational management, which was pushing back and making sure that the postmasters believed that they were the only ones experiencing these issues. We know now, and we quickly came to know, that hundreds of people were in the same position.

The fact that this was a human failure means that we need a human solution. We have to be humans first and politicians second. The hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw spoke of watching grown men trying not to cry. I am not the best at doing that myself, although I am not directly involved. I recently attended the presentation of the GG2 Asian awards round the corner from here, and to my surprise I saw Hasmukh Shingadia, Vijay Parekh, Vipin Patel and Seema Misra. Members may remember Seema’s story in particular; she was pregnant at the time when she was charged in West Byfleet. Those people were receiving awards and recognition, and it was lovely to see the outpouring of support for them in the room.

[Shailesh Vara]

Those are the people who received the awards, but does my hon. Friend agree that an award is due for every single sub-postmaster?

[Paul Scully]

For sure. We cannot do enough for these people. They have been cast out as pariahs in their communities. They have been charged, they have been put in prison, they have lost houses, families and health, because of a body that is ultimately owned by the state. We, as a collective body, have destroyed these people’s lives. There is not enough that we can do for them.

We are looking at what is in the Bill and at all the other compensation schemes as well, but we have to act. We are having to conduct this mass exoneration in the first place not just that the wheels of justice turn slowly, but because these people are so triggered, whether by PTSD or simply by total mistrust of the system, that they do not want to go through another process with someone in authority saying kind words, warm words, and then letting them down for the second time—or worse. It is actions, not words, on which we will be judged. When I stood up at that Dispatch Box, I knew that whatever I talked about, I could not expect the postmasters to trust me. I knew that they would trust me on the basis of my actions, and I know that my hon. Friend the current Minister feels the same way.

I welcome the Bill. It is important for us not to let perfection be the enemy of the good. Let us get this done, because we cannot come on to the second Bill and these people’s compensation until they have been exonerated—not pardoned, for they have done nothing wrong. Let us make sure that we accentuate that as well. That is why I am keen for us to rush this legislation through. Yes, we need to scrutinise it, but it is a short Bill, so we can do that quickly, and then we can get on to that life-changing money that I—that we—keep talking about, and try to restore some semblance of their lives to those whose lives have been destroyed.

This is Second Reading, and we will get into the specifics in Committee and on Report, but let me offer a few possible solutions. The solution that my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Sir David Davis) talked about earlier—bringing back judges—would at least add capacity to the system. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), who is no longer in his place, previously said something similar when he said that we do not necessarily need this kind of law, which is, frankly, trampling quite a lot on the independence of the judiciary. That is why the Government had to move really carefully, which is one reason for some of the concerns raised by the Business and Trade Committee about the people who have not been able to go to appeal, or who will not be included because they have been refused leave to appeal or have failed in their appeal.

There is still more that we can do for victims of this scandal. They will be able to appeal at another time, but maybe there is something we can do, in the way that my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst suggested in their contributions, to accelerate their cases and not just let them have to go through the same situation that they would otherwise have done. May I respectfully suggest that that may be the case for Scotland and, indeed, Northern Ireland? I am not an expert or a lawyer, and it is not for me to give advice, but it occurs to me that if the proposed amendment does not go through and the territorial extent stays as it is—that is for this place to judge in other stages of the Bill—perhaps there are other methods that we can use to make sure that postmasters in Scotland and Northern Ireland do not receive compensation more slowly.

We all want this to be done as quickly as possible. The postal affairs Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton, has talked about getting the majority of the compensation delivered by August. Clearly, that is not going to happen, because we have only just got this Bill through, so we will have to exonerate the postmasters. However, if we can get the Horizon shortfall scheme and the rest of the GLO largely done by that time, and restore these people’s lives to some sense of normality, then we can do the rest of it. We still have not finished, because we have to get Sir Wyn Williams’s report back and get the investigation done.

Some previous contributors to the debate said that it might take weeks or months to deliver the compensation, and that there might be complications. I remember speaking to the solicitors who represented the 555 people involved the GLO. I said, “If we gave you lots and lots of money and you distributed it, how long would it take?” The answer was about 18 months. It is about how we apportion the money and work it through—the same kinds of things that the advisory committee has been wrestling with—and the solicitors would have to do that internally. It is not a matter of giving people life-changing sums of money in one block and then everybody is okay; it is about making sure that we can work through the system, which will inevitably take time.

When I made Sir Wyn Williams’s investigation non-statutory, it was to get speed into the system to make sure that we did not have to “lawyer up”, as it was described. I always wanted money to go to the victims, not to lawyers talking about the same things again. As I say, if we can get the compensation out, we have to get the answers. We keep on talking in this place about the Horizon scandal, the infected blood scandal and any number of scandals, and I keep hearing people say that it must never happen again. Do you know what? It usually does. Why? Because we talk and talk about it, but we do not learn the true lessons or get the answers.

[Sir David Davis]

One of the things we need to consider, both now and later, is how we stop this happening again. I reiterate the point I made in my speech: when the inquiry looked at it, there was systemic failure right across the board. My hon. Friend is right to say it was a human failure, a system failure and an organisational failure. The Post Office is an arm’s length department. What we are finding with this and other cases is that arm’s length departments are disasters when it comes to correcting mistakes and delivering accountability. Does he agree that we should think about that when we are doing this?

[Paul Scully]

As usual, my right hon. Friend is absolutely on point. In our Department, we had a number of arm’s length organisations, which is true of other Government Departments as well. They are representatives of the Government, and we elected politicians or the Government will inevitably be held accountable; if there is no direct relationship, it is very difficult to speak from the Dispatch Box with enough authority and information to be able to take that accountability.

[Shailesh Vara]

I commend my hon. Friend for a very passionate and committed speech. The point about learning lessons is crucial. I fear, as do others in this Chamber, that in the old times we would say that the file is sitting on a shelf, collecting dust; nowadays, it would be archived and just stay there. Does my hon. Friend agree that serious attention needs to be paid to ensuring that we learn from this episode and the countless other occasions when things go wrong? There needs to be some sort of set-up to make sure that other bodies—voluntary organisations or those at arm’s length—actually take on board what has been said.

[Paul Scully]

Absolutely; that is a really good case in point. I hope my right hon. Friend will be in the next Parliament to help drive this through. I have said I am stepping down, so I will not see Sir Wyn Williams’s final report—not from these Benches, anyway. I hope the House takes it to heart and drives through the lessons learned.

I recommend a book by Matthew Syed, called “Black Box Thinking”. He compares accidents in the NHS with accidents and near accidents in the airline industry. With aircraft, even just a near miss gets learned from not only by the airline in question; it has to be passed on to every airline in the world. There is a collective sense of learning in the industry.

[Chris Stephens]

I have enjoyed the hon. Gentleman’s considered speech so far. When he was a Minister, did he have a potential solution for what my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) mentioned: the Asda employees in Scotland who have been caught up in this scandal?

[Paul Scully]

I did not, but the issue is worth looking at. This is a human scandal, and it is not just about the postmasters who were directly affected. I am not sure how we start to unpick that as it gets wider and wider, but I hope and trust that the Government will reflect on it as we do the wider learning.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I was tempted to intervene on two of the interventions I heard, but that is impossible here. It is certainly possible that the person who had the contractual relationship with the business concerned, such as a small post office, could submit a claim to the Horizon shortfall scheme, which could include amounts that should be paid to individuals who worked for them so that they can be compensated through that route.

Given that we are looking at public sector or quasi-public sector organisations, it would be dangerous to assume that there is a problem with governance. As my hon. Friend said, from the Back Benches I dealt with a number of scandals that involved private sector organisations, such as Lloyds and the Royal Bank of Scotland—we saw years of obfuscation around similar kinds of problems. We should not jump to conclusions. We should probably let the inquiry report first, and have a debate from there.

[Paul Scully]

My hon. Friend makes a really good point. To follow on from the intervention from my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden, it is difficult for us as parliamentarians, and doubly difficult for Government Ministers, to speak with authority on behalf of a public organisation—rather than the private sector, which we do not speak on behalf of—without necessarily having all the facts, because there is only so much we can drill into.

Obviously, we want to right the wrongs of the past and make sure as best we can that the people’s situations are restored so that they can have a future for themselves and their families. There is also the case of the Post Office itself. The Post Office still has more branches than the banks and building societies put together. I know that there have been closures in certain areas—that is a whole other debate, perhaps for Westminster Hall—but none the less, the Post Office has a massive impact on people’s lives, especially in rural communities. We must not forget that when we are looking at the Post Office, its brand and its overall aim. This is not a reflection on the current management or anything like that. We have to give the Post Office a future.

[Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his work on this issue and other issues protecting local post offices and looking at the range of services they can offer to the community. Has he had any further reflections about the role of post offices in communities? I also want to thank him specifically for the work he did to support my constituency. Perhaps, now that he has left the Government, he can tell the House his own thoughts on post offices as part of the local community and the potential for new services to be based in them.

[Paul Scully]

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s kind words regarding when we worked together on his constituency issue. We ask the Post Office to do a lot of work of social value and economic value, and those often conflict. It is difficult to get that right. We cannot ask the Post Office to turn a good profit as if it was just another bank, as well as to do the things we sometimes expect as parliamentarians, especially when we talk about our own constituencies and those in more rural areas. That is something we have to give careful consideration to. My original point is that while we are righting the wrongs of the past, we have to remember that this is an important organisation for our country and our constituents and we have to give it a future as well.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Jones]

People might think that because the system is not Horizon, the Bill does not apply to them, but the cases I am dealing with show that there was an injustice. I have spoken to individuals who went to prison. The computer systems were not same, but the Post Office showed the same attitude in the way it went at individuals. It did not believe the postmasters—they were going to be found guilty, come what may.

[Paul Scully]

That approach to the investigation and the presumption of guilt was what my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Katherine Fletcher) was referring to in relation to her constituents and Royal Mail, as it was before ownership had transferred. The case did not get as far as prosecution, but investigation officers, the same kind of people that we have seen at the public inquiry, made that presumption.