Kevin Hollinrake: who is Post Office minister? What has Tory MP said about Horizon IT scandal

Plans to clear hundreds of Post Office branch managers who were wrongly convicted in the Horizon IT scandal are set to be announced imminently, Kevin Hollinrake has said.

Hollinrake, a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department for Business and Trade, is the designated Post Office Minister, and has been leading the government response to controversy. More than 700 sub-postmasters were given criminal convictions after faulty Fujitsu accounting software called Horizon made it appear as though money was missing from their shops.

The Post Office relentlessly pursued its staff through the courts, with many spending time in jail and some even committing suicide. It has been described as the biggest miscarriage of justice in modern British history. There has been fresh public backlash to the scandal after ITV aired the drama Mr Bates Vs The Post Office, starring actor Toby Jones. Questions have been asked why it has taken a TV show for the government to act in a scandal which has been going on for decades.

Hollinrake said the government is “very, very close” to announcing its plans to override the convictions, with an announcement “possibly” coming as soon as Wednesday afternoon. He told Sky News he could not promise a “particular timeframe” because a decision “has not been finalised”.

The government is considering emergency legislation to overturn all convictions but there are concerns that it could be seen to be interfering with the independent courts process by quashing them “en bloc”, Hollinrake said. It is thought Rishi Sunak could make an announcement at Prime Minister's Questions at 12noon today (10 January).

Who is Kevin Hollinrake?

Kevin Hollinrake, a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department for Business and Trade, has been the designated Post Office Minister since October 2022 after Liz Truss' resignation. It has a dedicated minister as the company is publicly owned. He was previously a PPS to Michael Gove at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Hollinrake has been the Conservative MP for Thirsk and Malton since 2015. He opposed Brexit and is also a landlord, previously renting out five residential properties of his own in York. In January 2016, Hollinrake was one of 72 Tory MPs who voted against a Labour amendment that would have required private landlords to make their homes “fit for human habitation” who was a landlord, the Independent reported.

In 2018, Hollinrake wrote an article in NationalWorld's sister paper the Yorkshire Post arguing that fracking will help tackle climate change. In 2019, Hollinrake also voted against permitting same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland. He was criticised in September 2020, for responding to Marcus Rashford's free school meals campaign by saying "where they can, it's a parent's job to feed their children".

What has he said on the Post Office scandal?

On Monday, Hollinrake gave a statement to the House of Commons on the Post Office scandal. “We have devised some options for resolving the outstanding criminal convictions with much more pace,” he said.

“While the scale of the problem is immense, the government is unwavering in its resolve to tackle it, to compensate those affected and to leave no stone unturned in the pursuit of justice.” Hollinrake added that “proper and thoughtful consideration” will also be given on how private prosecutions are undertaken “to make sure a scandal like this can never happen again”.

On Wednesday, Hollinrake said the announcement would come imminently but there are "still some issues we've got to resolve". He told the BBC that the government is “definitely not ruling out” emergency legislation to quash all the convictions that arose during the Horizon scandal.

Hollinrake also told Times Radio: "There has always been a sense of urgency and it has been my number one priority since being appointed Post Office minister in October 2022, also a big priority for me as a backbencher.”

He added: “There are some complexities around (making full and final payments), not least the ones you described because of the 980 postmasters that were convicted. So far 93 have managed to get their convictions overturned. So there’s a problem there both in terms of the overturning of convictions when people do come forward, but also lots of people just don’t want to come forward or are not coming forward.”

What is the Post Office Horizon scandal?

The Post Office scandal is one of the UK's biggest miscarriages of justice. It began in 1999 when the Post Office adapted a new electronic accounting system called Horizon, produced by Fujitsu. Software glitches caused it to wrongly show financial discrepancies worth thousands, meaning that Post Office branch managers were left responsible as the system suggested huge amounts of cash had suddenly disappeared. 

The Post Office consistently told the sub-postmasters that no other staff members had issues - when in fact hundreds were left with the same problem all over the country. From 2000 until 2014, more than 700 sub-postmasters were prosecuted by the Post Office, with some left to spend their life savings on the shortfall and 263 were imprisoned. At least four people committed suicide. 

In 2019, campaigners took the Post Office to court, with the judge ruling that postmasters were prosecuted based on data from the flawed Horizon IT system. It was ordered to pay around £60 million to 555 victims, however the Post Office’s astronomical legal fees meant many subpostmasters got minimal compensation with others dying during the process. A public inquiry into the Post Office scandal is still ongoing, with phase 4 set to continue on January 11, 2024.

Ralph Blackburn is NationalWorld’s politics editor based in Westminster, where he gets special access to Parliament, MPs and government briefings. If you liked this article you can follow Ralph on X (Twitter) here and sign up to his free weekly newsletter Politics Uncovered, which brings you the latest analysis and gossip from Westminster every Sunday morning.