Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 1:20 pm on 7th December 2022.
As a former chair of the all-party parliamentary group on post offices, I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement, the compensation scheme announcements—particularly on the benefits disregard—and the comments on the timing of what will happen, but I think there are going to be some shocking lessons from all this that we will need to learn. These revolve around who knew what, and when, and what the role of the Federation of SubPostmasters was in standing up or not standing up for its members during this crisis. I hope the Secretary of State will agree that when the inquiry is finished there should be another debate in this House to make sure that we really do learn those lessons, including, as two or three Members have said, the crucial point about how technology cannot be wrong.