Post Office Horizon: Compensation and Legislation

Sarah Olney Excerpts

Monday 26th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank the right hon. Lady for all her work on this subject and on the infected blood scandal. I contributed to that work as a Back Bencher, and I understand that £400 million has been paid out in interim compensation, but I know she will not rest until all the people she represents get full and final compensation.

On overturned convictions, not everything is within our gift. We are summarily overturning convictions en masse, and we hope to do that very quickly. We plan to table legislation next month, and we hope to overturn all the convictions by July. That will open the door to compensation through the two different routes. We are somewhat at the mercy of claims being submitted, which can take time. The £600,000 route is much quicker. I cannot say when the general election will be, so I cannot answer yes to the right hon. Lady’s specific question, but I very much hope we will do so. Our original date was August, and we hope to get everybody compensated by the end of this year. We will do everything we can to ensure that is the case.

[Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)]

We understand why the legislation to overturn convictions must be limited, but we have heard today from the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) and the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Duncan Baker) about convictions that were secured through other systems and other prosecutors. What assessment has been made of the likely number of people who have been wrongfully convicted outside the boundaries that have been set? What might be made available for people who want to bring their own appeals against wrongful convictions but who cannot make use of the forthcoming legislation?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

It is fair to say that we can all now see a significant body of evidence showing that these were wrongful convictions, which is why we are acting in this unprecedented way. If the hon. Lady is referring to the Capture cases, we do not have that body of evidence thus far. We think the DWP cases are a different cohort because of the evidential standard. We are acting in this way because we do not think the evidential standard for Horizon was of the right level, and clearly a number of different factors were involved in these convictions. The DWP cases are different. There are around 70 to 100 cases in the DWP cohort, which means that the vast majority of the 983 convictions will be overturned by this legislation.