Post Office Horizon IT Scandal: Compensation

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Tuesday 18th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

Nine hundred prosecutions—all the postmasters involved have their own stories of dreams crushed, careers ruined, families destroyed, reputations smashed and lives lost. Innocent people have been bankrupted and imprisoned. This may well be the largest miscarriage of justice in our country’s history, and I pay tribute to Members on all sides of this House who have worked for justice, none more so than my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones). I also thank the advisory board and Sir Wyn for their work, as well as the Minister for the constructive approach he has taken on this issue to date.

However, as Sir Wyn’s interim report makes clear, the compensation schemes for postmasters are a mess. The commitment to give fair compensation should apply to all postmasters. Sir Wyn specifically recommends that terms of reference should enable the monitoring of individual cases. Can the Minister say that he will act on that recommendation, and when can we expect him to respond in full to the report’s recommendations, including maximising the use of the Horizon compensation advisory board and providing clarity about the tax status of compensation payments? Can he also provide a final figure for claims that have been made to the historical shortfall scheme and how much the Government anticipate the final compensation will cost?

I also ask the Minister what he is going to do about Post Office management. As the only shareholder in the Post Office, does his Department take responsibility for addressing those management issues? The leadership team accepted bonuses for their work on the inquiry, which is just unacceptable. When will the Minister deal with this? Sub-postmasters have had their lives ruined: they must be confident that lessons will be learned from those failures. Sadly, it seems that the Post Office has failed to do so.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I add my thanks to the advisory board and the right hon. Member for North Durham, but also to Lord Arbuthnot—who is a tremendous campaigner in this area—and other individuals such as Professor Moorhead, who we were keen to include on the advisory board. I also thank campaigners on both sides of this House who made sure that the issue came to light and that action was taken to address these horrendous situations.

On individual cases, as I said to the right hon. Member for North Durham, we are looking at Sir Wyn’s recommendation. There is an appeals mechanism, and condition D of the terms of reference does not prevent us from looking to make sure that claims have been settled fairly and fully. That is something we are looking at and we will respond in due course. On the tax position, as I said earlier, we have provided an extra £26 million to address that. We are keen to make sure that not only all the settlements, but all the tax treatments of those settlements are fair across the board. On the totals for the historical shortfall scheme, we have made offers totalling over £100 million in value and £72.8 million has been accepted, so we have made good progress, but we are keen to make further progress on the remaining claims that are yet to be accepted.

On the Post Office management, there have been a number of unacceptable matters relating to what has happened in the governance of the Post Office. That is why we put in place a governance review, which is being conducted by a very competent legal firm. It is due to report by the end of this month. We will study that review carefully and respond accordingly.