Post Office and Horizon Software
Debate between Ian Paisley and Andrew Bridgen(4 years, 2 months ago)
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Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Telford (Lucy Allan) on her effective and efficient introduction to the debate. All parts of the United Kingdom have been affected by this utterly disgraceful scandal. Postmasters up and down the country and across in Northern Ireland have been affected. Whether our constituencies are rural or have large towns, all hon. Members know how important central post office services are to our constituents. Post offices take on an even more significant role when banks withdraw from our constituencies, so the reputation of the people in the post office is so important.
My uncle was a postmaster in Dundonald. Although, thankfully, he was not caught up in this situation, he often talked about how the system caused many people in the post office to work under an atmosphere of fear in case it did not tally and was not right. They saw what was happening to colleagues of sound reputation and how their lives were being destroyed by what was going on. The injustice done to more than 500 postmasters is all the more duplicitous given how central post offices and the standing of the workers in them are to our community.
After the judgment was made in December, my constituent Mr Graham came to me to outline the problems that he has gone through. I will not recite the details, as the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) has eloquently put on record one specific example, and we have heard other examples of individuals.
I salute the fortitude of the campaigners. One can imagine people putting their heads down and saying, “Let’s just hope this goes away,” but they have stood up and fought, because they have suffered a personal injustice that means that they want the matter to be put right. Their reputations have been ruined and their family’s lives have been completely disrupted, yet they have faced the injustice.
Andrew Bridgen
Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the Post Office was given prosecution powers, which meant that the prosecutions it brought did not have to go through the Crown Prosecution Service for review, as normal prosecutions would? It abused those powers, as far as I am concerned.