Speeches by Thomas.

“What I would say to you, Mr Byrne, is that we are working at pace to try to get more compensation out of the door to more victims more quickly, and we do need access to legal advice to help us do that. There is more we need to do, and we recognise that—some of the measures we have taken since we came into office are de…”

“They are our independent advisers. They help independently assess the claims in order to move things forward, so they play an important role. In terms of the GLO process, we are hearing in the conversations we have had with claimants’ lawyers that the vast majority of the remaining cases in the GLO group are likely to …”

“Just to be clear, under the Horizon shortfall scheme, there is the option of a fixed-sum payment of £75,000—”

“To continue down the Horizon shortfall scheme, many victims will decide that they want a full assessment of their individual circumstances and the compensation they are entitled to; they are fully entitled to go down that route. They will give initial indications of what they think they suffered. They are then entitled…”

“Mr Byrne, I am quite happy to look at any recommendations the Committee wants to bring forward in this regard. Our instinct has been that for victims of the Horizon shortfall scheme who want to avoid a longer process, the fixed-sum payment is a way to offer quicker redress. Every victim’s experience has been very diffe…”

“We have looked at the Horizon shortfall scheme and at what we could do to speed the process up and to begin to address some of the questions that people have asked about the fairness of their offers through the scheme. The fixed-sum payment is an attempt to offer quicker redress for a significant number of people, but …”

“Our sense is that people will want to begin the process initially by making a judgment as to how big and wide their claim should be. Once they bring their claim forward, advice can be made available. What we have wanted to do as well, though, is to give another route for people to get swifter redress, so we have introd…”

“As we have alluded to, there are things relating to the use of forms that are provided going forward. As I say, we have introduced a fixed-sum payment in the Horizon shortfall scheme to, in a very direct way, help speed up redress for those people when the Post Office has the responsibility for running that compensatio…”

“Legal advice is available to people who choose to ask for a full assessment of their legal claim.”

“That is probably a question for me—[Interruption.] Sitting suspended for Divisions in the House. On resuming—”

“Given the number of people who were yet to have compensation when we came into office, I absolutely want to speed up the process.”

“My basic analysis is that we have to do more to get redress out the door more quickly.”

“On the overturned convictions scheme, we are making reasonable progress on getting redress out to the victims who are covered. On the GLO scheme, which I am sure we will come to, we are now confident, having talked to the claimants’ lawyers, that by the end of March we will be able to get substantial redress out to all…”

“On the process of giving compensation to all those who are identified as having had a conviction and as having had it overturned in the legislation we voted for in the last Parliament: a compensation scheme had not been set up for those individuals by the time of the general election. Those details have been left for u…”

“As you have just discussed with Heidi, we inherited the system after the last Parliament took the decision to overturn the convictions of all the sub-postmasters, but none of the details of the compensation process had been sorted out by the time of the election. That was left for us to sort out.”

“I think it would be an understatement to say that there has been considerable criticism of the compensation process. Many of the sub-postmasters I have spoken to who were victims of the scandal have criticised the speed and, on occasion, the number of requests that they have received for extra information to help judge…”

“Just to be clear, we have delivered that message in a significant way to the Post Office. One of the reasons why we have actively introduced fixed-sum payments is to try to make the process easier for a relatively large number of people. We meet on a regular basis with claimants’ lawyers to understand ongoing cases, in…”

“We are certainly trying to avoid that perception. We are trying to be as generous as we can. The motivation behind requests for additional information is to enable us to make a more generous offer. We are depending on the scheme wherever we can—we are making interim payments and, where we have been told that there are …”

“We are certainly aware that what has occasionally happened is that the requests for information have come late in the GLO process—after our first offer has been tabled. When a challenge process kicks in we are happy to be held to account, and 90% of challenges will be responded to within the 40-day process. I hope that…”

“If you will forgive me, this is a good moment to mention that Sir Gary Hickinbottom has just been appointed as the chair of the HCRS appeals process. He is again helping us to make sure the newest compensation scheme learns from some of the lessons of past ones. On HSS, there is an independent process. We think that th…”