Post Office scandal - live: Rishi Sunak announces new law to quash convictions of Horizon victims

Building HS2 between London and Birmingham alone will cost as much as £66.6bn, almost twice the original estimate for the entire project, according to Sir Jon Thompson, the executive chair of HS2 Ltd:

The Government should review all of its contracts with Fujitsu and should consider suspending the company if it “won’t do the right thing”, Conservative former minister Mark Francois has said.

“On Fujitsu, they’re a multi-billion-dollar company with numerous Government contracts, including a number with the Ministry of Defence. They have persistently for years been reluctant to admit the weakness in their system,” he told MPs.

“Does the minister agree they now have a moral duty, if not directly a legal one, to put right that wrong. We should review all their Government contracts and if they won’t do the right thing, which they should, we should consider suspending?”

Business minister Kevin Hollinrake said: “I think it’s right that we let the process take its course, that the inquiry looks at who is responsible for what... who was responsible for this between the Post Office and Fujitsu, who told who to do what.

“And I think it’s only right that we have a process therefore where we do set some criteria, some parameters about who can access Government contracts.

“So those are conversations we should have when we’ve identified exactly who is responsible. We won’t be able to do that for some months yet but we’re keen to do it as soon as we possibly can.”

A Conservative former minister claimed ex-Post Office chief Paula Vennells refused to meet him while he was in Government without her lawyer present.

George Freeman, a former business minister, told the Commons how when he was covering for an absent minister, he asked to meet Ms Vennells. “I was told she would refuse to meet me without her lawyer,” he said.

He urged the Government to look at recovering money from the Post Office, as well as learning “wider lessons from this appalling scandal”.

Mr Freeman added: “I want to highlight that this saga raises some very important issues about scrutiny, accountability, responsibility in our public office and in public administration, difficult questions that this House must tackle.”

Demands for Alan Bates to receive a knighthood for his decades-long fight for justice for subpostmasters hit by the Horizon scandal has received backing from Downing Street.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s spokeswoman said it would be “common sense” to honour the crusading former subpostmaster after a mass quashing of convictions was announced.

It was reported last week that Mr Bates refused an OBE while former Post Office boss Paula Vennells still held the CBE she received. But MPs and campaigners have called for Mr Bates’s honour to be re-submitted now that Ms Vennells has agreed to relinquish hers in the face of a public outcry.

Senior minister Esther McVey said she wanted Mr Bates to be knighted “as soon as possible”.

“Anybody can nominate him and I’m quite sure we will see Sir Alan as soon as possible,” the Tory MP told GB News.

The Prime Minister’s press secretary argued that it was “hard to think of someone more deserving of being rewarded through the honours system than him”.

Asked if she agreed about the knighthood with Ms McVey, who is nicknamed the “minister for common sense”, the official said: “That sounds like common sense to me.”

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer is also backing the move. His spokesman said: “I think Alan Bates clearly has emerged as a hero.”

All the details of today’s announcement in full:

Rishi Sunak is braced for a Commons showdown over his Rwanda plan after being warned by Tory MPs that the proposal will not work unless it is significantly beefed up. As the right wing of the Conservative Party gears up for a parliamentary battle, the Prime Minister was warned by former immigration minister Robert Jenrick that the plan “simply doesn’t work” in its current form:

The Post Office should be forced to reveal how much money it “stole” from innocent people during the Horizon scandal, according to a former subpostmaster.

Conservative MP Duncan Baker, who worked in the role in Norfolk before being elected in 2019, said the sum was expected to total hundreds of millions of pounds although no figure has ever been provided.

Mr Baker (North Norfolk) told the Commons: “One question that has never been answered is just how much money was taken unlawfully from thousands of innocent men and women.

“The Post Office took that money, we have never known that figure.

“Even the most basic accountant knows that it will run into hundreds of millions of pounds. So could the minister find out from the Post Office - force them to publish - just the grand scale of how much money they stole from people?”

Business minister Kevin Hollinrake replied: “The money was taken, somebody must have noticed that money - you’d think the finance department would have noticed that money, you’d think auditors would have noticed that money.”

He added: “I will endeavour to find out the number. I don’t have a number.”

Many would see Paula Vennells remaining as a Cabinet Office director as a mistake, business minister Kevin Hollinrake said.

Mr Hollinrake told the Commons: “I think it was right and proper that the former CEO Paula Vennells handed back her CBE.

“It clearly was prior to my time in Government, but she raises some interesting points, I don’t know the answer to her question. I think with hindsight many people would see that as a mistake, but very happy to take that away.”

We are putting our coverage of politics and the Post Office scandal on hold for tonight. Please keep up with the rest of our coverage here and here.