Post Office Horizon Scandal

Robert Buckland Excerpts

Wednesday 10th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his work; he has been a constant campaigner on behalf of his constituents, and has contributed to every debate I have seen on this issue. However, I think his challenge is a little unfair. As he knows, I worked on the issue as a Back Bencher, and as a Minister I have made it my No.1 priority for the past 15 months. This is not something that we have just picked up, and he can see how much we have done.

Of course, during this process we have learnt things, and things have happened that we did not expect. We did not expect it to be so difficult for people to overturn convictions after the overturning of the first convictions, and we did not expect it to be so difficult to assess the damages and losses. We have tried at every point to accelerate compensation. We introduced the fixed-sum award last November, long before the TV series was broadcast, and before then there were measures involving tax treatments. We also started to look at different ways of overturning convictions long before the TV series was aired. So it is not the case that the series, excellent though it is, has resulted in these changes.

I think it is fair to say that the whole House and the whole country were shocked by what they saw on television, and that has made it easier to push certain developments forward more quickly, but I believe that we would have arrived at this position in any event. Nevertheless, I am glad we are here today moving things forward at this pace.

[Sir Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

I warmly welcome the statements from the Prime Minister and from my hon. Friend. I thank my hon. Friend for his hard work, and I am also grateful for the work of other Ministers, such as my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), in pursuing and dealing with this injustice.

The key point to bear in mind is that, owing to the number of people who have refused to come forward, Parliament has an obligation to act. In the case of existing appeals, the matter can be dealt with by the Court of Appeal in respect of the quashing of any convictions, pursuant to an Act of Parliament, but the key challenge lies in all the people who are not in the court system. Will my hon. Friend work with me and others to ensure that the system he envisages—I think he is talking about statutory declarations, which would perhaps come under section 5 of the Perjury Act 1911—is got right in order to avoid further disincentives for innocent people to clear their names and, in the words of judges up and down the country, “walk from the court without a stain on their character”?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank my right hon. and learned Friend for his work and for his advice over recent days. As he has said while we have been trying to resolve this issue, there is no perfect solution and there are going to be compromises. We are keen to reach out to the people he has identified who have not entered the system because they are deterred by the processes that they would have to go through in order to gain access to compensation. I am keen to continue to work with him on all the measures that we will need to put in place over the next few weeks to ensure that we get this right, and get it right first time.