I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. I also thank the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, Kevin Hollinrake. It is nice to see a poacher turned gamekeeper in the Department. Can I also put on record my thanks to Paul Scully? In a long list of useless and indifferent Ministers over the years, he was the only one who actually got it and was determined to sort it out. I would also like to give my personal thanks to Alan Bates and the Justice for the Subpostmasters Alliance, because without them the truth would not have come out, and that happened in spite of the Post Office throwing a tsunami of cash—£100 million—at them to stop the truth coming out.

This is the only scandal I have seen where cover-up and lies ran to the top, not only of the Post Office but, I have to say, of the right hon. Gentleman’s Department. Today represents a move forward, and I welcome what is being done. Does the Secretary of State agree that what we need next, following the public inquiry, is for those individuals who were responsible for ruining people’s lives—in some cases people took their own lives; others who were innocent went to prison—to be held to account? It has to be a determination for the Department to ensure that those individuals—whether they are in the Post Office or in his Department—face the day of reckoning that should be coming to them in a court of law.