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Business, Innovation and Skills Committee
House of Commons 14 Toth,
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Rt Hon Vinee Cable
Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills
17 March 2015
Ovar Svctetury of State,
Post Office mediation scheme
As you Wo'l be aware, on 3 February 2015, the Business, Innovation and Skills Commute heard
e@vdence on the Post Office medration scheme. During this session, we were concerred to hear
that the mednatron schem- 1s not cperating in the manner envisaged when it was Ustablished.
Iwas pleased to huar that since our evidence session Post Office has agreed to take most
casey forviard to mudhation. However, I have a number of specific concerns regarding Post
Oftice-’s approach to the mediation process, which I expect the Government to be actively
involved in addressing sn order to ensure they do not caus¢ further issues in the future:
* During our evidence session, Post Office assured us that individuals who had previous
pleaded guilty to charges arsing from information provided by Horizon were chgible
for mediation. The letter sent by Post Office to Jo Swinson MP on 9 March would
appear to contradict the evidence given to the Committee on this matter, and we wish
to have clarification on this.
© On the basis of the evidence we received, we were not convinced that Post Office was
engaging us constructively as it cou’d be with the mediation process We heard
«uggestons that Post Office has adopted an overly legalistic approach to mediation,
contrury to thy ¢pint of the scheme,
e Beyord the medaton scheme, it seems that there 1s consderub's scop.s tor Post Office
to be more pru-act.e in providing support to sub-postm tt en accounting errors
abtean the fetinetince There are deficiencies in the supp ot on offer to stuff ut
plenty Cure dincadence to us. We would exp 6th: tire chanems to be in
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Business, Innovation and Skills Committee
place to investigate the cause of errors at the time of the error occurring, rather than
after charges have been brought
« We believe that your Department should have a copy of Second Sight’s final thematic
teport on the operation of the Horizon system.
I hope you will confirm to the Committee that you will be actively engaged in investigating
these concerns.
We were especially concerned that there had been such a lamentable lack of information
provided to Second Sight. As an dependent investigator, Second Sight should have been
given ready access to the documentation it considered necessary to carry out its work, We
would have expected there to be a clear presumption of timely information disclosure to the
indeperdent investigators in order to aid their review. On those occas‘ons where Post Office
Limited wished to withhold information, we would expect the reasons why to be cleariy set out.
It 1s my understanding that, now their investigations have concluded. Second Sight are
expected to destroy the documents they hold following their investigations In PMQs on 11
March, the Prime Minister recognised that this was a potentially serious issue. In order to
ensure an effective audit trail is maintained, copies of these documents should be lodged with
BIS in case they are needed in future.
It ts regrettable that the relationship between sub-postmusters and Post Office has been
damaged as a result of these issues. We expect Post Office to be actively engaged in trying to
re-build these relationships, and your Department has a role in ensuring that this is done. We
urge you to pay particular attention to the number of cases which are considered to have
reached a satisfactory outcome upon completing the mediation process, and to update the
House on this matter, in order to monitor the outcome of this scheme.
We understand that some of the cases being considered may be complex. I hope that, with
your infiuence being brought to bear upon Post Office. the cases at hand may be directed
towards a constructive resolution.
Yours sincerely
. Adrian Bailey MP
Chair of the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee
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