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.

UK Accession to CPTPP

Sarah Olney Excerpts

Thursday 22nd February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Liam Byrne]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that question. I think the Minister made the point in the Bill Committee on Tuesday that this is not necessarily an under-scrutinised treaty, as it has been the subject of quite a lot of debate; my Committee has certainly taken lots of evidence on it. However, when we left the European Union, one of the big arguments made was that this Parliament would reassert its sovereignty and—in those infamous words—take back control. That means that this House needs to have a strong hand in scrutinising trade agreements.

We hope that there will be many more free trade agreements to come. I know that they are getting harder, but this House none the less needs to develop expertise in scrutinising free trade agreements, so that we can ensure they are genuinely in the national interest. That is why I hope the Government will, within the 21-day CRaG period, find Government time for debate on an amendable motion, to give the House the opportunity to delay ratification, if that is the judgment we all come to. That is the process; we have to test it, use it, and make sure it works.

We have to get much better as a House at navigating the dilemmas of free trade in a world where economic security is a much sharper imperative than before. That means we have to have better debates, but also better numbers. We cannot have a situation where we produce models using very old data—going back to 2017 in the case of the models used for this treaty’s impact assessment —and when the Secretary of State comes to our Committee, she resiles from the models of her own Department. That is not a good way of producing evidence-based policy.

I hope we can have a discussion across the House on how to ensure that the economic models that we use are good. Free trade agreements are choices, and sometimes free trade agreements in one part of the world rule out those in other parts of the world. We have to judge what is in the best interests of the country, and it is difficult to do that if the numbers are flaky.

[Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)]

I would like to pick up on the point from the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi). During the passage of the Trade (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership) Bill through this place, many concerns have been raised about investor-state dispute settlement arrangements. It is good to see that the Select Committee is calling for a debate to resolve some of the contentious issues around that. However, does the Select Committee Chairman consider the provisions of the CRaG legislation to be sufficient, or might this be an opportunity to look again at how the specific requirements of trade deals are dealt with by Parliament?

[Liam Byrne]

That is an excellent question. The hon. Lady may have seen a really good report produced by not our Committee, but the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, on 29 January 2024, which makes precisely that point. We need a better way of scrutinising trade agreements. The CRaG structure allows us to delay things, but not necessarily veto them. When CRaG was introduced back in 2010, it was an innovation, because in the past, that was something that Governments did without any scrutiny whatsoever. Now we are in a different kind of world, in which we are signing free trade agreements at, I hope, increasing pace. However, the House will still have to navigate when we want open trade, when we want to de-risk trade, and when we put economic security first and free trading second. These are dilemmas in which there is not an obvious answer. We cannot prejudge the answers to those questions; they will have to be debated case by case. It could well be that a Government will come to the wrong conclusion about that balance between open and free trade and maximising our economic security as a country, and therefore we in this House must be able to apply a brake —put a hard stop—to trade deals that we think are ultimately not in the national interest.

Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill

Sarah Olney Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 17th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)]

The Liberal Democrats warmly welcome the measures in this Bill that will enable the Competition and Markets Authority to counter the dominance of big tech firms and encourage real competition and dynamism across the sector. It is a real pleasure to speak in such a good debate on well-drafted legislation that has broad support from across the House. Credit is due not only to the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) and the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones), who are not in their places but who have worked very hard on this Bill, but to the Competition and Markets Authority for all its work throughout the consultation stages and in designing this pro-competition regime.

I am pleased the Government have acted on the CMA’s recommendations and are introducing this Bill to the House. The Liberal Democrats want to see a thriving British tech sector, where start-ups can innovate, create good jobs and launch new products that will benefit consumers, and a strong competition framework that pushes back on the dominance of the tech giants is essential for that.

For too long, smaller, dynamic start-up companies have been driven out of the market or swallowed up by big tech firms that see the existence of other players in the market as a potential threat. We are therefore pleased to see greater powers awarded to the CMA to investigate the takeover of small but promising start-ups that do not meet the usual merger control thresholds, as well as the other key pro-competition interventions. The update to the competition framework provided for in the Bill is also particularly important for growth industries such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality, which are in their infancy but have great potential both for positive contributions to our economy and for competition disadvantage.

Consumer protections form another part of the Bill; the new rules and powers awarded to the CMA to protect consumers in parts 3 and 4 of the Bill are well overdue and will benefit many of our constituents. In particular, like many hon. Members who have spoken already, the Liberal Democrats are pleased to see the measures designed to tackle subscription traps by increasing transparency, making it easier for consumers to end those sorts of contracts and clamping down on fake reviews.

While we are glad that most of the CMA’s recommendations are included in the Bill, we have concerns over certain aspects that would benefit from further consideration and clarification. I think I join with the hon. Members for Warrington South (Andy Carter) and for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey) —we have proper cross-party agreement here—when I say that I am very concerned about the Bill’s countervailing benefits exemption. It might allow some large tech firms to get away with anti-competitive practices and to evade conduct requirements by arguing that the benefits to users outweigh the negative consequences for competition. The broad nature of the exemption risks significantly undermining the entire regime by limiting the efficacy of the conduct requirements. We will therefore seek to tighten the definition of what benefits are valid as the Bill progresses through the House.

The Liberal Democrats are also concerned that the Digital Markets Unit will designate firms as having strategic market status based on an assessment of their entrenched market dominance five years into the future. Future dominance is hard to predict and we have seen rapid change in the tech sector over the past 20 years. We would never have imagined in the late ’80s or early ’90s the dominance that firms such as Google and Apple would have in the market at the turn of the century.

We are concerned that that ambiguity could allow firms wide scope to challenge their SMS designation and fall outside the Digital Markets Unit’s regulatory framework. Above all, we urge the Government to resist pressure to water down the measures in the Bill, which could allow tech giants to continue anti-competitive behaviour. In other countries such as Canada and Australia, we have seen how firms such as Google have responded to tougher regulation of big tech by restricting access to domestic news on their platforms. It is imperative that the UK Government do not bend to any such pressure and reject attempts to water down legislation or weaken it through loopholes.

As the Bill progresses, we must also ensure that there is no ambiguity in its drafting that could be open to exploitation. It is important to remember that it is not only tech companies that require a level playing field to operate in the digital economy; small businesses across the country are increasingly moving their operations online, and many now rely on digital platforms such as online marketplaces, yet current unfair market practices mean that many find themselves vulnerable to exploitation, causing economic harm and stifling innovation. Unlike larger firms, many small and microbusinesses do not have the resources to take action when they are treated badly, and Trading Standards is powerless to act on their behalf due to a significant lack of resource and an outdated operating model still based on local authorities.

One key concern of small businesses operating online, and the best example of that power imbalance, is infringement of intellectual property rights. Intellectual property rights are absolutely central to the success of small businesses and individual creators, protecting the integrity of original work and ensuring that individuals are fairly compensated. However, IP theft is all too common in the digital environment, which causes significant economic harm.

Yasemin Guzeler, a constituent of mine, has been a victim of such infringement and has allowed me to share her story. Yasemin owns her own small business, Blooms of London, which sells bespoke umbrellas featuring trademarked designs. Around October last year, Yasemin noticed that the manufacturer of her products, based in China, had copied her designs and was selling the items directly via online platforms at half the price of the original items. Yasemin has since faced a momentous battle with online platforms such as Amazon to try to remove counterfeit links. After months of emails, complaints, referrals and untold financial and emotional distress, there remain almost 40 counterfeit links on Amazon. Yasemin’s business is now facing bankruptcy, and there is seemingly nowhere else she can turn for help and no mechanism through which she can effectively enforce her rights against Amazon.

I am therefore pleased to see

“effective processes for handling complaints and disputes with users”

listed under

“Permitted types of conduct requirements”

for SMS firms, but much more must be done to protect our small businesses and individual creators and uphold their intellectual property rights when they engage in digital activity. I would like an explicit reference to “intellectual property theft” in the Bill, and for reducing economic harm on their service to be included in the list of permitted types of conduct requirements for SMS firms in clause 20. I would also welcome further comment from, and engagement with, the Minister on how we can best protect small business owners such as Yasemin when they operate online. It is essential that we get this right to support our entrepreneurs and small businesses, and allow them to remain competitive in the digital economy.

The Liberal Democrats are pleased that the Government are finally acting on the CMA’s recommendation and bringing forward measures that will allow the regulator to prevent tech giants from putting our digital sector in a stranglehold. We hope that the Government will be robust in their defence of the Bill against lobbying by tech giants, and we hope to see the Bill progress through the House without being watered down or weakened through the addition of loopholes that might be ripe for exploitation. I hope that the Minister will also reflect on my comments about the additional measures needed to support small businesses online. I would welcome further opportunity to engage with the Government on that. Although competition is crucial for Britain’s tech sector, we hope that the Government will move to tackle the fundamental issues that are holding it back, such as the skills gap, a shortage of skilled workers and weak investment.