Speeches by Thomas.

“I recognise the significance of the post office in my hon. Friend’s constituency, as indeed I recognise the significance of post offices in my constituency and across the UK. It is important to maintain access to post office services as they play a crucial role in the high street. That is why we are determined to work …”

“My hon. Friend will be aware that the Chancellor of the Exchequer recently announced £20.4 billion in investment for research and development for the next year, which will help to drive even more of the type of technological investment that she rightly champions. We are also working with small businesses to encourage t…”

“We recently launched Unlock Europe, a new export programme designed to help UK businesses build stronger relationships with European customers. Last month, in Manchester, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State launched a new pilot scheme, alongside the mayor and his team, that offers businesses in the north-west m…”

“We are looking at working with other GCAP partners. I was in Italy last month to discuss the further potential of GCAP, and other work that we can do with the Italians in this space, but that will not affect the issue about which the hon. Gentleman is specifically concerned.”

“I appreciate the opportunity to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Siobhain, and in the usual way I congratulate the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Liz Jarvis) on securing this important debate. I thank her for her invitation to visit Eastleigh; I do not know specifically when I will have the opportunity to do so, but I w…”

“I beg to move, That the Committee has considered the draft Companies and Limited Liability Partnerships (Protection and Disclosure of Information and Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2024. It is a particular joy, Mr Efford, to serve under your chairmanship in a statutory instrument debate—for the first time, I thi…”

“I am grateful to the hon. Lady, who rightly said that additional resources have been given to Companies House that will help it apply not just this statutory instrument but others to help the implementation of the 2023 Act. We have carefully discussed, both across Government and with Companies House, the issue of wheth…”

“Once they have put their claim in, absolutely.”

“We have discussed the way in which the legal advice that they have accessed up to now operates, and whether there are changes that they can make there. We have encouraged them to write to anybody else who they think might be a victim of the scandal in order to encourage them to come forward, and we are talking to claim…”

“I understand that concern. I suppose I have an answer in two parts. In terms of the situation now, the last thing we want to do is slow the process, which would be the risk if we just said, “Okay. We are going to take the Post Office completely out the picture at this point.” That would undoubtedly slow down the proces…”

“The difficulty is that the most complex cases are often very different. I acutely recognise the need to try to speed up the process for people, particularly those who have been waiting for a very long time, so I am genuinely open to suggestions from the Committee as to what might be an additional way to give confidence…”

“I would not want anybody to be playing games in the process either. I think we have tried to solve in a slightly different way the problem that you perceive: by essentially trying to find ways to speed up the process, be that through the fixed-sum payments or by working directly with claimants’ lawyers on forms and the…”

“The difficulty with binding timelines is that you risk excluding people. People who have perhaps been deeply traumatised by the process—as many of the victims of the Horizon scandal have been, as we all know—might feel that they could not put in a claim and that they might miss the deadline for putting in a claim. I sp…”

“I know there have been criticisms of the adversarial nature of the compensation process to date. We are certainly trying to make sure that is not the case going forward. We do need legal advisers to make sure that the scheme is run fairly and in line with the principles that we have published. In that regard, I welcome…”

“As I understand it, the amount of interest in fixed-sum payments, for example, had not been taken into account in previous estimates—certainly, the HCRS had not been taken into account in those estimates—and that is what led the Chancellor, in discussion with the OBR, to set the £1.8 billion figure. That is not a limit…”

“If a first offer is made, but the individual victims are not happy with that first offer, we will none the less pay 80% of that first offer—which is my point about substantial redress by the end of March. We need to recognise that each claim has to be treated on its own merits, and we will do that going forward. I thin…”

“I am not saying—”

“Whether or not someone goes to court is an individual decision for people; it is the responsibility of Government to try and make the compensation processes work as well as is feasible. We are talking regularly, as I have made clear, to the claimants’ lawyers, both for the GLO scheme and more generally, to look at what…”

“On the GLO scheme, the accountability mechanism, if you like, against which the Department is judged is that we have to give 90% of first offers within 40 working days, and we are confident that we are meeting that at the moment. What we are also saying now is that if an offer is challenged, we will commit to getting 9…”

“I will come back to the GLO scheme in just a second. I am thinking of the experience of one of my constituents who only narrowly avoided missing the original deadline for the HSS. We are still seeing people coming forward to claim for the Horizon shortfall scheme in particular, so I am wary of imposing a deadline at th…”