Horizon Settlement: Future Governance of Post Office Ltd — House of Commons, 2020-03-19
Topic: Government Operations
Duncan Charles Baker (Conservative, Centre-right): When I spoke in the Westminster Hall debate on 5 March, I said that I had a declaration of interest to make. May I declare that I was once a postmaster? In 2015, I was somewhat of a pin-up for the Post Office when I won postmaster of the year at the retail Oscars. Really, I could not sell a stamp; it is the team who should take all the honour. I resigned as a director of the company that ran those post offices and now have no interests. I also want to make it clear that none of my post offices or staff were affected by the scandal However, this is a valid point to make—I wonder whether anyone else in the Chamber can claim to have been a postmaster at any point in their career. I think it gives me a unique insight and ability to comment on this scandal. As I said in the Westminster Hall debate secured by my hon. Friend, the brilliant Member for Telford (Lucy Allan), I will concentrate on the governance issues. I shall make three points Not only have I used the Horizon system and had first-hand experience of making up the losses, which is always a worrying moment, but I can empathise utterly with the awful situation of the hundreds of innocent victims. We have heard it before and we will hear it time and again this afternoon: innocent people have lost their life savings and young people—men and women—have been jailed and then struggled to rebuild their lives because of the criminal record. I have constituents in North Norfolk who have gone through such trauma. Their story is every bit as dreadful as the other cases we will hear about I question whether the £58 million that has been set aside to recompense the victims will be enough. I think we probably all agree that it will not. After the lawyers take a large portion of that fund, what will be left? That is not right. The Government must intervene, as the main shareholder, to ensure that people are recompensed properly The board of Post Office Ltd is, unquestionably, accountable for this fiasco. Action must be taken so that board members are properly dealt with for this injustice. What kind of corporate governance structures failed to allow this to happen? Those who have been jailed and who have criminal records must have them overturned I turn to the three governance issues that need to be put right. Together, these issues show the failings in the organisation. My first point is about the total withdrawal of the Crown network. It is an absolute necessity that we still have a backbone of Crown post offices in this country. We have gone from 600 a few years ago to just 100. Why is that relevant? We are talking about systems like Horizon going wrong. If you have a backbone of Crown post offices that work effectively, they are often a test bed for new products and systems. They provide continuity in the network when so many franchised operations come and go depending on the operators’ success Let us also remember the staff, as an organisation is only as good as the people who work in it. It is the staff who are the real holders of long-standing deep knowledge, and they should act as the wider custodians of the network. If the Post Office had listened to its staff in the first place when they raised the flag, this perhaps would not have happened. There should be an immediate moratorium on the programme of Crown disposals to ensure that the Post Office’s backbone is preserved Secondly, a total decimation of the wider branch network is going on at the moment, and it remains a concern to many people—not just to the people who work in the Post Office, but to many communities that use it—that they and their communities are losing their branches. It is not anecdotal to suggest that the number of permanent sites falls year after year. All the longer-term projections will see them continue to go, despite the Government enforcing the Post Office to not shut its branches Let me go back to the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland (Jerome Mayhew), the eminent barrister that he is. His Fakenham branch closed just around Christmas time. Replacing a physical branch with a mobile post office is not adequate for that community. I urge the Minister to put some governance in place to make sure that such branches are not lost. I say to him, please step in to try to stop these closures, because these post offices are so vital in our communities. My final point goes back to the remuneration of our sub-postmasters. It is really quite clear that the commissions that a sub-postmaster earns from running a post office are so low that many of the franchise operations have to have a retail offering as well. In many rural areas where footfall is lower—and it is getting lower all the time—we need to ensure that we preserve those that remain. We want to have a vibrant network, so will the Minister please look into that?