I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
I am pleased to present the Bill for its Second Reading. It will quash the convictions of those affected by the Post Office Horizon scandal in England and Wales—one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in our nation’s history. The legislation will clear the names of sub-postmasters whose lives were ruined because of the Horizon scandal: those wrongly convicted of or cautioned for offences of false accounting, theft and fraud, all because of a faulty IT system that the Post Office had implemented.
Instead of listening to whistleblowers such as Alan Bates when they raised concerns, the Post Office viciously pursued them for the shortfalls. Some were suspended or dismissed; hundreds were prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned; others were harried as thieves by their local communities. Several were driven to suicide. The Government cannot turn back the clock or undo the damage that has been done, but we will seek to right the wrongs of the past as best we can by restoring people’s good names and ensuring that those who have been subject to this tragic miscarriage of justice receive fair and full redress. The Bill represents a crucial step in delivering that.
The whole House appreciates the efforts that the Government are making to rectify this problem at last, but I appeal to them to listen to the cross-party representations made from both sides in this House and all sides in Northern Ireland, including by the First Minister, the Deputy First Minister and the Justice Minister for Northern Ireland, who have appealed for the fewer than 30 people in Northern Ireland who have been affected by the scandal to be included in the Bill.
We are working closely with the Northern Ireland Executive. We have carefully considered the territorial extent of each piece of legislation, and we are rigorous in our commitment to devolution. The hon. Gentleman should be assured of the amount of work that is taking place to ensure that we get the Bill done properly in a way that will not have unintended consequences. I thank him for that point.
This new legislation will quash all convictions that meet the clear and objective conditions laid out in it. We recognise that postmasters have suffered too much for far too long, which is why convictions will be quashed automatically when the Bill receives Royal Assent, removing the need for people to apply to have their conviction overturned.
I am extremely grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. I understand entirely why the Bill is necessary. She will agree that it is important that we do not, through the Bill, set any precedent for the interference of this House in individual convictions, unless there are exceptional circumstances such as these. That means that the Bill must be tightly drafted. At the moment, condition E—the last of the conditions that she has mentioned—is that
“at the time of the alleged offence, the Horizon system was being used for the purposes of the post office business.”
Why is that not phrased differently to say that Horizon-based evidence was presented in the case against the person convicted? There is a material difference between those two things. I just seek to understand why she has chosen that formulation rather than the alternative.
My right hon. and learned Friend makes a good point about the final condition in the Bill. That is something that we considered, but it would likely have required a case-by-case, file-by-file assessment of each prosecution. That would have added significant time and complexity, which is what our solution avoids. One thing that I have been keen to emphasise is that speed and pace are critical. This has taken far longer than I would have wanted, and I would not have gone for a solution that would have impeded this and created complications.
I put on the record my thanks to and commendations for the Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade, the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake), for the way in which he has approached the groundwork for the Bill.
Among those excluded from the scope of the Bill are those who went to the Court of Appeal and lost their case, or were not given leave to appeal to the Court. What we now know would have been quite useful in many of those cases. Should we enlarge the scope of the Bill to include those who lost their case at the Court of Appeal or were not given leave to appeal in the first place, as many of them may well be truly innocent?
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that point. That is also something that we considered carefully. It is part of the trade-off that we had to make in doing something unprecedented: Parliament overturning convictions. We respect the judgment of the Court of Appeal—it has gone to an appellate judge. We are willing to consider some of those cases individually just to ensure that nothing has been missed, but the Bill has been drafted in consultation with the Crown Prosecution Service and the judiciary. We want to ensure that we are bringing everyone with us. Concerns such as his have been raised, but this is more or less the consensus that we think will get the Bill done, and allow redress, as quickly as possible.
I will elaborate on this point further when I speak—hopefully, if I catch Mr Deputy Speaker’s eye—but there is already data about the cases that the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) referred to, those that are outside the Horizon case itself but were attempting to get themselves exonerated on the basis of other data. As far as I can see, they failed precisely because they were not part of the Horizon case, so I ask the Secretary of State to return to this issue before Report and look at whether we can solve that problem.
I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. That is something we can look at again at further stages of the Bill. We understand the issue that hon. Members are trying to resolve, and agree with them that we need to make sure that everybody who deserves justice gets justice, but we also have to be careful to make sure that we are not exonerating people who we know for a fact have committed crimes.
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way, and I commend her work and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake), not only in recognising the plight of these people and putting in place compensation for their suffering, but in ensuring that these criminal convictions are expunged from their record. It is really important for these people that they regain their standing within their communities.
As my right hon. Friend has rightly said, so many of these whistleblowers were failed by the current law: the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998. It is really vital that we not only put that right, but have a good look at the law again. I know that a framework review is going on, and have spoken to my right hon. Friend and my hon. Friend about what more can be done. I have tabled a whistleblowing Bill that will sort this problem out. It lands within the Department for Business and Trade—it is something that is within my right hon. Friend’s gift. Will she support my private Member’s Bill on Friday?
I thank my hon. Friend for all the work she does in chairing the all-party parliamentary group for whistleblowing. She is right that this issue needs consideration, and we are going to look again at the whistleblowing framework—it is something that comes up time and time again in many respects. I will not comment yet on her private Member’s Bill, because I have not seen it, but I thank her for all her work on this issue.
I welcome this Bill. I know that it is groundbreaking and possibly sets some nerves off with the judiciary, but I think the judiciary need to look at themselves and how they have dealt with some of these cases.
On the point that my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) raised, a small number of cases are not within the scope of the Bill. I perfectly understand why, but we have to get those cases looked at again, because evidence has come out in the Sir Wyn Williams inquiry that was not available at the time. Will the Secretary of State commit to at least sit down with the judiciary to look at these cases and emphasise the fact that there is new information, and that responsibility for some of this injustice has got to lie with the justice system?
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. The courts dealt very swiftly with the cases before them—perhaps a bit too swiftly. That is why the sub-postmasters suffered so many miscarriages of justice, and it is right that we make their exoneration as simple and quick as possible, so while my priority is passing this Bill for the bulk of the people who have suffered, that does not mean we will not be able to look at other scenarios later and see if we can find solutions where we genuinely believe that there has been a miscarriage of justice. That is not for me to do at the Dispatch Box—it will not be up to Ministers. There will be caseworkers who will carry out that work, but we have to be careful to make sure that we are exonerating the right cohort.
I hear what the Secretary of State says, but I would just say to her that this is a small number of people and they have to be looked at. Can I ask that she shows the same zeal that her hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) has shown in his approach to this process? We need a commitment, not to get these cases sorted today—I accept that the Secretary of State cannot do that—but that the Department will look at them. I think that will send quite a strong message out to people.
The Department can always do that. This is something that we believe is so critical in order to make sure everybody gets the justice they deserve, and we need to make sure that we carry out the process in such a way that everyone has confidence in it. We can continue to look at cases and see if there are other solutions, but as the right hon. Gentleman has rightly said, that will be outside the scope of this Bill.
I am very grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way, and I also pay tribute to the exceptional work of my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) and the way in which he has engaged in what is a sensitive issue, not least constitutionally. Does my right hon. Friend accept that it is not ideal under any circumstance for this House to trespass upon the legitimate preserves of the independent courts? It should only do so under the most exceptional circumstances. There is a case that this is one of those instances, but while we can legitimately criticise failings in the criminal justice system—such as in disclosure, which is part of the system—it is important that we do not get into the territory of impugning the individual decisions of judges made in good faith on the evidence properly before them.
One thing we could do to emphasise the exceptional nature of the Bill would be to introduce a sunset clause, so that at an appropriate time when the Bill has served its purpose—perhaps some way in the future, once those who need to be found and contacted have been able to come forward and have their convictions quashed— it would no longer be the constitutional anomaly that it might otherwise be if it stayed on the statute book indefinitely.