Post Office Horizon Scandal

Debate between Robin Millar and Kevin Hollinrake

Wednesday 10th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Robin Millar (Aberconwy) (Con)]

I am grateful to the Prime Minister for his announcement and I welcome this response from the Minister. I know that a lot of work has gone into this issue, but the energy and attention he brings is well received across the House. This is the right thing to do.

Notwithstanding the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), it occurs to me that important information has emerged in evidence during the process of prosecutions so far. The Minister, if I understood his response correctly, referred to “malevolence” in behaviour. Will he ensure that whatever process unfolds will contain a mechanism by which information that would be useful for consideration in further action will be gathered and collated, given that people will not necessarily have the mechanism of a court case and a legal testing of their situation?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I am keen to engage with my hon. Friend to make sure that we get what he needs. Malevolence is the right word in this respect and it is important that we learn the lessons from that, in terms of both private prosecutions and the wider inquiry. We are very keen to do that, but of course I am happy to engage with him to make sure that we address any lessons he thinks we need to learn. This is not just a lessons-learned exercise; we want to hold people to account, but there are also lessons we can learn. It is important that we learn them, and I am happy to talk to him about what he thinks we should do, in addition to what we have set out already.

Horizon: Compensation and Convictions

Debate between Robin Millar and Kevin Hollinrake

Monday 8th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

There are three compensation schemes for good reason—it is not ideal to have three different schemes, but we are where we find ourselves. We have the Horizon shortfall scheme, the group litigation order scheme and the overturned conviction scheme, and it sounds as though the hon. Gentleman’s constituent would fit into the Horizon shortfall scheme and should be able to apply to that. I am happy to make sure that he is aware of the route that his constituent can take. In assessing financial loss, consequential losses are a part of that assessment, and it sounds as though there is a case for consequential loss in that particular case. It can certainly be something that financial compensation takes into account. With regard to the families of deceased individuals, they can still claim to the same compensation schemes and should be compensated in exactly the same manner and to exactly the same degree.

[Robin Millar (Aberconwy) (Con)]

The building on Queens Road in Craig-y-Don in my constituency, where Alan Bates served the community as sub-postmaster, is now a charity shop. It is one small reminder of the damage that has been done to lives and livelihoods across the country. I welcome the Minister’s statement and his tone. I welcome the progress that the Government are making, but I also know that he has seen the interim report from the inquiry. He has heard the mood of the House this evening, which is that a great scandal requires a great response. Does he agree with me that, in addition to prompt payment of fair compensation, now is the time to consider legislation for the overturning of unsafe convictions, to consider the powers of the Post Office and to consider Fujitsu’s status as a framework provider for Government contracts? Does he agree that we need to see justice where actual wrongdoing has occurred, and soon?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the work that he has done on this, and I share his ambition on delivering. This has been a great scandal and we need a significant response to it. Our discussions today with the Lord Chancellor were very much along the lines of attempting to do something unprecedented in this space, and we are working on that right now. I hope to give my hon. Friend something more definite in that regard in the coming days.

With regard to Fujitsu and individuals, we think it is right for the inquiry to be given time to ascertain who did what, who did not do what, and who is responsible for the scandal. When the inquiry reports in due course—it should be concluded by the end of this year, with a report hopefully soon after—we should be able to make decisions on those areas at that point. Certainly, our prosecution authorities should be able to make decisions with clearer sight of the information and the evidence that has been ascertained.

Small and Medium-sized Enterprises: Great Yarmouth

Debate between Robin Millar and Kevin Hollinrake

Wednesday 7th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Kevin Hollinrake)]

I am sorry that I cannot emulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis) by speaking without notes, but I will do my best to ad lib a little. I thank him for securing this important debate. I love his words that SMEs drive the whole economy. It brought back the words of Winston Churchill about the private sector; he said that some people see private enterprise as a predatory tiger that needs to be shot. Some people see it as a cow that needs to be milked. Few people see it for what it really is: the strong horse that pulls the whole cart. That is exactly right. Everything we see in the public sector and in this House is paid for by the private sector, the taxes it raises and the jobs it creates.

I totally agree with my right hon. Friend on the title and the primary content of this debate—SMEs are the most important part of the sector. As he said, I started a very small business and grew it over time, but the pressure we were always under as our business grew was from smaller businesses starting up and putting pressure on our market share. I listened carefully to his points about his father’s business and the legacy effect it has had on Great Yarmouth. That is my experience. Many people go into business for the potential financial reward, but also for the legacy: the jobs they can create and the business that they leave behind. That has a long-lasting effect on towns such as Great Yarmouth.

The Department for Business and Trade is seeking to make the UK the best place to do business in the world. We want to make it easier to do business every single day. My ministerial colleagues and I, as well as many others including my right hon. Friend, the Chancellor and the Prime Minister, are for business because we are from business. We understand how this works.

My right hon. Friend made the point about smaller businesses that start up and grow to become larger businesses. That is the fundamental basis of our strategy to scale up Britain. We want the start-ups to become scale-ups. That is one of our areas for development. We are No. 1 in the OECD for start-ups per capita, but in a survey of 14 OECD nations, we were 13th for scale-ups—businesses that have 10 employees or more after three years. That is our focus, and there are three key focus areas underneath that: access to finance, support and advice, and removing barriers and red tape. Those are critical issues for the SMEs I speak to.

When we speak about business, it is important to speak about the entire world of businesses in all sectors. Hospitality is very important in Great Yarmouth, where 23% of all jobs are in the tourism industry. In his intervention, my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Robin Millar) rightly said that the hospitality business feels that cold wind first, but also sees the benefit of the improvement in the economy first, too. It is truly the canary in the coalmine, as he put it.

In Great Yarmouth there are some fantastic opportunities for the future, not least in green energy. My right hon. Friend pointed out the businesses that are benefiting from that. I am aware of ASCO, which employs more than 100 people, providing services to the North sea opportunity that is green energy—30 wind turbines on the Scroby sandbank. There are many more opportunities in that sector.

In the Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth enterprise zone in his constituency, South Denes energy park and Beacon Park are boosting innovation and growth in the region. More recently, investment through the Great Yarmouth town deal and the future high street funds, building on previous support from the local growth fund, is helping the local area by supporting jobs and growth in that region.

I will go into some specifics about the three areas of focus I referred to earlier. First, access to finance is one of the primary concerns for small businesses as they open their doors and grow. We work closely with the British Business Bank to improve access to finance. I am pleased that as of March 2022, the British Business Bank programme has supported over 96,000 small and medium-sized businesses nationally with over £12.2 billion of finance. The programme is designed to bring benefits to start-up businesses, businesses with high-growth potential looking to scale up and businesses looking to stay ahead in the market.

I know my right hon. Friend the Member for Great Yarmouth has supported many initiatives in his time in this place, such as the important start-up loan scheme, which has delivered around £1 billion of finance to 100,000 companies. Those unsecured loans are vital to many people who cannot access finance to start a business. In his constituency, 95 loans have been provided, to a value of almost £800,000.

Inclusion is a priority of this Government, so I am pleased that in terms of all the start-up loans issued up until April 2023, 40% went to women, 20% went to people from a black, Asian or minority background and 32% went to people who were previously unemployed. Those are all disproportionately high numbers, which we should welcome.

Within the space of access to finance, we are also undertaking the payment and cash flow review. We know that is an issue for SMEs and we want to make it easier for them to be paid, as that is another source of finance. We have improved our equity finance offering through schemes such as the regional angels programme, supported by the British Business Bank, and the enterprise investment scheme, the remit of which has been extended.

We are looking at potential new opportunities on the back of open banking. Open banking was a huge success in this country and has been emulated around the world. There are now 7 billion API calls every month for open banking, connecting one banking app with another, and there are other fintech solutions. Open finance provides the opportunity to completely liberate opportunities for SMEs to access finance. Rather than going to their own bank and asking for a loan, they can ask many different providers for that finance, which will increase choice and opportunity.

[Robin Millar]

The Minister is following the speech given by my right hon. Friend the Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis) with another very interesting and helpful speech about what SMEs need. He is describing the Government’s role in creating an environment in which SMEs can flourish. Will he comment on the importance of the regulation to which he referred, not just to say that there should be as little of it as possible but to set out what regulation is effective? Will he comment on whether it is right for the Government to intervene when the market is failing?