Post Office and Horizon Software

Paul Scully Excerpts

Thursday 5th March 2020 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr McCabe.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (Lucy Allan) on securing this important debate about the Criminal Cases Review Commission’s review of the convictions. As we heard, there has been a lot of human cost to what has happened over the past few years, and as the new Post Office Minister, I will dedicate my time to ensuring that we can see this through, keeping the Post Office on its toes, so that we come to a proper conclusion that means something to the postmasters who have suffered in the past. We also want to give confidence to the postmasters of the future about their ability to work in the network.

I am responding to the debate, rather than a Justice Minister, because, as I suspected, the debate has widened beyond the CCRC part of the situation. I hope to respond more fully to those wider points.

The hon. Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) asked what hope we can give to the victims about timescales. That will obviously depend on the complexity of each case so, yes, although we want to get this dealt with as soon as possible—it has without doubt been going on a long time—just having a tick-box approach would not be fair on those postmasters or give the answers that we need to move forward.

[Lucy Allan]

Does the Minister agree that the convictions should be treated as a group? They should be overturned as a group, with a common theme, rather than individually, case by case, which would make it a much longer process.

[Paul Scully]

I will come back to my hon. Friend’s point in a little more detail, but the way in which our legal system works means that, at the moment, we cannot do that. The CCRC can analyse the cases that come before it as a group, and it still needs to do a lot of forensic accounting, but the Court of Appeal can only deal with each case individually. The legal structures that we have at the moment prevent just one single hearing with a view to taking on board all the people who have gone through this process.

[Maria Eagle]

Will the Minister give way?

[Paul Scully]

I will give way briefly—the hon. Lady must be quick, or I will not cover things.

[Maria Eagle]

Will the Minister undertake that the Government will take steps to ensure that those who pleaded guilty will have a chance to have their convictions overturned, because that normally would not be the case?

[Paul Scully]

I thank the hon. Lady for making that point. I was going to cover it because, as she said, ordinarily those who had pleaded guilty would not be able to do that in the system. The whole point about the CCRC system is that we can allow those people who were found guilty to have their cases reviewed—among the cases that went through, 46 people did indeed plead guilty. I can assure her about that.

Clearly, a lot of the speech I have in front of me talks about the post office network and how important it is for this country and our communities but, begging the House’s forbearance, we do not need me to cover that. We all know what a great job that post offices do for our communities and, therefore, what a great job postmasters do for our communities, so I will stick to the questions that have been asked and where we will go.

The Post Office has accepted that it got things wrong—it clearly did, and we have heard that in stark measure today. I am pleased that on 11 December we had a comprehensive resolution to the litigation, following several days of challenging and ultimately successful mediation, but there is an ongoing process. Some Members talked about the settlement, and clearly a number of people who had shortfalls in the past were not part of that group litigation, so there will be an ongoing process that the Post Office will announce shortly. I hope that some of the other cases will be able to be raised in that.

We heard about the financial and emotional suffering that impacted postmasters over so many years. Settling the long-running litigation, therefore, is so important. The Government will challenge the Post Office and its new chief executive proactively. I will ensure that happens.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Will the Minister give way?

[Paul Scully]

I will not just at the minute, because I want to make some progress.

I spoke to Nick Read, the new CEO, and what I found refreshing about that conversation was that this guy had been chief executive of Nisa, the association of independent supermarkets, so he already gets the relationship, the fact that he is working with people who own individual independent shops. They were self-employed people, so that relationship is similar in some ways to the Post Office relationship with sub-postmasters. Rather than treating them as de facto employees, he understands the nature of their micro-businesses within the wider network.

[Karl Turner]

Given that the Minister had an opportunity to speak to the new chief executive, I wonder whether the Minister and indeed the new chief executive of Post Office Ltd support an independent, judge-led inquiry. The Government need to support that, as does the Post Office.

[Paul Scully]

We will certainly look at how we can keep the Post Office on its toes in future and at how to look back to learn the lessons—

[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Paul Scully]

I will not for now, because I must give my hon. Friend the Member for Telford a minute at the end.

I do not want to step on the toes of the CCRC’s investigation or of the things that are happening at the moment. Clearly, however, we need to ensure that lessons are learned. Over the coming days, we will look to see what more we can do.

I want to cover the CCRC cases specifically. The litigation that concluded with a judgment on 16 December last year only resolved the civil case—it cannot deal with criminal matters. Claimants with convictions are therefore seeking to have those convictions overturned by going through a process with the CCRC, which has the power to refer cases to the Court of Appeal. The independent CCRC plays a vital and valuable role in maintaining confidence in the criminal justice system. It is important to pay tribute to it for its process. The key role of the commission is to investigate cases in which people have been convicted and have unsuccessfully appealed, but believe that they have been wrongly convicted or incorrectly sentenced.

The CCRC received 57 applications, all of which are being reviewed—the first 20 in 2015 and the most recent 22 following the settlement in the civil case in December 2019. A small number of those applicants pleaded guilty at the magistrates court and, normally, they would have no ordinary route of appeal, but the CCRC provides a way to ensure that we can go through those cases. The CCRC has a team of three case review managers working on the cases, supported by a group leader, a commissioner and other advisory staff. They have obtained and are reviewing thousands of pages of material from the Post Office and other public bodies, and expert forensic accountants have been instructed, with the substantial task of examining transaction data from a sample branch.

[Gill Furniss]

I fear that the Minister does not get it. He is still parroting exactly what has been said by previous Ministers to me. If this had happened to him, and he had lost everything and had his reputation done, he would want an independent judge-led inquiry. In this Chamber, we have all made it very clear that that must be the outcome.

[Paul Scully]

I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s intervention, but she used up a lot of my time. Specifically, we are talking about the CCRC. I want to ensure that I leave my hon. Friend the Member for Telford some seconds at the end. I will continue to look at that. We will continue to ensure that sub-postmasters can feel that they will have justice, recompense and the confidence to move forward.