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Minister Hollinrake weekly note 15/01/2024
Last week
Following the airing of the ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office, the public
and the press interest in Post Office Compensation increased greatly.
On Monday, I met with the Lord Chancellor and the Chief Secretary to the
Treasury to discuss options for speeding up compensation payments. This
meeting focused on options for overturning convictions en-masse and
therefore enabling many more postmasters to be eligible for compensation
through the Overturned Convictions scheme. I updated parliamentary
colleagues on the topic via an oral statement on Monday evening.
On Tuesday, I met with the Small Business Commissioner before continuing
my engagement with key stakeholders and MPs on Post Office compensation
and convictions. My Private Office and the Postal Affairs team worked in
unison with No10 colleagues to get advice to the PM on both the overturning
of convictions and the GLO Fixed Sum award. I had a second meeting with
the Lord Chancellor on Tuesday evening and engaged with the Shadow
Cabinet later that day also.
On Wednesday I represented the Government on the morning media round,
which focused on Post Office issues. Work on the announcement continued
right up until PMQs, where the PM announced that we would be legislating for
the overturning of postmaster convictions and implementing a Fixed Sum
Award for the GLO cohort. I elaborated on the PMs announcement by
answering an Urgent Question on the subject. I then went and met with the
Post Office Compensation Advisory Board, to discuss the announcement. The
board - Lord Arbuthnot, Chris Hodges, Richard Moorhead and Kevan Jones
MP - were all supportive of the action we'd taken. I did a number of interviews
with media outlets on Wednesday evening.
On Thursday, I met with Chris Elmore MP to discuss his PMB and had a
discussion with Ryan and my Private Office to discuss our return to No10's
commission on the top 5 priorities for SMEs.
This week
On Monday I will be preparing for my Select Committee appearance, which
will focus on the Post Office Horizon Scandal. I'll be attending the Deep Dive
on SMEs.
On Tuesday I'll face the Business and Trade Select Committee, where we
expect they'll focus their questioning on the announcement on the 10" of
January. I'll also be meeting the Chief Executive of Airlines UK to discuss drip
pricing within the sector.
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On Wednesday I'll have my routine meeting with the National Federation of
Subpostmasters, Post Office Limited and HMG colleagues. I'll also be meeting
with Ryanair, participating in the Levelling up IMG and meeting with Minister
Davies to discuss the Lilac Review.
On Thursday I'll be Participating in a roundtable with the National Enterprise
Network, meeting with Helen Dickinson of the British Retail Consortium and
also meeting James Lowman of the Association of Convenience Stores.