Post Office minister: people responsible for the Horizon scandal ‘should go to jail’ – UK

On a campaigning trip to a hospital in the east Midlands, Labour leader Keir Starmer has said that “nobody is interested” in questions about the living and tax arrangements of his deputy Angela Rayner from a decade ago, criticising Conservatives for focusing on that rather than improving the state of healthcare.

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He told the media:

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Angela Rayner has been asked no end of questions about this. She’s answered them all. She said she’s very happy to answer any further questions from the police or from any of the authorities. I don’t need to see the legal advice. My team has seen it.

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But I will say this, that on the day that the A&E figures – people are waiting more than 24 hours in A&E, we now know that they are ten times as high as they were five years ago – the idea that the Tories want to be focusing on what Angela Rayner, how much time she spent with her ex-husband ten years ago, I can tell you here at this hospital, nobody but nobody is interested in that.

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PA Media reports that an episode of shadow foreign secretary David Lammy’s LBC programme is being investigated by Ofcom.

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The Labour MP’s show, broadcast on 29 March, is being looked at over whether it broke broadcasting rules on politicians acting as news presenters.

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Ofcom’s rules on due impartiality state: “No politician may be used as a newsreader, interviewer or reporter in any news programmes unless, exceptionally, it is editorially justified. In that case, the political allegiance of that person must be made clear to the audience.”

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Last month, episodes of GB News programmes presented by Conservative MPs were found to have broken broadcasting rules by them acting as newsreaders, for example when Jacob Rees-Mogg presented news coverage as a jury returned a verdict in a case involving Donald Trump, or when Esther McVey and Philip Davies offered their personal opinions on stories while interviewing GB News reporters live on air.

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In that instance, Ofcom said:

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We found that host politicians acted as newsreaders, news interviewers or news reporters in sequences which clearly constituted news – including reporting breaking news events – without exceptional justification. News was, therefore, not presented with due impartiality.

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Ofcom took no action against the channel beyond a warning not to break the rules again. This was the 12th time GB News breached the broadcasting code. GB News described the ruling as a “chilling development for all broadcasters”.

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Appearing on the BBC Today programe, Work and Pensions secretary Mel Stride has agin refused to commit Rishi Sunak’s government to paying compensation to the Waspi women campaigners over changes to their state pension.

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At the end of last month the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) said those affected should be compensated with recommended payouts of between £1,000 and £2,950 a person.

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Stride told listeners this morning that “as the ombudsman report was published, at the earliest opportunity I personally appeared at the dispatch box in parliament. I made an oral statement … [and] took an hour and a half of questions from colleagues from right across the house and I have reassured them that … we will come back without undue delay.”

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However, pressed on timing, Stride said he would not be “coaxed” into making an announcement, saying:

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I’m not going put a precise time limit on it, but we do need to look at these things very carefully. This was a report that was five years in the making. It does relate to matters that started with legislation in 1995. So over 30 years ago, people have very strong feelings on both sides of the argument here.

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I think I owe it to everybody to really make sure that the guiding light in this process is that it is thorough, and that it is conclusive, because it has gone on for an awfully long time – under governments of different colours incidentally – and going back 30 years.

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While appearing on BBC television this morning, Post Office minister Kevin Hollinrake has claimed that he has instructed government officials to “just settle” compensation cases where “it looks right”.

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Hollinrake was being asked by an East Yorkshire subpostmaster about the legal costs involved in claiming compensation.

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Lee Castleton, who was made bankrupt after he lost his legal battle with the Post Office over an alleged £25,000 shortfall, told the minister “we’re currently looking at paying £2 in legal fees for every £1 in compensation”.

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Castleton said “it’s very adversarial, and people are talking about sitting in these meetings having to re-go through this criminal investigation. Why is that right for the taxpayer?”

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In response, Hollinrake said:

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Lawyers are a fact of life, and they have an important role to play, of course, but we’re keen to try reduce the legal argument over these processes.

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We need to simplify the process, take the common sense view. I’ve said to our officials, and to legal representatives, “if it looks right, it is right, just settle it” – that’s what we need to do.

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Post Office minister Kevin Hollinrake has said people responsible for the Horizon scandal “should go to jail” in an interview on BBC Breakfast.

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Without specifically naming any one person, he told viewers:

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The inquiry is unearthing the evidence, what you see now is a result of the inquiry, the statutory inquiry.

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The Metropolitan police are undertaking an investigation – the Government doesn’t do that, the police do that.

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When evidence has been established, people should be prosecuted – that’s my view.

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And I think you, and other people I’ve spoken to, and I certainly feel, people within the Post Office, possibly further afield, should go to jail.

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He continued:

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We have to go through a process, we believe in the rule of law – lots of people in this room, and other people, have not had the benefit of the rule of law.

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It has failed, failed these people, inexcusably.

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We do believe in process, that’s the country we are very proud to live in.

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But if the threshold is met, the evidence is there, where criminal prosecutions can be undertaken – and that those people are found guilty – I have no reservation in saying people should go to jail.

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The former Post Office boss Paula Vennells, who ran the Post Office while it routinely denied there was a problem with its Horizon IT system, has already forfeited her CBE for “bringing the honours system into disrepute” over her handling of the Horizon crisis.

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Fujitsu’s Europe chief Paul Patterson has said it was “shameful and appalling” that courts hearing cases against post office operators over missing funds were not told of 29 bugs identified as early as 1999 in the accounting system it built.

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The former chief executive of Royal Mail, Adam Crozier, and the campaigner Alan Bates will give evidence this week as the public inquiry into the scandal enters its next phase.

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Good morning, it should in theory be a quiet week for politics in the UK, as it is Easter recess. However there are local election campaigns ongoing in England, we are expecting a Reform UK press briefing mid-morning which is billed by them as an attack on Labour’s betrayal of the working class, Aslef’s train driver strike reaches its final day, and there is a total eclipse of the sun in North America which some people are claiming will herald the rapture, so let’s keep an open mind on where the day might lead. Here are your headlines …

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• Post Office minister Kevin Hollinrake has said people responsible for the Horizon scandal “should go to jail”

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• Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride has declined again to put any timetable of paying the compensation to the Waspi campaign women recommended by an ombudsmen report

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• A cross-party group of MPs is proposing to make abortion access a human right in England and Wales, putting forward legislation that would decriminalise abortion up to 24 weeks

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• Labour has announced plans to digitise the NHS “red book” that parents use for their children’s medical records

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• The Foreign Office has been criticised as “elitist and rooted in the past” in a new report

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• UK rent rises are forecast to outpace wage growth for the next three years

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• People receiving the state pension will get a 8.5% increase worth an extra £900 a year to full rate claimants starting from today. Universal credit claimants will receive a 6.7% increase

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It is Martin Belam here with you this week. I do try to read all your comments, and dip into them where I think I can be helpful, but if you want to get my attention the best way is to email me – martin.belam@theguardian.com – especially if you have spotted my inevitable errors and typos, or you think I’ve missed something important.

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