Beaver: Reintroduction in England
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle
To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to reintroduce the beaver in England.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Baroness Hayman of Ullock) (Lab)
My Lords, the Government recognise that beavers can benefit biodiversity, improve water quality and reduce flooding, among other things. However, beavers can also potentially cause damage to property and infrastructure through flooding and foraging. This means that reintroductions must balance the benefits and the risks, and be carefully considered and planned. Defra continues to work with Natural England to develop our approach to beaver reintroductions and management.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
I thank the Minister for her Answer, although it is disappointing, given that the benefits of beavers in the UK are already very evident. I wonder if she is aware of the case in the Brdy protected landscape area in the Czech Republic, where beavers demonstrably saved the local government €1 million by putting a dam exactly where it needed to be to prevent flooding. Could not so many communities in England now be benefiting from that kind of protection at no cost?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
My Lords, as I said, we recognise the benefits that beavers can bring. Although reintroduction worked extremely well in that particular case, they have to be released into the right place at the right time with proper management. That is what this Government are working towards.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the Minister on identifying the damage that beavers do. I declare an interest: illegally introduced beavers have destroyed the willow trees at the bottom of my garden. They are ringing trees on the River Tay that are more than 100 years old, undermining the banking. Although there may be a case for introducing beavers in some places, it should be done very carefully, and those who do it illegally should be held to account.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
The noble Lord is right to say that we need to manage beaver release correctly. A licence is, of course, required to release beavers in England and these are available only for release into enclosures. The licensing scheme, which is managed by Natural England, creates controls so that any potential damage is minimised.
Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)
My Lords, though I sympathise with the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, about his willows, does my noble friend the Minister agree that where beavers are allowed to flourish they help other species to flourish too? That is a fine thing for one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
A 2020 evidence review by Natural England found that beaver reintroductions can bring benefits through the restoration of lost natural ecosystems, including boosting biodiversity and increasing other species. I am sure noble Lords listen to “The Archers”, as I do, on which there was a story around beavers this week. What we will have learned from that regarding species is that where you see beavers you will also find tits.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
On Tuesday, I visited the South Downs National Park, which has introduced a pair of beavers. Their introduction can have benefits for other animals. They are large animals that are not aggressive to other species such as the mink, but they appear to act as a deterrent for the mink. Where water voles have been reintroduced alongside beavers, volunteers have noticed the benefit that the number of mink has reduced and thus the water voles thrive. Are the Government considering the reintroduction of both species in areas where they used to be abundant?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
The Government’s approach to reintroductions more widely needs to be considered on a case-by-case basis. We are committed to providing opportunities for the reintroduction of formerly native species where the benefits for the environment, such as the noble Baroness has demonstrated, are clear, but any reintroductions of any species must follow the published Reintroductions and conservation translocations: code and guidance for England.
Baroness Boycott (CB)
My Lords, I completely support the Government’s view on beavers and what the noble Baroness said about them bringing other species, but I will put in a plea for another wild species, which is the hare. At the moment, you can hunt and shoot hares 24/7, all through the year. We need to introduce a time, when hares are pregnant and breeding, when they are off the cards for people to shoot. This is really important, as the population of this majestic animal is dwindling rapidly. People in China are betting on hare coursing in Norfolk and places such as that, and they put cameras on the dogs to watch them tear the hares apart. This is truly shocking. It is an amazing, wonderful, beautiful animal.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
Of course, hare coursing is not allowed in this country. I congratulate the previous Government on tightening up the rules around this, which was really important. The particular issue around the shooting of hares is that there is not a closed season, which there is for other species. This is an anomaly, and we should look at it very carefully.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the Minister on the stand that this Government have taken. If beavers are to be introduced in areas where they are currently not found, to what extent will farmers, drainage boards and others in the catchment area be consulted?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
I can be very brief and clear: we intend to do full consultation with stakeholders and work closely with them around any introduction.
Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)
My Lords, may I take my noble friend back to her previous answer on the reintroduction of other wild species? I am very glad to find that she is a fellow fan of “The Archers”. She will be aware that there were recently some very serious illegal releases in Scotland, which resulted in not only the use of precious resources but the death of at least one of the animals. Can she say what sanctions are available to be brought to bear against people who do that? Whether their intentions are good or ill, they are not doing anybody any favours.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
I completely agree with my noble friend. The Government condemn any illegal release of beavers. They not only are unlawful but, as she said, can lead to damage and conflict, and they undermine legitimate releases. Just to confirm, it is an offence in England under Section 14 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 to release a beaver into an enclosure or the wild, except under the authority of a licence from Natural England. Regarding penalties, doing so without a licence carries a penalty of either an unlimited fine or up to six months in prison.
Lord Roborough (Con)
My Lords, I refer the House to my entry in the register of interests, in particular as a host to an illegally released beaver—not by me. As the Minister pointed out, the reintroduction of beavers to the UK may well have a role to play in managing waterways and reducing the risk of flooding. We have discussed nature-based solutions in this House before on the then Water (Special Measures) Bill, and I would be most grateful to the Minister for an update on progress on nature-based solutions within the water sector.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
The noble Lord is absolutely right. The Government are very serious about this. Nature-based solutions will be incredibly important if we are to get the outcomes and results that we want. We are continuing to make progress, and I am happy to keep the noble Lord updated as that progress continues.
Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)
My Lords, bearing in mind the experience of the introduction of the grey squirrel in this country and that beavers have been introduced into Scotland, is there not every likelihood that it is only a matter of time before the beavers establish themselves in England—with or without consent from Natural England?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
As I have said, any introductions are being very carefully managed and licensed. We have a five-step management approach to beavers, which can also come in if there are illegal releases or releases that have spread into areas that are less appropriate. That five-step approach has a number of actions to cope with beaver numbers as we move forward with this programme.
Lord Douglas-Miller (Con)
My Lords, it is often the unplanned and unbudgeted aspects of species reintroduction that cause the conflict. In Scotland—where, like my noble friend Lord Forsyth, I live—the original beaver reintroduction study concluded that there was little impact on agriculture. Beavers were released, legally and illegally, and given full protection. The study, although technically correct, failed to mention that the reason for the small impact on agriculture was largely due to the fact that there was very little agriculture in the study area. The subsequent expansion of beaver numbers has caused conflict as they go into agricultural areas. Can the Minister ensure that any study or consultation prior to a reintroduction is comprehensive, includes a plan for problem areas and has a financial contingency?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
I reassure the noble Lord that there will be proper consultation and thorough consideration of any aspects of reports or information before any releases take place. I finish by stressing the fact that beavers bring huge benefits as well as potential risks.
Private Rented Sector: Affordable Rents
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Grender
To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to ensure that rents in the private rented sector are affordable.
Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)
Before we proceed, may I just remind colleagues that this is called Question Time for a reason. We want questions, so that the Minister can give an answer.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)
My Lords, the Government entirely understand concerns about the affordability of rents. We have inherited a private rented sector that is failing many low-income renters. The Renters’ Rights Bill will empower tenants to challenge unreasonable rent increases, as well as taking practical steps to end the practice of rental bidding and prohibiting landlords from demanding large amounts of upfront rent. In addition, the Government are committed to building 1.5 million safe and decent homes in England over this Parliament. This boost to supply is critical to improving housing affordability.
Baroness Grender (LD)
I thank the Minister for her response, but current rents remain unaffordable for the 34% of renters in poverty—a figure likely to rise with the freeze of local housing allowance. Private rents increased by more than 8% last year and market rates are already out of reach for so many. The First-tier Tribunal will not resolve any of these issues. Are the Government considering any form of rent stabilisation?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for her question. We have discussed this in the Chamber before, and the Government have been clear: we do not support rent controls. Heavy-handed rent controls tend to mean higher rents at the start of a tenancy, and they can make it much harder for prospective tenants to find a home. They also encourage the growth of unregulated sub-letting, which can leave the most vulnerable tenants very exposed to higher costs and minimal protections. Those rent controls always come at a cost, often in reduced investment in housing supply and quality standards. We prefer to use this mechanism to strengthen tenants’ rights.
The Lord Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, is participating remotely. I invite him to speak.
Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab) [V]
My Lords, has my noble friend seen the very interesting briefing from UNISON, which has 1.3 million members? The brief calls for measures to stop escalating rents; increased enforcement and the regulation of landlords and their agents; changes to the benefits system, incentivising work; and measures to end the right to buy in conditions of housing shortage. We urgently need to find a way to ensure that rents in the private sector become affordable. Could Ministers arrange to meet UNISON representatives to discuss their very interesting proposals for reform?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for his question. Of course, I am always happy to meet with trade union colleagues, particularly on important issues such as this. I thank him too for his reminder of the information in that UNISON report. Many of the issues raised in it are being tackled in the Renters’ Rights Bill, and in the leasehold and commonhold reform Bill which we will be bringing forward later in the year. On the right to buy, we have already taken significant steps to make sure that the funds from the sale of social housing go back to those councils to enable them to build more social housing.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, further to the Question from the noble Baroness, Lady Grender, rents in the private sector are rising because supply is falling as many smaller landlords decide to sell up. While there is much of value in the Renters’ Rights Bill, there is nothing in it to increase supply, which is what tenants want. Will the Minister turbocharge the discussions between her department, the Treasury and the pension funds and insurance companies in order to get serious, long-term institutional finance into good quality accommodation for rent and to redress the imbalance between supply and demand?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for his question and for all his expertise on this subject. A few weeks ago, I attended an investors’ summit in the City of London where there was great enthusiasm about investment in the housing market. We welcome those institutional investors and recognise the crucial role that the build-to-rent sector in particular is playing in building those 1.5 million homes. Last year, we announced a £700 million extension to the home building fund to support housebuilders and to catalyse that institutional investment. This should support the construction of 12,000 more homes, including build-to-rent. We also announced a £3 billion guarantee for SME and build-to-rent housebuilders through the reopening of guarantee schemes, which should deliver the construction of around 20,000 new homes.
Lord Bird (CB)
My Lords, could the Government also turbocharge getting rid of Section 21, which legalises insecurity in the lives of people paying rent?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I absolutely agree with the noble Lord about the insecurity that Section 21 presents. It is also a huge economic burden on local councils as they pick up the tab for emergency accommodation coming out of Section 21 evictions. That is why our Renters’ Rights Bill contains clear proposals to get rid of Section 21 once and for all.
Baroness Winterton of Doncaster (Lab)
My Lords, in some areas, selective licensing schemes have been introduced because of the poor performance of private landlords. They can make a real difference in improving standards. Would my noble friend the Minister consider looking at best practice in those schemes, and at whether local authorities could be encouraged to adopt them in areas where landlords are poorly serving their tenants?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I am pleased to commend those local authorities which have taken steps to regulate private housing in their areas through the use of selective licensing schemes. We continue to look at how we might better support that going forward.
Lord Jamieson (Con)
My Lords, as my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham said, when supply goes down and demand goes up, prices increase. What assessment have the Government made of reports that landlords are leaving the rental market at the highest rate ever? Many are citing rental reforms as their reason for leaving.
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
If I am honest with the noble Lord, I think the pressures on housing come from 14 years of not taking the housing market seriously. We have carefully assessed what the impact of the Renters’ Rights Bill might be, and we do not believe that it will have a significant impact on the supply of private rented housing in the market. Supply has been consistent for several years, and we want to maintain that and to make sure that the Renters’ Rights Bill delivers the right balance of support for both landlords and tenants. There are many really good landlords, and we want to give them the help and support they need through the Bill, as well as supporting our tenants.
Lord Best (CB)
My Lords, market rents in the private rented sector are often unaffordable for those on low incomes, which is why I greatly welcome the Government’s announcement this month of more funds for social housing. Roughly what proportion of the 1.5 million new homes the Government are planning for this parliamentary Session will be affordable to those on average incomes and below?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
That is a key question, and I am afraid it is not possible for me to give a specific answer because we have just set aside social housing in local plans. We will be asking local authorities to determine their local need for social housing.
The Lord Bishop of Chelmsford
My Lords, one consequence of sustained high rents in the private sector is the conversion of family homes into HMOs. Are the Government monitoring this trend, and what action are they taking on the loss of family homes in this way?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I understand the point the right reverend Prelate makes about the conversion of family homes into HMOs. I do not have those figures here, so I will write to her with a response.
Baroness Thornhill (LD)
My Lords, evidence from Scotland shows that only 4% of tenants with a rent rise use the First-tier Tribunal to challenge that rise. How will the Government ensure that more tenants are aware of and use this right? Does the Minister accept that, in a system where demand significantly outstrips supply, a tribunal decision that the rent is fair does not make it affordable?
Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)
I absolutely understand the point the noble Baroness makes, but tenants will be able to dispute rent increases they think are above market rate by referring their case to the First-tier Tribunal. The tribunal will assess what the landlord could expect to receive if re-letting the property on the open market, and it will determine the rent. Both landlords and tenants will have the opportunity to submit evidence, and the tribunal will not be able to determine a rent increase higher than the landlord had originally proposed—all through our Renters’ Rights Bill. So we are improving the position for tenants, and for landlords, who will be able to make their case at the tribunal.
Prostate Cancer: National Screening Programme
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to introduce a national screening programme for prostate cancer.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Baroness Merron) (Lab)
My Lords, we are investing £16 million in the Prostate Cancer UK-led TRANSFORM trial to look for better tests than we have currently. Evidence shows that the current best test available, the PSA test, is not accurate enough to use in men without symptoms. As noble Lords will appreciate, policies must be evidence-based, so the UK National Screening Committee is actively reviewing the evidence for prostate screening programmes and will complete its review this year, to be followed by consultation.
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
My Lords, I declare an interest, in that just a year ago I was unexpectedly and rapidly diagnosed with prostate cancer and received wonderful treatment from the NHS, to which I pay tribute today. Some 12,000 men die each year, many needlessly, because of late diagnosis. It is a postcode lottery. It is quite clear that in areas of socioeconomic deprivation, and among black men between the ages of 45 and 70, there is a much higher incidence. When can we expect to hear news about a national screening programme? What assessment is being made of the new tests that are being reported at the moment, which are much more successful in diagnosis?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
My Lords, I am glad to hear that the right reverend Prelate had such good care in the NHS. His comments are appreciated, and we are very pleased that things have out turned so well for him. The issue, as I know he will he understand, is that we cannot offer an inaccurate test to high-risk groups, not least because that increases the risk of adverse effects, unnecessary treatment and misdiagnosis. We are not yet in a scientifically and evidence-based position to offer the national screening programme, and that is why we are taking the action that I outlined in my Answer.
Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, while we wait for a more reliable screening tool, what are the Government doing to inform men about the very clear risk factors that are known about? To that I would add that maintaining a healthy weight reduces the risk. Additionally, what can the Minister do to reassure men that, if they are in any way worried about any symptom, they are not wasting their GP’s time if they go along and get it checked out?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
The noble Baroness is absolutely right. I encourage everyone, men and women, to be aware of any changes in their bodies. They are not wasting the time of their GP. That is exactly what they should do. As she says, men are disproportionately affected by a number of health conditions, including some cancers, heart disease and type 2 diabetes. As part of addressing this, the Secretary of State has announced that we are developing a men’s health strategy, not least because we know that men are less likely to come forward to deal with health matters.
Baroness Manzoor (Con)
My Lords, in the absence of a national screening programme and given the difficulty in getting access to GPs, particularly in deprived areas, how are the Government improving access to GPs? In some areas, it is two to three weeks before people can get an appointment.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
Again, I am sure that the noble Baroness would agree that the important thing is that people ensure that they do not ignore the situation. I agree that the situation that we inherited was hugely difficult, particularly in some areas, around GPs. In the 10-year plan, which will be published in the coming months, there will be a big focus on the move from sickness to prevention, from analogue to digital, and from hospital to community. In all three pillars, greater access to GP appointments will be included.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)
My Lords, as the Minister rightly highlighted, there are detection gaps, and one in 50 people have aggressive disease at the time of diagnosis. When this proves to be hormone-therapy or chemotherapy resistant, how many centres can offer strontium, which can be very effective for metastatic bone pain, as that is how some people present?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
I was glad to have the opportunity to discuss this with the noble Baroness. Having looked into it, we do not currently hold this data. However, where strontium therapy is appropriate and preferred to improve patient outcomes, it will be offered. This is, of course, a clinical decision.
Lord Kamall (Con)
My Lords, when I worked in Belgium, a urologist told me that men over 45 years old should seek a test every year for this. When I came back and asked my GP, he was dismissive of that, saying that I should seek a PSA test. When I asked a nurse at my next blood test for a PSA test, she said, “Are you sure? They’re not very reliable”. Given that the last Government introduced trials, and that one of the tests seems to be 96% accurate, can the Minister say any more about that trial and its evaluation, and whether we are any closer to a definitive test? If not, what guidance is available to medical practitioners for the PSA test?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
The advice and guidance is that GPs should counsel asymptomatic men about the potential benefits and harms of PSA testing, so that they can make an informed decision. However, the guidance is that GPs should not proactively offer a PSA test, for the reasons that we have covered. That is why we are investing in this trial, to find a better test so that we can address this. This is a complex area, as often it is, but we are making progress, as I have already outlined.
Lord Brennan of Canton (Lab)
My Lords, it is very welcome that new diagnostic tests are being investigated. However, can we be careful not to give out the wrong message? I was diagnosed with prostate cancer—and I was completely symptomless—thanks to the PSA test. In giving out that message, can we make it clear that GPs should not stop men getting a PSA test, even when they are symptomless, if they are at the right age and in the right bracket?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
I certainly agree with my noble friend. As he knows from his experience, tests are available. The point is that they should be used in the right situation. As he knows, one of the issues is people being asymptomatic, which is why it is very important that men take note of their health and report any change or concerns that they have.
Lord Grayling (Con)
My Lords, I am also here thanks to early diagnosis. I understand what the Minister is saying about the PSA test, but very many people are here today because they had such a test. It worries me that the message is that, because it is not reliable, it should not be at the forefront. I ask the Minister not to rule out using PSA tests more widely. If it is the best we have got, it may be the only thing we have got.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for sharing his personal experience. I am not suggesting that the PSA test should not be used, but we are talking about extending it and using it in a screening program. I thank him for giving me the opportunity to reassure your Lordships’ House that that is why we have the trial, which will report later this year, to find a better answer; the answer we have currently is not where we need it to be. Yes, there is a role for it, but we must strive for better than we have got currently.
Lord Sentamu (CB)
My Lords, 13 years ago, a PSA test saved my life. I had an operation in Leeds hospital and I now have no sign of that, and every year they test me by the same method. I encourage the Minister not to give mixed messages. We need a very clear message that, at the moment, the PSA test saves a lot of lives.
Baroness Merron (Lab)
I agree about the need for clear messages, and I hope the noble and right reverend Lord will agree on the need for striving to do rather better.
Lord Bailey of Paddington (Con)
My Lords, in many deprived communities, and in the black community in particular, there is a very high incidence of prostate cancer. Before they get to the PSA test, what work is being done to educate communities even to be involved with seeking out that test in order to protect their health?
Baroness Merron (Lab)
The noble Lord is quite right to raise this. I am glad to say that the TRANSFORM trial I referred to will help to address this by ensuring that a significant proportion of participants are black men, who suffer disproportionately in this regard. That is really important, because previous trials have not included enough black men. The trial will address those disparities, and therefore the results that we get from that will be really important. It is always the case that working with specific communities to get the right message out is key to what we do.
Copyright and Artificial Intelligence
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Chakrabarti
To ask His Majesty’s Government what is their initial assessment of the scale and balance of responses to their consultation on copyright and artificial intelligence.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business and Trade and Department for Science, Information and Technology (Baroness Jones of Whitchurch) (Lab)
My Lords, the Government consulted on several issues regarding copyright and AI. That consultation closed on 25 February and over 11,500 responses were received. We welcome this significant engagement from across the creative and AI sectors. Our priority must be now to analyse the evidence that has been submitted. Proposals will be set out in due course, including a fuller breakdown of the types of respondent to the consultation.
Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)
I am very grateful to my noble friend the Minister for that Answer. I declare my interests as an author, like many Members of your Lordships’ House. Does she agree that the intellectual property of creatives in this country is no less precious or important than the intellectual property of tech companies that have, frankly, already been scraping the internet for creative work and ripping these people off? Wherever the policy lands in the future as a result of the consultation, will the Government consider offering assistance to creatives, many of whom are really not very well off, to ensure that they have restitution for the grand theft that has already been perpetrated?
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, of course the Government recognise the concerns that many in the creative industries have about the potential impact of AI on that sector. This is why we want to act now to give UK creators greater control over their works and more transparency about how their work is being used, as well as creating the ability for them to be paid for it. That is exactly what the proposals in our consultation aim to achieve. But I should say that this is a complicated area, because AI adoption also has the potential to drive growth across the economy, including in the creative industries. For example, 38% of creative industry businesses are already using AI technologies. So this is a complicated area, but we know we have to find a solution and protect the interests of creatives in the future in the way that the noble Baroness has alerted us to.
Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)
My Lords, the Government intend to take out the transparency amendments tabled by my noble friend Lady Kidron in the Data (Use and Access) Bill. What provision are they going to make to ensure that creatives know that their copyrighted work has been pirated by AI models, so that they can then take action?
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, the Government agree with many of the points made during the debate on the data Bill, and in other discussions in this House, that further transparency is needed from AI developers about their use of web crawlers and the materials that they use to train their models. However, we have a consultation out and it would be premature to commit to specific legislation until we have analysed the responses to that consultation and heard all the voices in this sector. Nevertheless, I assure the noble Viscount that we intend to resolve this issue. It is one that the previous Government failed to resolve and we need to resolve it now, so we will take action as soon as the consultation has been analysed and resolved.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, there has been widespread concern that the Secretary of State in the Minister’s department has been very happy to meet representatives of big tech and AI firms but less willing to meet representatives of our thriving but threatened creative industries. Of course, in due course his meetings will be published through the Government’s quarterly transparency returns but, given how germane this is to a contentious area of policy currently under discussion, will she give consideration to publishing that list of meetings sooner?
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, as the noble Lord knows, that information will be published in the normal way. What I will say is that the Minister for AI and Digital Government and the Minister for Creative Industries, Arts and Tourism have been extremely active in engaging on this subject. They have held round tables with the creative industries and the AI sector during the consultation, which is a joint consultation involving DCMS and DSIT. This morning, the Secretary of State for DSIT explained that, and also said that he is of course open to meetings with the creative sector. All that is on the table and there is no problem about dialogue or engagement. That will go on in the next few months as well, while we seek to find a solution to this issue.
Lord Foster of Bath (LD)
My Lords, regardless of whatever future plans are brought forward, will the Minister confirm that, if the outcome of current challenges shows that our current IP regime is legal, the Government will provide assistance to those creators whose IP has been stolen on an industrial scale by AI companies?
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
The noble Lord is right that this is a complicated copyright area and there are some legal cases in the offing. It is a complicated area that needs a holistic approach. Our view is that addressing the issue in isolation will not provide sufficient legal clarity or resolve the issue in a way that I think that most noble Lords would expect. The consultation will help guide us on this issue and I urge noble Lords to await its outcome, which I hope will provide some solutions.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, despite what the Minister says, there is a basic concern about the framing of this issue by the Government, their perceived need for a balance between the tech companies and the creative industries, and the logic of that in terms of the need for someone to give something up. Should any side have to give up something that is already theirs, morally and in law: namely, work made by artists, who therefore hold the copyright? This is not about balance; it is about rights.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
The noble Earl is right, and we are trying to find a way to ensure that those rights are upheld. However, all these sectors need to grow in our economy. As I was just explaining, the creative sector uses AI, so it is not as simple “us and them” situation. AI is increasingly being used by all sectors across our economy. We need to find a way through this that rewards creators in the way that the noble Earl has outlined, which I think we all understand.
Viscount Camrose (Con)
My Lords, I recognise of course that the task of analysing the results of the consultation still needs to go ahead. That said, does the Minister agree with us that digital watermarking is going to be a key component of the solution to the AI and copyright issue? If so, what does she make of the number of digital watermarking solutions that are now coming to market? In her view, is this to be welcomed or should we be pursuing a single standard for digital watermarks?
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
The noble Viscount has made an important point about watermarks, and that is certainly one solution that we are considering. The issue of transparency is crucial to the outcome of this issue, and watermarks would certainly help with that. I do not have a view as yet on whether we should have one or many, but I am hoping that the consultation will give us some guidance on that.
Lord Brennan of Canton (Lab)
My Lords, the Minister is right when she says that AI is extensively used in the creative industries and the music industry, and has been for a long time—as a servant, not a master of creatives. Is this not an opportunity to look at those companies such as DAACI that try to use AI in an ethical way which ensures that creators are rewarded for their input?
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for that proposal. Again, I hope that all these companies will contribute, or have contributed, to the consultation, because those are exactly the sorts of standards we want to achieve. We want to make sure that creators get the right awards; that is certainly our intention through this consultation. We need to find a way through this. We are working hard and we will not give up until we have found a way to resolve the issue.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, the noble Lord, Lord Foster, and the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, all pointed out the way in which big tech has already stolen large amounts of property. Had that property been cash or gold, we surely would be getting a different reaction from the Government—yet it is actually the same thing. I have a constructive suggestion to help the Minister. How about a universal basic income for the creative sector as compensation?
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for her helpful suggestion. Hopefully, she has fed that into the consultation. I am sure it will be considered as one of the many proposals to resolve this issue.
Lord Pannick (CB)
My Lords, have His Majesty’s Government received representations, formal or informal, on this subject from the Government of the United States and, if so, will they publish the substance of those representations?
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
To my knowledge, we have not received any representations from the US Government. I am sure any such discussions that take place will become public very quickly.
Business of the House
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Smith of Basildon
That Standing Order 38(1) (Arrangement of the Order Paper) be dispensed with on Wednesday 5 March to enable debate on the report from the Conduct Committee on the Review of the Code of Conduct and the Guide to the Code of Conduct to begin before Oral Questions that day.
Breakfast Clubs: Early Adopters
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for the Statement. The Government’s announcement in relation to breakfast clubs builds, obviously, on the approach of the previous Government, who ran a breakfast club programme from 2018. As we know, the vast majority of schools have a breakfast club; some are free and others charge a very low fee.
Although I understand and absolutely respect that the Government are following through on their manifesto commitment to deliver breakfast clubs in primary schools, can the Minister clarify for the House what will happen to breakfast clubs in secondary schools funded by the previous Administration when that funding ends? Similarly, the Statement talked about the growth in childcare provision and the very significant funding going into that, which also builds on previous Conservative government policy.
On the specifics of the scheme, the Minister will be aware that the Institute for Fiscal Studies report last year calculated that the £315 million announced by the Government for breakfast clubs would fund only the food element in all primary schools. As she knows, the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill proposes half an hour of childcare as well as breakfast. Can the Minister clarify what percentage of funding for the new breakfast clubs the Government will provide? What discussions have the Government had with schools on how to cover any shortfall?
The Minister will have seen the report from the BBC yesterday of a small primary school in Lancashire that was part of the 750-school pilot phase and felt that it was not able to continue because, in its case, the funding did not cover its costs. Obviously, there has been wider commentary on this issue. Can she shed light on whether there is truth in the rumours that some schools were invited to take part in the pilot but were unable to and, if so, what the main reasons for that were?
Can the Minister also confirm what percentage of schools in the new scheme had no breakfast club provision before this?
I have tried to work out the Secretary of State’s assertion that the scheme will save families £450 a year. Maths is not my strongest suit but perhaps the Minister can help me. The Government, as I understand it, are funding 60p per child and 78p for those children in receipt of pupil premium. On my maths, £450 a year is about £2.30 per school day per child. Equally, if you put it the other way round, the government funding of £315 million spread across 4.5 million primary school children is about £70 a year. So can she set out what assumptions the Government are making that are behind the statement of the £450 saving to families?
Finally, I wonder what assumptions the Government are making about the uptake of the scheme. A range of breakfast clubs already exist, of course, with and without additional childcare, and the Government have said they aim to learn from the pilot. Given that the vast majority of schools already have breakfast club provision, I am unclear what the Government need to learn from this pilot as opposed to what has gone before. All this matters, of course, because the Government’s choice—and it is a choice—is to fund breakfast for all children in primary school, including those whose parents were happy to pay for that breakfast and could do so without financial difficulty. It would be helpful for the House if the Minister could explain why.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for bringing this Statement to the Floor of the House even if it is a few days behind the Commons. The main thrust from my party is that we would rather have had the emphasis of this put into lunchtime meals, because, from the information I have received, about 40% of children who are eligible for this take it up, and anybody who has dealt with any child, or indeed rush-hour traffic, knows that you have more trouble getting children to school early in the day to get breakfast than you would do at lunchtime, when everybody is there.
That is a fundamental flaw in the system of getting the nutrition in. The second flaw is what is in one of these breakfasts. If it is a sugar-laden breakfast cereal, you have the equivalent of a turkey twizzler in the morning. If it is just preserve on a bit of white bread, you will fill somebody up, but what is the nutritional guarantee?
We have more experience in lunchtime meals—it is easier to get a balance in the meal. You will get a bigger bang for your buck. We also have the idea that people are used to eating that meal at lunchtime, so it will probably be slightly easier to get acceptance. If you are going to do this, what are the steps you will take to make sure it reaches more people? If you are going to put this money in, what is the benefit?
I had prepared a slightly less extensive list of other questions, which the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, has got to before me. I will not weary the House by repeating them. The basic thing is the strategy to make sure that you get the best nutritional outcomes for those pupils and get to a higher percentage of the school population. I think we are entitled to know about that from the Government.
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)
I thank noble Lords for their responses to the Statement made earlier this week by the Secretary of State, in which she spelled out very clearly the delivery plans for the Government’s commitment to deliver on their pledge to provide free breakfast clubs in every state-funded school with primary-age children. Let us reflect on what that means for those children. Evidence shows that, where schools run breakfast clubs, they report improvements to pupil’s behaviour, attendance and attainment. We want every school, child and family to have the chance of those benefits.
In response to the noble Baroness, I think that is where this scheme builds on—in some ways it is fundamentally larger and more significant—the national breakfast club programme, which has previously been running. I know there will have been some enormously good work and pupils will have benefited, but it is not universal; it is not open to every child and every school, and it is not necessarily free. That is the difference in the proposals this Government are putting forward, which are being tested and will be evaluated and developed through the early adopters scheme the Secretary of State announced earlier this week. Some 750 schools, chosen from a whole range of different sizes, regions and levels of deprivation, will have the opportunity to test it.
In response to the question about the continuation of the national breakfast club programme, we have committed to continue that until March 2026 for all those involved. After that, we will make decisions based on the spending review which, of course, is coming soon. The funding made available in the early adopters scheme is not just for food; it is for delivery, staff and food. Compared with the previous scheme, an average school would receive £24,000 as part of this scheme, which is £21,000 more than they would have received as part of the national breakfast club programme. We can see there the scale of the ambition of this breakfast clubs policy.
On the case reported by the BBC, I can assure the noble Baroness that the BBC has now changed that story because it was wrong. There are 754 schools that have accepted and will be part of the early adopters scheme. There is a very small number the department is in discussion with about the details of those arrangements and making sure that they are able to continue. But the vast majority of the schools have taken up this very important opportunity. I think we will learn a lot from their experience about how we can ensure the national rollout.
On the £450 figure, of course, not only are children being provided with breakfast, but they are also being provided with 30 minutes of free childcare as part of the breakfast scheme. A calculation of the value of 30 minutes of free childcare five days a week gives us a figure of up to £450 that could potentially be saved by parents. At a time when parents face considerable cost of living pressures, I am sure that this will be widely adopted and welcomed by parents.
The noble Lord, Lord Addington, argued that this should be something that is happening at lunchtime as opposed to breakfast time. The Government already rightly spend a considerable amount of money on free school meals for those who are eligible, but what is being provided here is something universal for all children and free at the beginning of the day. Although it was some time ago for me, I had some sympathy with his picture of the parent in the morning struggling to get themselves and their children organised, and to get themselves to work and their children to school.
However, I have to say that I think that struggle would be made easier by the idea that your child—I would not want anybody to think this ever happened to my children—is not being flung out of the car just before school to start the day in some disarray without having had a proper breakfast, or the time to settle into the school day in a way that is likely to make them calmer and more able to learn. The idea is that not only are we providing children with a breakfast, but we are also providing them with a calm start to the day, and we are providing their families with an additional 30 minutes of childcare first thing in the morning when it is often very needed in order for parents to get to work.
On the point the noble Lord raised about the quality of the food, of course that is important. It is not true that school food standards only apply at lunchtime. They also apply to what will be served in breakfast clubs. That will ensure the quality of food available for those children.
Breakfast clubs will ensure that every child, no matter their circumstances, can achieve their full potential by providing a supportive start to the day. I hope noble Lords will feel able to celebrate and support the scheme, and that we are all able to learn from the 750 early adopters how we can make this policy a real success.
Baroness Blackstone (Lab)
My Lords, I welcome the innovation set out in the Statement, but I am sure that my noble friend the Minister will agree that it is of such importance that it should be properly evaluated. She mentioned evaluation in answer to one of the other questions, but it would be very helpful if she could tell the House what this evaluation and monitoring will consist of. There is some scepticism about take-up. If we are to succeed in reaching children living in poverty, it is important that we get to those children from very disadvantaged homes. That should be part of the evaluation.
We also need to see what works and what does not. I would be grateful if my noble friend could put more flesh on what she said about evaluation and tell us when it might be completed. What steps will the Government then take to publicise it, so that local authorities and teachers can see it and officials and Ministers can move to make changes where they are needed?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My noble friend makes a very important point. It is at the heart of the early adopters scheme that, exactly as she says, we are able to see in different circumstances, with different types of schools and different needs of children—there are 50 special schools included in the 750—how the scheme works and therefore learn what more we need to do.
In order to ensure that that happens, we will engage with academics to be able to evaluate it. We will make sure that there is peer-to-peer learning throughout the early adopters scheme. We will then want to reflect further on that evaluation to think about how we develop and roll out the scheme nationally. I am sure that I will be able to come back to this House with more information about what we have learned from the early adopters scheme and how we are intending to put that into operation to deliver the whole scheme.
Baroness D'Souza (CB)
My Lords, there are many different schemes in addition to the one the Government have just announced, which aim to provide breakfast for children in schools. How and through which government departments will these be co-ordinated? I ask this because I fear that there is a siloed approach to many of these schemes, which means that there will be gaps in the service provided If there were proper co-ordination through a department that is overtly in charge of these schemes, those gaps would not occur.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Baroness is right that some good schemes are already in place but, to reiterate, none is universal or free. The breakfast club commitment that will be brought into law through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which will come to this House soon, will ensure that there are no gaps because there will be universal provision across all state-funded schools with primary-age pupils. It will be co-ordinated by the DfE, supported in some of the ways I have outlined. That is how we will get coherence and opportunity for everybody. To be fair, the noble Lord, Lord Addington, also pointed out the benefit of a universal scheme: it removes the stigma associated with schemes targeted specifically at some children.
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, as someone whose daughter has just started breakfast club this week for the first time, I absolutely recognise their value for children and parents. The Minister was helpfully clear that the key difference in the Government’s approach is that it is about universality and a free-to-use service. She was also clear that the intention is for the funding to cover food and childcare, but there is a bit of a tension in those two statements. The IFS has been clear that the funding available is sufficient to cover all pupils if it covers only food costs, but that it would cover only about 60% of pupils if it covered food and childcare costs. While I welcome the Minister’s clarity that the intention is to cover food and childcare, it seems that the Government are missing about 40% of the funding needed to do so on a universal basis.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
We do not believe that that is the case. With the considerable additional money that will go into schools—£24,000 for an average school—we believe that it is possible to cover all the elements I outlined. However, part of the reason for having the early adopter scheme is to be able to look at how these 750 schools are delivering and the extent to which the resources are right for them to do so, and to use that to plan for how and what resources are necessary to roll that out nationally.
The Lord Bishop of Chelmsford
My Lords, like many other noble Lords, I welcome this Statement. How will the Government ensure that breakfast clubs will be accessible to learners with special educational needs and disabilities who may usually be supported by one-to-one staff during the school day?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The right reverend Prelate makes an important point. As I suggested earlier, 50 of the 750 schools in the early adopter scheme are special schools and will receive a higher rate per pupil. They will give us the opportunity to see what design, level of staffing and type of organisation work best for those children. Equally, for schools that are not special schools, we are clear that these breakfast clubs need to be available for all children, including those with special educational needs. Being able to evaluate and look at the experience of the early adopters will help us ensure that we can deliver that.
Baroness Brown of Silvertown (Lab)
My Lords, I once represented an area that had massive child poverty and where children had great needs. I have been told by children that it was not their turn to eat that night. I have been told by teachers that children stand by their friends to have the leftovers of their packed lunch because their family cannot provide food for them. Is there any flexibility in this scheme for children who find it almost impossible to get to a breakfast club because of its timing? Many of the children I once represented are in temporary accommodation and homes. They move around quite a lot and often find themselves having to access their school via three or four bus journeys, which makes it almost impossible for them to get in for an 8.30 am or 8.15 am breakfast club. If we could feed those children at break time to give them that extra start and boost, I am sure that would be most welcomed by teachers, parents and children. Is there flexibility to allow that to happen?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My noble friend makes an enormously important point from a position of considerable experience. The intention is that this club happens before school and provides childcare and food, but I take her point about children in particular need of food who find it particularly difficult to access it at that time. I will certainly take that away and discuss it with my right honourable friend the Secretary of State and Minister Morgan, who are responsible for this and, I am sure, will want to think carefully about it as part of the early adopter scheme.
Baroness Coffey (Con)
My Lords, in the Statement, the Secretary of State asserted that there are areas underserved with childcare places yet overwhelmed with demand. I am very conscious that it is a statutory duty of local councils to provide sufficient childcare places, so I would be grateful if the Minister could write to me and place in the Library evidence that they are underserved. When I was in government and took this up with the Department for Education, I was assured that there was no evidence of childcare being underserved. Going further, I respectfully say to the Minister that the increase in employer national insurance will have a massive effect on childcare provision. I would be grateful if she could address whether any impact assessment has been done on that.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The last Government, rightly, had an objective of ensuring a considerable expansion of the availability of childcare entitlements. For example, there was an objective to increase the free entitlement, from this September, from 15 hours to 30 hours for all children from nine months to two years to match the entitlement delivered for three and four year-olds, which was ramped up last September. The problem was that, while there was a pledge, there was no plan to ensure that that provision was available in all parts of the country. That is why this Government have worked enormously hard, alongside local authorities, to make sure that that plan is in place and backed up by sufficient investment—£8 billion will be spent on childcare entitlements, which is a £2 billion increase in funding for entitlements compared to last year. It is also why we announced the £75 million expansion grant to support providers for children using the new entitlements, delivered through local authorities. On the national insurance contributions point, we will also make available £25 million for public sector providers of childcare via local authorities.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
For the scheme to be successful, will the Minister address some of the concerns raised by teachers about which facilities will be made available—ideally, it should not be a classroom—and who will provide the care? I am sure she does not wish teachers to have to extend their already long working day.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Baroness asks precisely some of the questions that the early adopter scheme will enable us to consider. I agree that teachers should not be extending their day to do this. Schools will find different ways to think about the staffing of these clubs, which we can look at in the early adopter scheme, and the accommodation in which to do it. I do not necessarily agree that it would not be appropriate to use a classroom; some schools might think that is the best way of doing it. There is the flexibility, if necessary, to use premises close to the school if that is more appropriate. However, those are very legitimate questions. The early adopter scheme will help us iron them out and find the best practice that I am sure schools will develop.
Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)
I want to follow up one of the questions that has already been put to my noble friend. I was very pleased to hear the number of SEN schools that are part of the project. Has the Minister had talks with transport authorities about getting children with SEN to their school earlier, in time to have the meal? We all know that those transport arrangements can go awry for all sorts of reasons; if talks are not being held, this might add extra complexity that could jeopardise the system.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My noble friend makes a very important point, which links to the point about children with turbulent lifestyles and how they can get to school on time. I will certainly take it back to my honourable friend Minister Morgan, to think about in the development of this. As he is very good at this sort of stuff, I am sure he has already thought about it, but I will make sure that he has.
Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)
My Lords, child obesity is one of the biggest problems that we face. I welcome the direction of travel and the opportunities this presents to address some of the long-standing problems. The Minister mentioned that school food standards would be applied. I see a wink from the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, on the Benches opposite, given the number of interventions I made to her about the quality of school food standards being, in my view, inadequate, and the lack of enforcement. Can the Minister say what enforcement we will be applying? What standards will we have about the quality of the food? Is it not important that we spend more time looking at that, during this experimental period, to get the model right for the future?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My noble friend’s point about school food standards is a broader one and very important. I have previously told the House that, during my first time round in the Department for Education, I had the joy of being heavily lobbied to introduce school food standards in the first place, and I am very glad that we did. However, my noble friend makes the legitimate point that it is important that we keep those school food standards under review. There may be some learning from this scheme. I know that my colleagues in the department are keen to ensure that we have not only the right standards but the right ways of ensuring that they are delivered universally across schools. That is something that my noble friend will have the opportunity to badger me about in future months and years.
Lord Desai (CB)
My Lords, there seems to be uniformity, in that everybody has to have breakfast. Why cannot some schools have breakfast and others have lunch? I always went to school in the morning and always had lunch at home, so I did not have breakfast. I do not think my concentration was affected at all. It is a matter of choice, and one that should be given to students.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
Choice depends on there being provision. At the moment, there is not universal free provision of breakfast clubs for those children—probably their parents, frankly, at that age—who choose that to be the right thing for them. There will not be compulsory attendance at these breakfast clubs, but they will be available for anybody who wants them. I come back to the point about lunch, and reiterate that the Government are already rightly spending a considerable amount of money on providing free school meals at lunchtime for around 3.5 million children and young people. That will remain for those children.
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
My Lords, notwithstanding the results of the pilots, can the Minister tell us whether the department, or indeed head teachers, are encouraging children to stay at home to have breakfast, because it is quite valuable for the family unit? I realise that breakfast clubs are an idea, and I am interested to see what the pilots are doing, but this could be run in parallel.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
There is enormous value in families being able to sit down and eat together. My personal experience is that breakfast is not necessarily the most likely time to bring fruitful conversation and calm family time. To reiterate my point, any family who wants to carry on having breakfast together as a family should of course be able to do so. The point is that, for those who want their children to have a smooth start to school, the opportunity to be part of the club for 30 minutes, and the chance to have their breakfast at school, this will be provided through the scheme.
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, I want to follow up the point made by noble friend Lady Coffey on the impact of the national insurance rise on childcare providers. The Minister recognised the impact that rise will have on childcare provision by saying that public sector providers will get an additional £25 million to help meet those costs. However, a lot of childcare provision is in the private sector. How are those providers meant to meet the additional costs when the rates that the Government are paying for the provision of additional free hours are not going to change?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
We could have a broader debate about why it has been necessary for this Government to introduce an increase in national insurance contributions, but let us not do that today—everybody knows why, given the legacy that we had. I talked about support for the expansion of childcare and the additional £75 million that is being provided as part of the expansion grant. That will be available to private sector and other childcare providers, to support them in developing the necessary childcare.
Baroness Coffey (Con)
My Lords, I would be grateful if the Minister would place in the Library information about the local authorities that the Department for Education believes are underserved with childcare places. I asked the question earlier; I would appreciate it if that letter could be placed in the Library.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I will undertake to come back to the noble Baroness about that. The point I was making is that we are talking not only about the current situation, in which quite a few parents would suggest that they have not been able to access childcare provision at a cost they can afford. I do not think the noble Baroness is suggesting that every parent who wants to access childcare is able to do so. That is why I gave some credit to the previous Government for recognising that, along with the significance of childcare provision, and making the pledge to increase the free entitlements. The problem was that they did not put alongside that pledge a plan and investment. It has taken this Government to turn a promise into a reality.
Post Office Horizon Compensation Scheme
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Beamish
That this House takes note of the progress of the Post Office Horizon compensation scheme and of the contribution of Fujitsu to the compensation of victims.
Lord Beamish (Lab)
I begin by declaring an interest as a member of the Horizon Compensation Advisory Board. I am looking forward to the maiden speeches of the noble Baroness, Lady Elliott, and the noble Lord, Lord Barber, both good trade unionists who I have worked with and known for many years.
Along with my good friend—and I call him a good friend—the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, I have been involved in the campaign for sub-postmasters for over 15 years. I hope that our efforts have made a little contribution to exposing this scandal. The main efforts that need to be recognised in this scandal are those of Alan Bates and the sub-postmasters. They have ensured that we have got to where we are today, when the truth is finally coming out about what went on around the Horizon scandal.
I first became involved with this cause in 2009, when I was Member of Parliament for North Durham. A constituent of mine, Tom Brown, came to see me. He was an upstanding, hard-working postmaster who had received awards from the Post Office for fighting off an armed robber at his post office. He was accused of stealing £84,000.
Tom had raised with the Post Office the issues around the Horizon system, but he was completely ignored until auditors arrived to close his post office down and was subsequently taken to court for stealing £84,000. In that two-year process, Tom was made bankrupt. ironically, on the morning of the case at Newcastle Crown Court, the Post Office said it had no evidence to put forward. It was too late for Tom by then: his life had been ruined. Tom gave evidence to the public inquiry but, sadly, passed away last year before its conclusion. He was one of too many who passed away, never to see the justice that they deserved.
The Post Office Horizon issue has been described as a scandal, but I argue that it is worse than that. It is the worst example of when the state, with all its powers, not only goes unchecked but leads to collusion. Moreover, the state was in a position where it can bury the truth, even at the expense of individuals who are hard-working, upright citizens going to prison.
Over the years, the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, and I, along with other parliamentarians from both Houses who have been involved in this campaign, have been lied to. Has it been a lonely furrow to plough over those years? Yes, it has. Certainly, when you talk to the campaigners and the sub-postmasters, you find that they have felt frustrated over the years that they have been not only ignored but lied to as well.
Without Alan Bates and the campaigners—the 555—who took the case to court, I am not sure that the truth would have emerged. Even when the case took place in 2017, the Post Office and the state were still prepared to spend £100 million of taxpayers’ money to try to bury the truth to ensure that it did not come out. To the credit of the campaign, its financial backers and Lord Justice Fraser, they did get to the bottom of the case, but again, they had to settle because the Post Office and the state used a tsunami of cash to try to stop the process. The dam did burst in that case to make sure that evidence that had been hidden for many years but known to many of us who had been involved in the campaign saw the light of day. Remarkably, the ITV drama on the Post Office brought it to a wider audience. The subsequent public inquiry has shone an even deeper spotlight to reveal the truth, and I look forward to its findings. I pay tribute to Sir Wyn Williams and the staff of the inquiry for the work that they have done.
The Government have paid out £633 million to victims through the Horizon compensation scheme. We have four schemes: the Horizon shortfall scheme, the group litigation order scheme, the overturned convictions scheme, and the Horizon convictions redress scheme. If you were starting afresh, would you start with four schemes? No, you clearly would not, because the claimants have quite clearly found the way all four schemes have operated to be frustrating and bureaucratic.
The advisory board has sought to try to ensure that there is fairness across the four schemes, and that we have a system whereby individuals can get some independent legal advice and, at the end of the process, can have the process and their claims looked at independently from the Post Office. The victims quite rightly do not trust the Post Office. The scheme with which I have the most difficulty is the Horizon shortfall scheme, because it was run by the Post Office. There is quite clear evidence that there was an attempt to try to settle many claims as quickly as possible to ensure that the Post Office did not have to come to the Government for more money. The advisory board has recommended that there should be independent processes at the end for claimants to be able to have their cases reviewed, because there is clear evidence that there are individuals who have accepted settlements without legal advice that, I would argue, were under settled.
If noble Lords want to know why victims distrust the Post Office, I can tell them that there is potentially a fifth scheme that surrounds the Capture system, which pre-dated Horizon. It only came about because I found out about it by accident. I went to see a postmaster in Northumberland a couple of years ago, who said she had been a victim of the Horizon scheme, but when I looked at the dates I discovered that they pre-dated Horizon, which surprised me. When I went to the Post Office and the Government to say that this was surely a Horizon case, they said that it could not be because the dates were too early.
We then found out that there was a pre-runner of Horizon called Capture, which again has thrown up other issues, including more than 200 individuals who were either prosecuted or had their lives ruined. Because of that, the Government instituted an independent report—the Kroll report—and have agreed to compensate those individuals. That shows the culture there has been at the Post Office of not coming forward. You would have thought that, with all the publicity around Horizon, someone might have come forward and said, “Well, we might need to look at the earlier system”. Again, however, we had to drag out of the Post Office, kicking and screaming, any information that was needed.
This comes to broader point. As I said, would you start with four schemes in the complex system that we have? No, we would not. There is a need in government—and it might possibly come out of the inquiry—to set up a body to look at how we pay compensation to victims of misjustice: certainly, for example, those affected by the infected blood scandal. But this scandal was not the result of mistake or failure: this was conspiracy—a cover-up—involving government, Ministers, the Post Office and Fujitsu.
Fujitsu was the main contractor. In terms of that company, sub-postmasters were always told that this system was infallible, that it could not be accessed remotely, and that whatever was put in by the sub-postmaster was somehow their mistake and their fault. It was quite clear, however, that there could be remote access to it, and this was known. It is clear that that could happen from Lord Justice Fraser’s judgment in the sub-postmasters’ case. Again, we were given the impression that it was the perfect system but that judgment found that there were 29 bugs, some of which went unchecked for many years.
Was this known at the corporate level? Yes it was. For example, in 2001 Fujitsu paid the Post Office £150,000 for a data breach. However, it is worse than that, because Fujitsu not only covered up the fact that the system was full of bugs and could be remotely accessed but took an active part in the prosecution of sub-postmasters. It had, as part of its contract, a litigation and fraud support unit, which provided the Post Office with data to support prosecutions. This was known as ARQ data. Lo and behold, this ARQ data was never checked, so in the case that went forward not only did Fujitsu employees gave testimony against the sub-postmasters but the data they were given was not accurate or even checked. We know this because Anne Chambers, who was a Fujitsu employee, raised this at corporate level in 2006 and asked why this data was being given without any checks whatever. That, again, was raised and completely ignored by Fujitsu.
That begs the question: what was Fujitsu actually doing? We know now that all this was known. In his testimony to the public inquiry, Paul Patterson, the director of Fujitsu in the UK, admitted to all of this. Likewise, Rob Putland, who was the senior vice-president, admitted to it when he wrote to the BIS Select Committee of the House of Commons in 2020. All the information was there, so it raises the question: why were these red flags not raised within Fujitsu itself?
At the public inquiry and the Commons Select Committee, Mr Patterson said that he apologised to the sub-postmasters and that Fujitsu would make a contribution to compensate victims. As of today, no money has been paid by Fujitsu to victims—and this is a company that is still making multimillion-pound profits from government contracts. That information is available in Computer Weekly, where, last week, Karl Flinders had a very good article showing that Fujitsu will potentially make, over the next few years, over half a billion pounds in new contracts. It said that it was not going to bid for new contracts, but what it is doing is extending existing contracts. That is happening at the same time as the taxpayer is paying out nearly £600 million in compensation to victims, and many victims are still waiting for compensation.
Fujitsu is hiding behind the public inquiry. It knows the evidence that it has given to the public inquiry is there. Nothing will be revealed from a public inquiry’s findings that we do not already know. So I suggest that it should make an interim payment of at least £300 million now to cover the cost for victims. Some major changes are also needed within Fujitsu. When the process for bidding for new contracts starts, the Government should bar Fujitsu from taking part in any future contracts if major change has not taken place. That would be a tragedy for the 7,000 people in the UK who work for Fujitsu, nor would it be good for UK-Japanese relations, a point that the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, and I raised a few weeks ago with Mr Suzuki, the Japanese ambassador to London. I understand that, in a few weeks’ time, the Secretary of State for Business and Trade will go to Japan, and I suggest that he should meet senior Fujitsu representatives to press the case for them to make proper compensation, even if only on an interim basis.
In conclusion, yes, this a scandal, but it is also something that we cannot allow to happen again. We need to put in place things that not only prevent it happening again but change the culture, both within the organisations and in how we address these issues. We need a new system independent of government—an ombudsman system—which does not then mean that we need to have a public inquiry every time. Clearly, we need to strengthen whistleblowing, and the Government need to look at the way in which non-executives and others are appointed to outside bodies which, clearly, do not raise any questions. Finally, Fujitsu needs to pay up. It needs to make sure that it will not keep taking money from the UK taxpayer while it makes no financial contribution to this scandal.
I finish with this point. Tom Brown, who gave evidence to the public inquiry, was asked what he wanted from the inquiry. He said that he wanted the truth. That is what we owe Tom and all the other victims of this scandal. I beg to move.
Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom (Con)
My Lords, I too declare my interests as a member of the Horizon Compensation Advisory Board and as chair of the advisory panel of Thales UK.
I congratulate my good friend, the noble Lord, Lord Beamish, on securing this debate. He has been with me every step of the way in his vigorous campaigning on behalf of the sub-postmasters. It is at least partly thanks to him that we are where we are now, and that we are getting somewhere. Discovering the Capture issue is thanks to him. We are getting somewhere, but we are not far enough along, and I will come to that.
I very much look forward to the maiden speeches of the noble Baroness, Lady Elliott, and the noble Lord, Lord Barber. What an excellent choice they have made in their topic for their maiden speeches. It is a hugely important topic, and your Lordships will all want to welcome them to this battle. There is no party politics in this, because all the political parties comprehensively failed the sub-postmasters—we are all to blame. We all need to work hard together to achieve an improvement in the position of the sub-postmasters and their redress, holding to account those who were responsible for this mess and establishing a better set of institutions to try to ensure that it does not happen again.
The debate is about compensation, specifically drawing attention to the role of Fujitsu. Before I come to that, there is one important matter that I ask the Government to consider. In doing so, I welcome the Minister back to her place—without a stick—and I hope that she is well on the way to recovery. The important matter is that the politicians failed in our initial attempts to get this matter sorted out through politics; I failed and even the noble Lord, Lord Beamish, failed. As he said, the only thing that got us to where we are today was Sir Alan Bates’s courageous group litigation, funded by litigation funders. Following the PACCAR judgment in the Supreme Court, it would probably be impossible today for Sir Alan to raise such litigation funding. A cross-party group of your Lordships’ House will meet the Attorney-General next week to discuss this, but I raise it now to flag up its importance and relevance.
Returning to Fujitsu, I am grateful to Mr Stuart Goodwillie and Mr James Christie for their fascinating and helpful briefings online. Let us not forget what Fujitsu did. ICL, the company that produced Horizon and that was bought by Fujitsu, provided a computer program to the Post Office which it knew was seriously flawed. As Richard Christou of ICL told the public inquiry, Pathway, the ICL front company in the contract negotiation,
“was determined to win the tender, and decided to undertake as little negotiation as possible in order to better its chances of obtaining the award”.
Fujitsu had a duty under its contract to provide evidence for prosecutions that was admissible and accurate. It did help the Post Office prosecute the sub-postmasters, but with evidence that was false. Knowing of the flaws in the Horizon system, it told the courts that there were no such flaws.
Moreover, Fujitsu had a large operation altering the accounts of the sub-postmasters without the knowledge of the sub-postmasters. It told everyone that it could not alter those accounts, despite carrying out an extensive operation doing exactly that. So Fujitsu did much more than stand idly by while the sub-postmasters were maliciously prosecuted; it was an active, knowing and essential participant in the whole ghastly fraud. If it were not a company but an individual, it would be facing years, or possibly decades, in prison. Yet it is a company, and one on which the Government have become unacceptably dependent. Each year in which the Government extend some contract or other, saying that there is no alternative, they should ask themselves, “If this were Prisoner Smith in cell block J4, would we really be giving him a contract worth tens of millions of pounds?”
What is Fujitsu doing about this? What money has it offered? As we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Beamish: nothing. It has accepted its “moral obligation”, but the taxpayer is paying out hundreds of millions now. There needs to be an interim payment from Fujitsu now. The noble Lord, Lord Beamish, suggested £300 million; £700 million would be less than half the cost that the taxpayer is currently estimated to bear. If it does not do that, why should the Government offer it further extensions of its existing contracts, still less grant it new contracts? That is Fujitsu.
But what about the auditors, Ernst & Young? A couple of weeks ago, I told your Lordships that I asked the inquiry to include the auditors in its scope, but the inquiry chair decided that that would extend the length of the inquiry disproportionately. But here we have Ernst & Young certifying that the audited accounts represent a true and fair view of the Post Office’s financial state—missing a liability of £1.87 billion. What on earth were they doing? I will tell you what they were doing. In 2003-04, they decided to audit, out of a total of 12,000 Horizon branches, not 10% of them—1,200—which would have been respectable; not 1% of them—120—which would not have been respectable; but one. One branch. When the Post Office’s chief operating officer, David Miller, was asked in the public inquiry,
“do you consider it was a satisfactory way for the Board to satisfy itself of the accuracy of the company accounts?”,
he answered: “It was very limited”. One, out of 12,000 branches.
On 5 June last year, Alice Perkins told the public inquiry of a meeting she had with Mr Grant, the partner at Ernst & Young, when she became chair of the Post Office. He told her: “With Fujitsu”, the Post Office
“drove a very hard bargain on price but they took back on quality/assurance”.
So, he knew that the quality of what Fujitsu was providing was suspect. Where does that appear in the Post Office audited accounts? As the noble Lord, Lord Harris, would say: spoiler alert—it does not.
Mr Grant also told her:
“Horizon – is a real risk for us … Does it capture data accurately ... Cases of fraud—suspects suggest it’s a systems problem”.
In her evidence, Alice Perkins said:
“Horizon is a real risk for us”,
meaning that Horizon was a real risk not to the Post Office, but to Ernst & Young. That too does not appear in the audited accounts. As James Christie says on his website:
“The Horizon system has never featured as a risk in any annual report. It surfaced only indirectly in the 2019 report, but as a litigation risk, which was incorrectly thought to be mitigated by contesting the litigation that took place”.
Well, we know how that ended up.
“Even this risk had vanished in the 2020 report”.
In a management letter to the Post Office—I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, for drawing my attention to it—Ernst & Young wrote:
“We were unable to identify an internal control with the third-party service provider”—
that is, Fujitsu—
“to authorise fixes and maintenance changes prior to development for the in-scope applications”,
that is, Horizon. If there was no internal control, what were the external auditors doing about it? Nothing. How were the owners—the taxpayers—meant to know this was going on if the auditors were not telling them? How were the sub-postmasters, those who were being sent to prison, made bankrupt, having their lives ripped apart, meant to defend themselves?
If the public inquiry will not hold the auditors to account, it is a task that must fall, first, to the Financial Reporting Council and, ultimately, to the Government. The Government need to drive this. It should not be down to the advisory board—this part-time group—to be driving this forward. We need action now.
Baroness Ludford (LD)
My Lords, I look forward to the two maiden speeches.
I am a relative Johnny-come-lately to the story of this scandal. There are a number of people who deserve our thanks and regards: first, the sub-postmasters and their families, who have suffered terribly from the incompetence, arrogance and bullying of the Post Office. Sir Alan Bates, of course, stands out. The noble Lords, Lord Beamish and Lord Arbuthnot, have also been on the case for a long time and I thoroughly applaud their work. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Beamish, for instigating this debate. They both made excellent speeches.
ITV played a big role in reaching a wide and outraged audience with its admirable hit series “Mr Bates vs The Post Office”. There are lawyers, such as Neil Hudgell, battling for the postmasters. Among journalists, I must single out Nick Wallis. It was his BBC Radio 4 series five years ago that first alerted me, although he had been working on the issue for a decade previously, when he was a presenter on BBC Radio Surrey. An article on him three years ago described what happened:
“It was a tweet that any journalist might have ignored. It came … from a taxi owner asking if he could pitch for the local radio station’s taxi account … Davinder turned out to be the husband of Seema Misra who had been thrown into prison on her son’s 10th birthday while pregnant, for supposedly stealing £74,000 from the Post Office … Davinder insisted not only that his wife was innocent but that it was the Post Office computer in her sub-Post Office that was at fault”.
It was November 2010. The rest, as they say, is history; a very painful one.
Sir Alan Bates, brilliantly played by Toby Jones on TV, is of course the most famous of the wronged sub-postmasters. Lee Castleton is another well-known name. He recently tweeted:
“Why is it so difficult to be open, fair and quick. It is disgusting that Betty Brown at 92, is still waiting for the return of Her money. JUST PAY HER what she is owed”.
Someone replied:
“Still can’t help but feel they’re still putting 2 fingers up to us”.
The Financial Times reports that
“many victims are still locked in a glacial, bureaucratic process of offers and appeals that could end up back with the courts”.
Some 72% of the budget for redress has still not been paid. One recalls the adage, justice delayed is justice denied.
The worst problems are in the Horizon Shortfall Scheme—the HSS—which I will mainly speak about. Tony Downey is a former sub-postmaster caught up in this terrible injustice, together with his wife and business partner. He has been granted only 20% of his claim. Tony has written to Sir Wyn Williams, chairman of the Post Office Horizon inquiry, and is allowing me to quote from his letter:
“The Post Office agree we paid the shortfalls, they agree they made us both bankrupted with their action and they agree this made me sick and unable to work since, they agreed at the meeting that the forced sale of the property was related to the Horizon. However they will not pay me the lost income as in other schemes, they will not pay the bankruptcy or costs of my wife and business partner, they will not pay me the full amount of the head of claim for sickness, they will not pay for the loss of the property”,
which was, I think, the family home.
Tony Downey, Christopher Head OBE—another wronged postmaster—and journalist Nick Wallis have drawn attention to a curious feature of way the Horizon Shortfall Scheme is being administered by the Post Office that might help explain why claimant sub-postmasters with complex cases are receiving offers way below their claims. The HSS assessors seem to be—indeed are, and have said that they are—working to a set of guidelines different from the published principles and are refusing to share them with the claimants’ lawyers. One claimant has commented:
“We guess they include every get out clause possible”.
One of the claimant lawyers replied to Post Office lawyers as follows, and it bears quoting fully, which I have permission to do:
“The Post Office approach to HSS claims is on the basis of breach of contract and assessing damages had the contract been ‘validly terminated’. We fundamentally oppose that basis of calculation which is at odds with the Principles that are widely published in relation to the HSS, and therefore the narrow contractual approach taken by Post Office does not satisfy the tests presented in the Principles document. The document to which you”—
that is, a Post Office lawyer—
“refer appears to be fundamentally different to the widely published one and seems to be separate guidance used by the Panel and has never seen the light of day publicly, so how can we or a Postmaster be on an equal footing in this claims process, when you refuse to disclose guidelines used by the panel? This would not be an acceptable situation in any other claims or legal process in this country”.
As far as I can see, he is absolutely right that a narrow contractual approach, which effectively gives a sub-postmaster only redundancy money, is not at all the same as the Post Office’s published Horizon Shortfall Scheme Consequential Loss Principles and Guidance document, whereby:
“The object of the assessment will be … to put the postmaster into the position that the postmaster would have been in but for the Horizon Shortfall”.
For former sub-postmaster Tony Downey, this is the difference between getting redundancy money amounting to two years’ or so income and being fully compensated for inability to work since a nervous breakdown in 2007 after being suspended, audited twice, bullied to pay shortfalls in order to get reinstated, having to sell the business at a loss, both he and his wife having to declare bankruptcy, and losing their home. He says:
“We had gone from owning a mortgage free property now worth £900,000 with a successful business and savings to having nothing and the scheme is unable to put us anywhere near the position we should have been”.
Inquiry chairman Sir Wyn Williams wrote in his July 2023 first interim report on compensation:
“It would be tempting for some to be sceptical about whether”
full and fair compensation,
“can be achieved … a commitment to provide compensation which is full and fair is not the traditional stance taken by a defendant in our adversarial system of civil litigation”.
That was very prescient. What will the Government do to oblige the Post Office to follow the published principles on consequential loss, not revert to being a traditional adversarial defendant? Can the Minister ensure not only that the Post Office’s secret guidelines, which are not in accord with the published principles, are made available to all claimants and indeed to parliamentarians and everyone else, but that it stops using them?
The Business and Trade Select Committee reported on 1 January on redress for the Horizon scandal. The government response was not available yesterday or first thing this morning. I imagine the Minister can assure us that it is imminent; by my calculation, the deadline for the response is tomorrow at the latest. Your Lordships will probably all have read the committee’s recommendations, one of which was that the Post Office should be removed from administering any of the schemes. It says, and I strongly agree, that the Post Office acted as “judge, jury and executioner” when pursuing sub-postmasters and that now it
“should not be deciding on what financial redress is owed to victims of its own scandal”.
I do not have time to discuss the other recommendations from the committee, but I just point out that the present reality is that claimants not only have to fill out a complex form with no legal support but face a scenario of snakes and ladders. This is well-described in a letter that a former sub-postmaster, Christopher Head, wrote yesterday to inquiry chairman Sir Wyn Williams—he has made it public, so I can quote from it. He describes how a claimant faces
“the risk that should she pursue a claim above the Fixed Sum, she could be offered less and then have to enter the long drawn out dispute processes that could continue for years … There is also no guarantee she would get close to the fixed sum award let alone the sum claimed. All this must be done without any legal advice, unless the individual is willing to pay for their own representation, which is out of reach of most people”.
Mr Head rightly says:
“Claimants should be able to receive these awards”—
the fixed awards—
“in any of the schemes and then be invited to raise a further claim for the remainder of their claim should there be sufficient evidence to do so and a likely chance of success … without any risk”.
How does the Minister react to that suggestion, and can she tell us whether the department will take over the Post Office scheme?
I will conclude by quoting briefly from an interesting and heartfelt book by the former Prime Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady May, entitled The Abuse of Power. In her words, she,
“describes many examples of injustice against ordinary people perpetrated by the powerful and mighty”,
with
“often a sense that protection of the institution is more important than fairness, justice or seeking the truth”.
That is what we have seen with the Post Office. She concludes that
“we need to reconsider who we are as a country and the urgent need for those in authority to ensure that in all they do, they are putting the country and the people first”.
Baroness Elliott of Whitburn Bay (Lab) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, it is an enormous privilege to rise to make my maiden speech today in this place. I want to start by thanking Black Rod, her staff, the doorkeepers, police, and all the staff of this House for their warm welcome and support in my first few weeks here, and particularly for their help towards my family and friends on the day of my introduction—there was rather a large number of them.
I would also like to thank my supporters, my noble friend Lady Armstrong of Hill Top, one of my closest friends in politics and life, whose advice and guidance over many decades has been and continues to be invaluable to me, and my noble friend Lady Smith of Basildon, who has given me time, advice and guidance over the last few weeks.
Today, I want to give some background as to who I am, where I come from, and what motivates me and the areas where I feel I have most to contribute in this place.
I was born in my parents’ home, a council house in the village of Whitburn, the place I live today—I have never lived more than two miles from it in my entire life. My roots are very strong. I am a very much a northern woman who will stand up for the north at every opportunity I can.
My dad Harold worked as a blacksmith’s striker at the local colliery, and my mother Laura looked after the family and did little cleaning jobs to make ends meet. In my experience, that is the hardest work anyone can do. She was a very strong northern woman and was an enormous influence on me.
My brother Dennis, almost 15 years older than me, was an electrician at the colliery, and my sister Joan, who is 10 years older than me, was still at school when I was born. It is no underestimation to say that I was a little bit of a surprise to my family when I arrived. I was delighted that Joan was able to attend my introduction with her husband Derek, as sadly, only Joan and I are left from that family group.
Growing up, the community in my village was a very tight one, and still is. Neighbours were like family, and everyone looked out for each other. Most people did not have a lot of money—most men worked either at the local pits or the shipyards—but everyone believed in hard work, taking care of your family and your neighbours and wanting the best for everyone, and they had enormous aspiration for their children, although they would not have described it as that.
My family were not political, although they were very interested in current affairs. We watched the news, read lots of newspapers and discussed the issues of the day. I got involved in politics during the year-long miners’ strike of 1984, when, whatever the merits or otherwise of that strike, as a young woman coming from generations of miners on both sides of my family I felt that the Government of the day was attacking my way of life and the community I came from. I could not stand back and let that happen; I had to take a stand and make my voice heard in trying to defend my community, so I joined the Labour Party. I did not know it at the time, but that decision was to influence the path my life took in a way I would never have imagined or even thought possible all those years ago.
I have had the privilege of working for my party as a regional organiser, for my trade union—the GMB—for a charity, and then I had the honour of being the Member of Parliament for the constituency of Sunderland Central for 14 years.
My family is at the centre of my life. I have four grown-up children: Rebecca, Miles, Georgia and Helena, all of whom attended my introduction, along with five of my eight grandchildren, as well as my wonderful husband Andrew. They are at the centre of everything I do, and it is fair to say that I could not do what I do without their love and support.
My community, my strong sense of working-class values, my family and my passion for the north are the things that drive me and make me want to make a difference and contribute to public life. Over the years, I have developed an interest and expertise in all things connected to digital, culture, media and sport, having had the privilege of serving on the Select Committee in the other place for nine years; and the Middle East, with my involvement for several years as the co-chair of the Britain-Palestine All-Party Parliamentary Group. I also have a passion for promoting the north of England, its potential and its continuing regeneration.
I was pleased that my noble friend Lord Beamish, someone I have worked with in different roles for more than 30 years—there is a theme here from the north of England, where we all know each other—moved this debate on the progress, or perhaps lack of progress, on the Post Office Horizon compensation scheme today. More than a decade ago, two constituents came to see me at a surgery about the Horizon scandal. It was one of those moments in my time as a Member of Parliament when I was absolutely flabbergasted at the horror of what I learned had happened to my constituents. The female constituent had an exemplary work life in banking before she decided to take on a sub-post office. The couple had lived in a comfortable detached house in a very nice part of Sunderland that they had worked hard all of their lives to buy. When the Horizon system showed they owed hundreds of thousands of pounds that was missing, they had to sell their home and use the proceeds of that sale and all of their savings to pay the money back to the Post Office, to avoid prosecution and most likely prison.
This was wrong. It should not have happened, but, sadly, their story, as some of the stories that have already been talked about today, is just one of hundreds of cases. The victims of the Horizon scandal have waited far too long to get meaningful compensation. As has been described, even for those who have had some compensation, it has not been full or adequate. The Horizon system was introduced in 1999; the problems were actually known about before that. It is now time for Fujitsu to play its part and step up to the plate to pay some compensation. I urge all of those involved in this to move as quickly as is practically possible and pay all the victims of this scandal the moneys they so deserve.
I look forward to participating and making informed contributions in the future in your Lordships’ House.
Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick (CB)
My Lords, it is a great privilege to be able to pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Elliott, for her wonderfully warm and family-loving speech, and for naming her children and family in such an affectionate and supportive way.
She will not know it, but we are both Sunderland lovers. Maybe that is the reason I was selected to pay tribute to her wonderful and seriously, gratifyingly positive maiden speech. I am wearing the tie of Sunderland Football Club. She will not know, but I have attended the Stadium of Light on six occasions and the Academy of Light of four occasions, taken there by the owners of Sunderland in order to see the great playing craft of so many of the players, in particular Jermain Defoe, from whom I have a shirt with the number 14—my number—and the signatures of all of the players of Sunderland Football Club. I was delighted and honoured to attend so many times in the noble Baroness’s home town and constituency.
Many of the tributes that are owed to the noble Baroness include for her deep love as a governor of schools and her passionate campaigning on the issue of asthma, which affects so many, both ourselves and those we know. I know she will bring enormous expertise to this House and the punch that an elected Member who is now here in the upper House can bring from having heard the painful rhetoric of constituents, especially on the issue that we are discussing today.
One other thing unites us. In my research—which was very slim, because so much is wonderfully written about the noble Baroness, Lady Elliott—I discovered that we also share the fact that she voted against all Brexit measures in the House of Commons, and I voted against them all here in the House of Lords. We both realised what another tragedy of injustice was being imposed on us by the miscreant Government of the time. On that, her great policy wisdom is well noted and I am sure the whole House will look forward to her ongoing strength of position and commitment and welcome her to the House of Lords.
This debate is essentially about compensation matters. We tend to interpret compensation as meaning money. I pay tribute to the noble Lords, Lord Arbuthnot and Lord Beamish, for their arduous, persistent fight on behalf of those whom many of us only became intimately aware of because of Alan Bates and the ITV drama. It really hit us in the eyes when we watched it, let alone when we listened to the BBC’s own documentary. Through the drama and the documentary, we became aware of something that was happening below our noses, so close we should have smelled it earlier but we just did not. There was such clever scheming by the Post Office and Fujitsu.
I have been looking at this through a slightly different lens—a lens which many in this House will know matters to me enormously. The offences Act, passed last year, which essentially annulled the prosecutions of the postmasters, uses these words, already quoted:
“Some were convicted and imprisoned. Some were made bankrupt”.
Malicious allegations were made against them.
“Some lost their homes. some suffered mental or physical health problems … Some were harried as thieves by their local communities. Some suffered breakdowns in relationships with their partners, children or other families and friends. Several died by suicide”.
There is another actor in this horror, besides the Post Office and Fujitsu: the courts. I realise by flagging this that I am treading on very delicate territory, but there were 700 convictions in cases provided by the Post Office and a further 283 sub-postmasters were prosecuted by others, including the CPS, totalling just short of 1,000 prosecutions. I am not sure of the exact number who went to prison. Could the Minister tell the House in her reply how many went to prison as a result of this crass injustice?
It raises the very ugly case that potentially 1,000 courts heard 1,000 cases and thought it was okay. At what point did the justice system, the Ministry of Justice or the Law Society ask, “What the hell is going on?” Why is every court so disconnected from every other one? If judges did not ask, “What, another one? I’ve read about this, I saw this, there was a note about this”, or if clerks did not bring this to their attention, what is the role of judges? Judges are meant to be highly intelligent, impartial adjudicators of the law and its principles. Those principles include intelligent, evidence-based prosecutions, not just taking by swallowing what has been brought by an institute of the state—notably the Post Office—backed up by its deceitful accompanying company, Fujitsu, which simply wanted to bury the detail.
I will ask a difficult question of the Minister: was the wool pulled over the eyes of the judges? What assessment have the committee, the Government or the Ministry of Justice made of the wrongs done by the courts? I believe that it is a matter not just of what needs to be paid out in compensation—that is clearly the real cause of this debate, although it is somewhat flagging—but of from whom the apologies should come. I would like to see handwritten apologies from every judge to every prosecuted individual, especially those who went to prison, and face-to-face meetings that accept that there was deceit at multiple levels of this procedure. We will not have honest justice if there is no honest apology, recognition and accountability. That lies with the courts, as well as with the Criminal Cases Review Commission—which has failed in multiple cases—and the Crown Prosecution Service.
I realise that this is a sensitive thing to ask, because we have a tradition in Britain that we do not question judges. Following a question raised in the other place recently by the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition about a deportation issue—and therefore an allocation of refugee status based on falsified information—immediately somebody representing the court stood up, because there was a criticism of a decision of the court, and said, “Don’t question our decisions”. But is that not exactly what this is about? How can there be a thousand cases with not a single judge saying, “Excuse me? Throw it out”? I am sufficiently aware of so many people’s cases that I know of some where the courts—the Old Bailey or the High Court—and the judge have decided on day 1 or day 2, or week 1, of a case that there is no substantial evidence from the prosecution. They concluded the case and released the individual. Why did that not happen here?
I am asking a sensitive and important question. I am asking the Minister—I realise this is not her area—to communicate to her colleagues in the Ministry of Justice that they ought to wake up to our so-called supremely effective independent judicial system and ask the hard questions about the intelligence and agility of the courts and judges to deal with cases of such manipulation.
As many noble Lords know, I spend a lot of time in prisons, and I was in a prison yesterday morning speaking with a man on a 32-year sentence. He has attempted on five occasions to have the Criminal Cases Review Commission assess his case based on falsified forensic data. It refuses to do so. The CCRC has just lost its chair; it has been a flappingly useless institution and needs to be completely renewed from top to bottom. It is another part of the system of injustice, emboldened by the state because we will not ask the hard questions.
Two years ago, we all heard the case of Andrew Malkinson. He was released finally, after 17 years, after a falsified rape case, in which he was innocent. He is still awaiting the compensation agreed by the High Court. As we think about how to improve the financial compensation due, which in my mind is Fujitsu’s bill and not the taxpayers’, we need to recognise that honour, dignity and respect for those falsely prosecuted—and especially those imprisoned and those who lost homes, property, savings and work—requires those who did that injustice to them to look them in the eyes and admit they were wrong. Only then can we restore transparency and honour to our justice system and bring dignity to the postmasters.
Lord Polak (Con)
My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Beamish, not only for securing this debate but for all that he has done. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Arbuthnot. I guess that, in modern parlance, they are both superheroes.
This is not a matter of financial redress; it is, as we have heard, about the lives of real people who have suffered through the failures of a system that has wronged them for far too long. I wish to highlight one such person, whom I have mentioned many times in this House, albeit from the other side: Rita Threlfall, a 70 year-old woman who, alongside her family, has endured an unimaginable amount of stress, uncertainty and financial strain as a result of this scandal. Rita’s story is one of far too many, but I share it with noble Lords today because of the specific personal emotional toll it has had on her life.
Rita and her husband, Kevin, ran their business together in my hometown of Liverpool. I am northern too, but from the north-west, not the north-east. For many years, their post office was more than just a livelihood; it was their life, their future and their pension. This future was cruelly taken away from them. Rita’s claim for compensation was submitted two months ago, in January 2025. She was expecting an offer within the 40 working days stipulated, but that deadline is fast approaching—in fact, tomorrow marks the expiration of this deadline. To date, she has received no offer and has heard nothing further, aside from a request for additional information about her husband Kevin’s earnings—a query that has only added further stress to an already harrowing situation. Rita’s claim includes loss of earnings for her husband, as he worked in the post office alongside her, and she remains perplexed by the request. She paid her husband a salary for his work in the business, but the authorities continue to ask for further documentation—a process that Rita and Kevin have found incredibly painful.
Rita has been waiting for 15 years since she was first wrongly convicted in 2010. Despite the repeated assurances that the claims process would be expedited, she remains in the dark about the timeline for resolution. For her, and countless others in a similar position, this has been a crippling experience. Her emotional and financial struggles have only deepened over the years. Rita became a pensioner four years ago, yet she is now living off a state pension which is simply not enough to cover her living expenses, let alone the debts she incurred in the loss of her business. Rita and her family are struggling to make ends meet. As a businesswoman, she had always planned that her business would provide financial security in her retirement. Since the scandal took it all away, she has been unable to invest in her pension or secure a proper future for herself and her husband. Although her two children are doing their best to support their parents, they are finding it increasingly difficult to keep up with the pressure of daily living costs.
Rita’s anxiety and stress levels have soared, while her weight has plummeted, as a result of this prolonged ordeal. Her health, physical and mental, has suffered immensely. During our conversation this week, she shared with me that she feels overwhelmed by the uncertainty of it all, constantly wondering how much longer she must wait and what the outcome will be when it finally arrives. The emotional toll is staggering. For years, she has lived in fear of her future, unable to plan for anything and uncertain about whether she will ever receive the compensation she so desperately needs and deserves.
When I talked to Rita earlier this week, her distress was palpable. She spoke about her 70th birthday celebration in January, an event that, for a moment, allowed her to reflect on happier times. Rita and Kevin had to leave their home in Liverpool due to their financial struggles, and they now live in Stoke-on-Trent. For the occasion of her 70th birthday, all her family, including the youngest member, a six month-old, gathered at the local cricket club to celebrate with her. It was a rare moment of joy amid long years of pain. Yet even in that moment of happiness, Rita could not escape the overwhelming sadness of what had been lost, including her proximity to her family, her post office, her livelihood, her future and her dignity—they have all been taken from her, and the compensation she so desperately needs is still pending.
As of now, Rita has received nothing since the interim payment in December 2022, which, as we know, did not begin to cover the damages caused by the closure of her business. Rita remains in limbo, waiting.
This is why I urge the Government to act swiftly and decisively. This is not about statistics or balance sheets; it is about real people, whose lives have been shattered. Behind every claim is a person like Rita, who has endured unimaginable hardship, financial ruin and emotional turmoil. Rita, like so many others, has suffered more than enough. She deserves justice. She deserves compensation and she deserves it now. Every day that passes without resolution prolongs the suffering for those who have already lost so much. We cannot and should not allow bureaucracy and delays to stand in the way of what is right.
Given Fujitsu’s acknowledged role and its stated moral obligation to contribute to compensation, can the Minister explain why the substantial contracts that have been talked of today remain in place? Why were many of them awarded after 2019? What assurances can the Government provide that no further public money will be awarded to Fujitsu unless it has fully met its financial obligations to the victims of this devastating miscarriage of justice? Can the Minister also confirm that employees and suppliers are paid monthly and regularly by Fujitsu, in stark contrast to Rita and her colleagues who, rather than being paid, are being humiliated?
The Government must provide clear and transparent communication to claimants about process, ensuring that they know what to expect and how long they will have to wait. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Beamish, when he suggested £300 million from Fujitsu—I think that was upped by my noble friend Lord Arbuthnot. I argue that it should pay exactly as much as the taxpayer has. It is a lot of money, but it should be paid.
I would also like the Government to do more to support those who are struggling with the emotional and financial strain of this scandal and provide them with the tools and resources that they need to move their lives forward. As I said at the beginning, this is not just about money; it is about rebuilding lives that have been torn apart. At 70 years old, Rita should be enjoying retirement with her family, yet instead she finds herself battling anxiety, financial hardship and the lingering effects of a fight that she should never have had to endure. Her family is doing all it can, but why should it have to? Why should any victim of this scandal have to rely on loved ones to survive, when it was the failures of others that put them in this position?
The Government must step up with not just words and sympathy but concrete measures that provide real, immediate relief for the victims. Rita and countless others like her have been waiting far too long for justice. I stand here today not as a Member of this House but as a human being imploring the Government to take immediate action to right this wrong. We cannot continue to allow these victims to suffer. We must act and we must act now.
Lord Barber of Ainsdale (Lab) (Maiden Speech)
I want to express my thanks to my noble friend Lord Beamish for initiating today’s debate and give my warm congratulations to my noble friend Lady Elliott on her excellent maiden speech.
I feel very privileged to join this House and acutely conscious of how much I have to learn of its conventions and procedures. I am fortunate to have the guidance and wisdom of my noble friends Lord Monks and Lady O’Grady, who both supported my introduction to the House. John has been a mentor and close friend of mine ever since I first walked through the doors of the TUC headquarters, Congress House, in 1975—quite a long time ago. Frances, who succeeded me in the position of TUC general secretary, has demonstrated ever since that her talent and integrity wholly justified my confidence that the TUC’s leadership would be in great hands on my departure. I am also delighted that another very close colleague, now my noble friend Lady Carberry, has also joined us in this House. She will give great service.
Ainsdale, now in my formal title, is an area in the town of Southport, which has suffered greatly in the wake of those terrible events some months ago. I applaud the spirit of the Southport people in their response to that outrage.
Throughout my childhood in Ainsdale, my dad worked as a bricklaying instructor in a local approved school. The term “approved school” was the language of the time; now I guess it would be called a young offender institution. We had a house in the grounds of the school; perhaps I am the first noble Lord to have been brought up in such an institution—or looking around all the Benches, perhaps not.
I sometimes saw my dad defuse a difficult situation, with angry young men about to kick off, by using patience, calmness and reason, and sometimes humour too. As I have discovered, both in the TUC and during my time as chair of ACAS, these can be important factors in the resolution of any difficult conflict.
I have tried to learn from all my experiences as I have made my way through life. After leaving school, I served for a year as a volunteer teacher in Ghana through the VSO—Voluntary Service Overseas—programme. This began to open my eyes to the vast diversity of life experience across the planet we share. At the end of my degree course at City University, I spent a year as president of the student union, able to observe and play a part in the university’s most senior governance structures. A year followed working for an industrial training board before I saw an advert for a job at the TUC. The advert told very little about the vacancy to be filled. It was only after I reached the interview that I discovered they were looking particularly for someone to do research and briefing on industrial training policy. My experience at the ITB, I think, got me the job and I was there for the next 37 years—serendipity.
Today’s debate is an opportunity to highlight again a terrible injustice suffered by a blameless group of workers, inflicted by an irresponsible and overmighty employer which appeared to feel that it could act with impunity. Fair compensation is long overdue and this scandal, to my mind, reinforces the message that trade unions are as vitally needed today as ever to provide effective representation for people at work and to hold employers to account.
The half a century since my entry to the TUC has seen remarkable changes in the world of work and of trade unionism. The mid-1970s saw the agreement between the Labour Government of the day and the TUC of what was termed the “social contract”. That saw the level of inflation in the economy reduced from around 24% in 1975 to 8% by 1978. That was a staggering achievement that appears largely forgotten now as the “winter of discontent” followed the breakdown of that agreement. History, of course, is written by the victors. That was followed by a long period of the demonisation of trade unionism, even termed at one point as “the enemy within”, with workers at GCHQ—Government Communications Headquarters—even being told that being a union member was not consistent with loyalty to the nation.
The Labour Government of 1997 righted that wrong at GCHQ and made other progressive changes. Trade union recognition rights were underpinned by law. The minimum wage lifted living standards for the lowest paid. The UK rejoined the European mainstream on rights and protections for people at work by signing up to the European Social Chapter, from which the previous Government had opted the UK out. But despite those achievements, there are long-term trends that have still left working people relatively poorer. In simple terms, inequality has grown as the coverage of collective bargaining and effective workplace representation has been weakened. A rebalancing is long, long overdue.
Good employers have nothing to fear from this. The story of trade unionism is often told by reflecting on major disputes. I understand why the drama of such events appeals to news editors but for most trade unionists the real story is of agreements being made, with good employment relations being a crucial part of the mix in building competitive and successful organisations. Change is so much better managed with understanding and consent.
One letter I received as TUC general secretary reflected that reality in a graphic way. It came from 12 individuals who had together come through an educational programme established by their trade union under the TUC’s Unionlearn initiative, in a partnership between their employer and a local college, to deliver basic literacy and numeracy skills. They told me that the experience and skills gained had completely transformed their lives—to their benefit, of course, but also to the benefit of their employer; a win-win if ever there was one. Crucially, those individuals would never have had the confidence to get involved if the invitation had come just from their employer or the local college. It was only the support of the union that persuaded them to risk re-entering a classroom, in which they had always previously felt a failure. The letter to me, thanking trade unionism for making that difference, finished by saying that it was the first letter any of them had ever sent in their life. That was truly humbling. At its peak, Unionlearn was helping over a quarter of a million people a year back into learning, and I hope our new Government will restore the support that made that possible.
During my time at the TUC, I also served on the Court of Directors of the Bank of England under the dedicated leadership of the noble Lord, Lord King of Lothbury. That brought me up close to the global financial crisis of 2008-09, with all the terrifying risks to the fabric of our financial system.
Since leaving the TUC, I have been fortunate to serve on the boards of Transport for London and Openreach, and the Financial Services Culture Board, each with hugely important public interest missions, and from each of which I have learned a great deal. I was proud to chair ACAS for six years; it does such important work, often behind the scenes, in resolving so many difficult disputes. My time as a trustee of the Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts has also been a delight, dedicated as it is to opening up the hugely successful education and professional training it provides to young people from all backgrounds, so delivering opportunities to make the careers that their talent deserves.
Now, as I embark on this new chapter, I am sure that I will again have an opportunity to learn many new lessons from noble Lords and noble Baronesses in all parts of the House and from the dedicated staff, who have all given me such a warm and kind welcome, for which I thank them most sincerely. I look forward to this next phase of my lifelong learning journey.
Lord Monks (Lab)
My Lords, it is a real pleasure for me to follow that excellent and inspiring speech by my noble friend and fellow Lancastrian—we are doing the northern bit at the moment, so I will join in with that. As my noble friend Lord Barber said, he comes from Ainsdale, an area with famous golf courses, where I think it can be said he had a misspent youth on many occasions—he is a very good golfer when his new knee permits it, by the way.
My noble friend’s appointment to this House, as he said, represents a reunion for both of us, because we have been friends and colleagues for about 50 years, with 30 of those spent together at the TUC. We rarely fell out, except perhaps about football from time to time, with his love of Everton, which I never understood. I was extremely pleased to see him succeed me all those years ago as TUC general secretary and for him then to flourish in that role and win this wide regard and respect, which is reflected in the different things he has done in his career. His determination, calmness and courtesy have long been hallmarks of his style, and I am sure they will be widely perceived within this House when noble Lords get to know him a little better. The range of tough jobs that he has done, and the people who have turned to him for help in tricky situations, is very impressive. We are looking at a stellar career that spans the private, public and voluntary sectors. That first speech was excellent, and the House can look forward to many more from my noble friend, as we can from my noble friend Lady Elliott, who gave a very warm speech, which would have gone down well with even the non-Sunderland supporters.
I turn to the subject of the day. The Horizon scandal is perhaps the worst British scandal in my lifetime. Here we had a respected and prestigious public body persecuting many innocent victims in what, ultimately, was a futile attempt at a cover-up. It went on for years, and it still goes on. People have lost their livelihoods, their savings and, in some cases, their freedom and their lives with the pressure that they had been put under—and it was all down to a dodgy, faulty computer system and an unwillingness to admit that a big mistake was made.
As I said, it is not over yet. Compensation schemes are in place but are being criticised for being too slow and, depressingly, Fujitsu is still dragging its feet on paying up—honeyed words are not enough. The point being pursued by the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, and others about the role of the auditors, Ernst & Young, in whitewashing the accounts of the Post Office reminded me of what happened in the wake of the Enron scandal—a scandal of a similar scale, in some respects—where it was the auditors who paid a very heavy price. Do noble Lords remember a firm called Arthur Andersen? Well, that was the end of it at that time. I am not saying that Ernst & Young is in that position, but it needs to come clean and make some contribution because, in my opinion, it shares the guilt for what has been going on.
Generally, I think we need to finish this saga and put it behind us. I want to ask the Minister a couple of things. Have the Government yet drawn any conclusions from the initial reaction to the Green Paper on the future of the Post Office and how this can be used to ensure that none of these terrible things that have been happening can happen again?
I recognise the Government’s contribution to delivering compensation. We all pay due tribute today to the doughty campaigners—Sir Alan Bates and his colleagues—as well as to our colleagues, such as the noble Lords Lord Beamish and Lord Arbuthnot, who brought all this to light. I add my tribute to them, as this House has done many times, for the steadfast and determined role they played in seeing those enormous wrongs righted.
Those wrongs were a product of the damaged culture in the Post Office, with its emphasis on being defensive, its opposition to anybody who looked like a whistleblower, and its feeling of being beleaguered—that it was the victim rather the one causing victims. That culture was deep-rooted. I am interested in what can be done to make sure that is completely eradicated, because many of the people are still there. I guess that they will remain there because, individually, they have not done any criminal wrong. It is the corporate story that is so bad. What can be done to make sure that the culture is repaired and changed? The Post Office used to be loved and respected for its competence and openness but, at the moment, it is reviled by a significant section of our community.
Finally, can the Minister tell us how many convictions have been quashed and how many have received their due compensation, including in relation to Capture, the preliminary scheme which was around earlier than the Horizon system? Let us see a determined effort to close this shameful chapter in the history of the Post Office. It is long overdue. As a nation, we must put it behind us.
The Earl of Erroll (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Beamish, for bringing forward this debate. This issue has worried me for a very long time. I remember the great campaign in particular by the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, as well as by others in the Commons. Some of us here mentioned it, but we knew we were getting nowhere and were labelled as nutters. After a while, because we wanted to get on with other important things, we just had to give up. I am delighted the noble Lord never did and that we are finally getting there.
As the noble Lord, Lord Beamish, said, the problems started years ago with the ICL Capture system and the PFI contract Pathway project to computerise the Post Office. It started going wrong very early on. I remember a parliamentary visit to ICL. Among other things, they showed us Horizon, though it was not called that then; it was either Capture or it may have been called Pathway. They said, “Sadly, it doesn’t work and we’re going to knock it on the head”. Very soon after that, Fujitsu took over and, suddenly, a bit later, this new Horizon system appeared in the Post Office. I was very surprised because, only a couple of years earlier, they had known perfectly well that it was not working.
A lot of people were taken off or left the Pathway project to work on the millennium bug to make sure that it did not take the country down—which it did not. It infuriates me when people say that so much money was wasted on the millennium bug. It was not. People pre-emptively sorted out the software so that things did not go wrong at midnight. In a way, the lesson is that lots of failures are needed and people must be paid to sort them out, but this is not the sort of lesson we want to learn.
I was told that part of the problem was that the Capture system was based on spreadsheets. The other trouble was the system for transferring the data centrally, which took place in a short, one-hour window in the evening, over telephone lines which, back in those days, were very dodgy—in some places, they are a little better today. That system often did not work, particularly with the software they were using, which was designed for very small datasets. The datasets they were transmitting were much bigger. There were lots of errors and lots of time was spent trying to sort them out. Very often, they did not work.
There is another problem in the system which you get in large organisations and everywhere else—confirmation bias. For a long time, those on the security side of the Post Office were sure that with the amount of cash sloshing around in the system, some postmasters out there must have been pocketing some of it. Therefore, when the Horizon system said, “Yes they are”, they said, “There, we’re proven right”. They were willing to believe that Horizon was right and not the others. That is the trouble with large organisations: you get these attitudes and they do not shift forward very easily.
Fujitsu knew the software problems and told the Post Office. It is on a PFI contract and therefore has a duty of client confidentiality and is not allowed to talk outside, so none of this was meant to leak. We were told by the Post Office and others that maybe they were crooks, but they obviously did not think about this very hard or investigate it properly. Auditors are all very well, but if they are investigating stuff that they do not know and understand, it is quite tricky, as they do not know what they are looking at.
Also, having dealt with accounting software in the past, I have noticed that large auditing companies do not understand cash-based accounting. They work on P&L accounting. You have lots of little accounts and you can push things away. You have control accounts between your sales or ledger accounts and your main nominal account, for pushing things into. You can tamper with them, which you cannot with cash-based accounts. In a cash system, the other side of your central bank thing, which tells you where the money is, is the individual postmasters’ accounts. If you tamper with one, it tampers with the other. The people doing the tampering probably realised that but were not listened to, so you have this big problem of not understanding things. Certainly, I have discovered that big auditors do not understand cash accounts. I have had this trouble in other small businesses.
It is just a ring of failures—of understanding, listening and looking at the problem properly. It is sad. However, the problem really is that there must have been people telling lies somewhere down the line. Those lies must have surfaced in some of the evidence given to the courts. There must have been people giving evidence to the courts or briefing the lawyers who were not telling the truth, in which case they are guilty of perjury. The only way of stopping this from happening in the future is to prosecute some people for perjury. There must be somebody in the Post Office, though not necessarily at the top; I do not know where it happened. I do not see why we cannot investigate who briefed whom with what to conceal the truth.
We should look also at how good the expert witnesses are. I do not know who the courts were relying on, particularly in the early days when they were being told that the systems worked. You must be very careful. We have had problems with expert witnesses in other areas as well. The courts need to start thinking about it.
Also, I seem to remember that barristers and expert witnesses owe their first duty to the courts, not to their clients. Sometimes our legal profession should think about that quite seriously, because that is how you can get these huge miscarriages of justice. We also need to remember that large bureaucratic organisations often like to conceal things that do not go right. I remember years ago trying to get a large part of an organisation—I had better not say which one—to adopt some software which would have been very good at tracking all the stuff around contracts so that you could tell exactly who had done what, what had gone wrong and everything like that. They said, “Oh. no, we can’t have that. The first rule is that if at first you don’t succeed, bury all trace that you tried”, because it would not be career-enhancing. Anyway, that is enough of the cynicism.
The sad thing about it is what happened to the postmasters and postmistresses. It was dreadful. It was known about for a long time and a lot of people colluded to hide it. I would like to see some heads roll. Who pays for it? Fujitsu made a lot of money out of those contracts, so I do not see why it should not ante up towards it. The Post Office must too, as it is hugely responsible for the whole thing. It owed a duty of care to its postmasters and postmistresses. We need to dig deep, but I would like to see some heads roll for lying to the courts. It really worries me when our court system is not working properly.
Lord Sikka (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Beamish, for securing this debate, and I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Barber of Ainsdale, and the noble Baroness, Lady Elliott of Whitburn Bay, on their wonderful speeches. I look forward to working with them.
The survivors of the Post Office scandal have already suffered enough, and the slowness and adversarial nature of the compensation schemes are simply adding another layer to the cruelty they have already suffered. I have a number of questions for the Minister. Can she explain why some claims are being minimised to as little as 5% when they have been fully prepared by financial assessors? Why are the claimants being asked repeatedly for more expert medical assessments? Why should Horizon shortfall scheme applicants have to wait for their first offer before qualifying for any legal help? Why is 92 year-old Betty Brown still waiting for compensation after the Minister, Gareth Thomas, pledged that he would find a solution six weeks ago?
We are seeing scandals within scandals. There is the tragic case of Mrs Gowri Jayakanthan, who I met last December here at a seminar organised in the House. In 2005, under pressure from the Post Office, her husband committed suicide. No wrongdoing was subsequently established. In summer 2020, Mrs Jayakanthan applied for compensation under the Horizon shortfall scheme. In November 2023, her application was refused because the company through which her husband contracted for his post office had gone into liquidation, and in the Post Office’s view her losses did not fall within the terms of that scheme. I urge the Minister to meet Mrs Jayakanthan and examine that case in detail, because justice must be seen to be done.
As has been mentioned, the cost of compensation must not fall solely on the public purse. What claims have been made against the directors’ and officers’ insurance taken out by the Post Office?
Then there are questions about Fujitsu. It played an active part in the prosecution of innocent postmasters and perverted the course of justice, but it has not returned even a penny of the fees that it collected over the years from the Post Office. Even worse, the company is currently bidding for a new £370 million government contract and is confident that it will be able to renew its contract with HMRC, which was worth £240 million when last signed in 2020. Why does Fujitsu continue to be indulged and why, despite massive evidence, has it not been prosecuted for perverting the course of justice? Why has it not been forced to make any contribution? As has been said, it should really bear at least 50% of all the compensation that is to be paid. Have the Government had any conversations with Fujitsu about funding Lost Chances? That is a charity set up to assist children whose parents were impacted by the Post Office scandal.
From a September 2024 report prepared by Kroll Associates, we know that Horizon’s predecessor, the Capture system, which operated from 1992 to 1999, was also flawed, and the Government are committed to redressing affected postmasters. The point here is that Ernst & Young was the external auditor of the Post Office from 1986 to 2018—the entire period of the Capture and Horizon scandals. Publicly available evidence shows that the firm knew the flaws. It could not have carried out effective evaluation of internal controls and satisfied itself that the Post Office kept proper accounting records, or that its directors were able to prepare true and fair statutory financial statements. Auditors did not qualify the Post Office accounts, which did not contain any provisions for contingent liabilities arising from wrongful prosecutions, which are now falling on the public purse.
On 11 February 2025, in reply to a call from the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, for an inquiry into the conduct of Ernst & Young, the noble Baroness, Lady Gustafsson, told the House
“I look forward to ultimately hearing the outcome from the FRC”,—[Official Report, 11/2/25; col. 1105.]
implying that the regulator is looking at it. Can the Minister tell the House whether the Government have formally asked the Financial Reporting Council to investigate accountants involved with the Post Office? When was that request made? What is the scope of that request? Ernst & Young was the auditor for the duration of the Capture and Horizon scandals; therefore, all those audits need to be re-examined by an inquiry. Have the Government asked the FRC to look at the conduct of Deloitte and PricewaterhouseCoopers as well? PwC succeeded Ernst & Young.
I will now ask some questions about the 61 or more prosecutions of postmasters by the DWP for alleged frauds, none of which have been quashed. These prosecutions took place mostly between 2000 and 2006. The Government’s position is that these were not connected with the failings of the Horizon system. Well, they certainly took place when there was a conspiracy of silence and cover-up by the Post Office, the state, and government officials.
To accuse someone of fraud there is a presupposition that the underlying accounting records are 100% correct. We know that Horizon, Capture and the manual accounting systems used before them were flawed. We know that sub-postmasters were given minimal accounting training. So, what did the DWP use as a benchmark to say that somebody committed fraud? How did it know that that benchmark was reliable? I have not seen any evidence to support that.
The cases were handled by DWP solicitors, who would then instruct counsel to represent the DWP at court. Too many sub-postmasters, facing the full might of the state without any legal aid, were advised to plead guilty to a fraud they insist they never committed. Sadly, many have since passed away and their families have long sought to clear their name. Since the date of those DWP convictions, court transcripts and bundles of evidence relating to those convictions have been destroyed. The DWP has been unable to provide any court transcript to back up its insistence that its position was correct, so how sound could these convictions have been?
We have to remember that before the 2019 High Court case of Alan Bates and Others v Post Office Ltd, the authorities insisted that the convictions were sound. The rest, as they say, is history. We need an independent inquiry. I pursued this with the Minister on 24 July. She replied:
“On the individuals and the question of whether there should be an independent inquiry, we believe that the best way to deal with this issue now is through the current arrangements being set up, rather than by having another third party involved. I am sure that all these matters will be taken into account in the eventual recommendations”.—[Official Report, 24/7/25; col. 505.]
The problem here is that Sir Wyn Williams did not consider the DWP prosecution of postmasters part of his remit. I am sure the Minister is committed to securing justice for all, and I encourage her to revisit this issue and commission an inquiry. We can only win justice, and that is highly desirable.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Beamish, on securing this important and timely debate. I echo his credit to the postmasters for their decades-long search for justice. My noble friend Lady Ludford highlighted the role of Nick Willis, whose reporting over decades exposed what was happening to many members of the public. I want to pay tribute to the many solicitors and barristers who worked with the victims over the years as well, long before they were listened to. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, who highlighted the delays and attempts to minimise compensation despite agreed routes to compensation. This is a key issue, and he is right that these are further scandals within scandals.
I congratulate the two new Peers on their maiden speeches. The noble Baroness, Lady Elliott of Whitburn Bay, spoke about the lack of progress of the compensation scheme. She is right and even though there has been some progress, as we have heard in this excellent debate, there are certainly problems and particularly snail-like reviews of complex cases. The noble Lord, Lord Barber of Ainsdale, brings his wealth of experience in the trade union movement to this appalling miscarriage of justice. He highlighted how employers could mistreat staff with absolute impunity. He has been, and I am sure will continue to be, an exceptional advocate for workers and the trade union movement. I also agree with him about skills. As a former director of UFI, I worked closely with Unionlearn. I believe it was transformational, and I hope that work can be resurrected. From these Benches, we welcome both new Peers and look forward to their contributions to your Lordships’ House.
Just over a year ago, the country was reeling from the exceptional ITV drama “Mr Bates vs The Post Office”, which brought to the country’s attention the appalling miscarriages of justices faced by many postmasters. Early on, we focused on the Post Office. This debate rightly takes us to some of the other issues, specifically Fujitsu. The noble Lords, Lord Arbuthnot and Lord Beamish, whose constituents were affected, have led the campaign for many years in Parliament on these issues and continue to lead the debate. The speeches were once again clear on progress and the remaining issues facing postmasters.
In February 2024, the Treasury supplementary estimates outlined the money set aside for the GLO scheme and, separately, the value of provisions relating to the Post Office for some of the other schemes and some of the Post Office’s legal costs. I looked at the Treasury supplementary estimates for the Budget last year, and the numbers had slightly changed. Without wanting to question the Minister about exact sums, it would be useful to know six months on whether those estimates still hold or if, in light of compensation agreements, we are going to have to expect further rightful compensation.
The noble Lords, Lord Arbuthnot and Lord Sikka, raised the essential issue of Ernst & Young’s audit practices. I hope the inquiry report will lay bare these failures and its practices in giving clean bills of health, because it just did not query items. The noble Lord, Lord Monks, spoke of the Enron scandal and the role of auditors, and about the cultures of organisations when things go so badly wrong. The noble Earl, Lord Erroll, spoke about the auditors’ shortcomings and of cash accounting. What are the Government doing to ensure that organisations, whether private or publicly funded, understand the role of auditors, make sure they have people able to assist them and, in particular, that the audit profession reviews what it does?
We had a very helpful briefing from Protect, the whistleblowing charity, which raised an interesting point in relation to the Post Office contractors—the sub-postmasters, who blew the whistle on the Horizon scandal. They would not have enjoyed legal whistleblower protections because they are self-employed. Will the Government use their powers to extend legal whistleblower protections to self-employed contractors?
The small number of postmasters who were not cleared under the Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Act was brought up by a number of speakers. In May last year, the Law Society gave parliamentarians a briefing when we were considering that Bill, setting out the reasons why some were not included—judicial reasoning that they would have been convicted of something else. I remain particularly concerned about this. If the evidence for the other items was also coming from the Post Office and Fujitsu, why is their evidence in those cases suddenly valid? I hope that this will be reviewed, particularly by the criminal justice system and the judiciary. As the Law Society commented, it is difficult for Parliament to insist on things with the justice system.
Can the Minister say how the appeal cases of those few who were excluded from the general cancellation of the wrongful convictions is proceeding and whether there is any doubt about the substantial evidence provided by the Post Office and Fujitsu on those convictions?
There has been some mention, as there has been elsewhere in Parliament over the last year, of the Capture scheme. The noble Lord, Lord Beamish, said it is now clear that there are certain problems. I am grateful that he highlighted the issues in the first place. The noble Earl, Lord Erroll, outlined some of the technical problems with Capture. Who among us does not remember dodgy phone lines when attempting to transmit data in the 1980s and 1990s? I certainly do.
It is really important to see whether there are miscarriages of justice in this scheme. Since this time last year, when we have discussed the Post Office Horizon scheme I have kept raising what will happen when it is realised that the Capture scheme victims also deserve to have their convictions overturned. I asked then whether it would be possible to amend by regulation the Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Act rather than having to start with new legislation, because it would be dreadful to have to start all over again. Can the Minister update the House on that and on what the Government plan to do about the Capture scheme? We saw the report published last autumn; it is really important that we get speedy responses on this issue.
Sitting behind all of this is Fujitsu. The noble Lord, Lord Beamish, is right to highlight its consistent lying for so many years that it was not possible to adjust Horizon remotely, which supported the prosecution of postmasters. Only through seeing Fujitsu staff on the witness stand at the inquiry having to admit that they regularly changed data did we realise the scale of what had been happening. I echo his concerns about Fujitsu’s silence. It is appalling that it has not yet announced how much it will contribute to the compensation. Above all, after they realised what was happening, why did the last Government—and the new one—give it and continue to consider it for new contracts?
My noble friend Lady Ludford highlighted the omissions from the Horizon shortfall scheme and how different standards are now being used by some of the assessors, which is very concerning. I have heard about this too, so can the Minister say whether these are being addressed? The example from the noble Lord, Lord Polak, of the struggles that Rita is facing demonstrated that this is not a technical issue; it is not done and dusted, and it is still affecting postmasters’ lives today.
My noble friend also made the point that the Post Office should not be responsible for negotiating with the victims. This also applies to other inquiries, where government department staff often operate the compensation scheme. The Infected Blood Compensation Authority is at least at arm’s length from government and therefore separate from the institutions responsible. Will the Government have a review to consider whether this might be a model for the future? The one thing we do not want to see is a repeat of the long years of mistrust and problems with the compensation—the speed at which it is being awarded, and the detail of what is being awarded.
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate and the noble Lord, Lord Beamish, for securing it. I greatly enjoyed hearing the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Elliott, and very much look forward to hearing her contributions on standing up for the north. We have an opportunity to create a genuine northern powerhouse, and it would be brilliant to achieve that. It was also extremely interesting to hear the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Barber—from Ghana, ACAS, TfL, Everton Football Club and Mountview Academy to the TUC, bringing together more than 5.5 million working people. He said that he is looking forward to learning from his noble friends, but I think your Lordships’ House is equally looking forward to hearing from him.
It would be remiss of me not pay a special tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, and, rather than my words, please let me quote from some of the many articles that highlight his amazing contribution which resulted in justice for postmasters.
“One of the figures who comes out of the Post Office scandal with universal and unequivocal praise is Lord Arbuthnot”.
“His actions, with purpose and forethought, that he stuck with through the process, show the instinct and intelligence to approach this carefully and allow all sides the opportunity to show their character before committing to the cause with fire and brimstone”.
We should all be incredibly grateful that both he and the noble Lord, Lord Beamish, did commit to the cause with fire and brimstone, because this was, unfortunately, one of the gravest miscarriages of justice in recent times. A scandal that saw honest, hard-working individuals—our local postmasters—wrongly accused, prosecuted and, in some cases, driven to financial ruin. Depression, prison time, moving country and attempted suicide: these are just some of the tales told by the victims of the scandal.
The Post Office is a pillar of our communities and has long been a trusted institution, but, between 1999 and 2015, hundreds of postmasters faced devastating consequences due to the faults in the Horizon IT system, supplied by International Computers Ltd, which was later fully incorporated into Fujitsu. These errors falsely suggested financial shortfalls, leading to suspensions, wrongful prosecutions and untold suffering. So my first question to the Minister is: what measures will His Majesty’s Government implement to prevent such a miscarriage of justice from occurring again?
The Government have indeed acknowledged this injustice and have worked to provide compensation, with the Post Office (Horizon System) Compensation Bill being introduced to ensure that victims receive full and fair redress. As of 31 January 2025, approximately £663 million has been paid across multiple schemes, which is part of a total £1.8 billion set aside for compensation costs. But, despite these efforts, we must ask: is justice being delivered swiftly enough?
The noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, and my noble friend Lord Polak mentioned legal complexity and speed of claims. The Business and Trade Select Committee recently raised serious concerns about the pace and complexity of the compensation process. While payments have increased, delays persist. The committee’s report describes the process as akin to a “second trial” for victims. Postmasters should not have to navigate an overly bureaucratic system to receive what is rightfully theirs after what they have already been put through. The committee has stated that while redress schemes are moving faster, they are still “not fast enough”. So we have to ask the Minister: what specific measures can be taken to accelerate these compensation payments?
The recommendations put forth by the committee must also be seriously considered. We must remove the Post Office from administering any redress schemes, we must offer upfront legal advice to claimants and we must introduce strict timelines to expedite claims. Furthermore, His Majesty’s Official Opposition believe that an independent adjudicator should oversee the process to ensure fairness, with legal costs being scrutinised to prevent further exploitation of the victims.
As mentioned by the noble Lords, Lord Beamish, Lord Arbuthnot, Lord Hastings, and Lord Polak, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Elliott and Lady Brinton, Fujitsu cannot evade accountability. The company must take financial responsibility for its role in this disaster. As the inquiry nears its conclusion, it is imperative that Fujitsu contributes meaningfully to the compensation efforts. Justice demands nothing less. The National Federation of SubPostmasters has raised concerns that progress on addressing the scandal has only been expedited due to public scrutiny and the ongoing inquiry. The NFSP has questioned what will happen once the inquiry concludes, particularly regarding Fujitsu’s contribution to compensation. It has suggested that Fujitsu may be delaying action in the hope of minimizing its culpability and avoiding public scrutiny over its financial responsibility. As the inquiry nears its conclusion, it is imperative that the company contributes meaningfully to the compensation efforts, so we need to ask: what conversations are His Majesty’s Government having with the board of directors at Fujitsu?
It is not just financial compensation that must be addressed, as was mentioned by my noble friend Lord Polak. The emotional wrecking of lives caused by this travesty must also be looked at, so we would like to know how His Majesty’s Government will support affected postmasters beyond financial compensation to help them rebuild their lives. Achieving justice for the victims of this scandal and ensuring that such a tragedy can never happen again must be the Government’s priority. When we talk about compensation, we have to remember that the lives of the postmasters and their families caught up in this scandal have been changed for ever. They have faced financial ruin, untold personal distress and a loss of reputation that no amount of financial compensation can ever fully restore. It is of paramount importance that we recognise our clear moral duty to right those wrongs to the best of our ability. His Majesty’s Government must set out a plan for how they will notify eligible postmasters of compensation. What steps will they take to ensure that all affected individuals are reached?
Finally, please allow me to quote my noble friend Lady Fookes, a hugely respected veteran of both the other place and your Lordships’ House, who spoke with such great authority when she challenged His Majesty’s Government on a similar topic. The same applies here for all of the postmasters who deserve compensation:
“The government machine needs to get more of a move on than it usually does in these matters. Will my noble friend take as his motto a cry often heard in the streets: ‘When do we want it? We want it now’”.—[Official Report, 18/5/23; col. 368.]
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business and Trade and Department for Science, Information and Technology (Baroness Jones of Whitchurch) (Lab)
My Lords, first, I welcome my noble friends Lord Barber of Ainsdale and Lady Elliott of Whitburn Bay and congratulate them on their maiden speeches. I am sure this House would agree with me that they both bring a wealth of experience, particularly in speaking up for working people, and I look forward to working closely with them as they navigate their way through our shared UK growth missions. My noble friend Lady Elliott—I am sure the House agrees—will be an important northern voice in this Chamber. I am sure that the House will also agree that we will all benefit from my noble friend Lord Barber’s experience in arbitration and conciliation. We have a lot to learn from him in that regard.
I am pleased to respond for the Government and . I thank the noble Lord for bringing forward this Motion and allowing us to debate this very important issue. I pay tribute to the work of my noble friend Lord Beamish, alongside that of the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, as members of the Horizon Compensation Advisory Board. They have helped guide and shape the Government’s work in this area.
Like my noble friend Lord Beamish, I pay tribute to Alan Bates and the 550 who took the case to court and finally shone a light on the role of the Post Office in deliberately hiding the truth. I also agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, that certain members of the press—ITV has obviously been mentioned—and in particular Nick Wallis, played an important role in shining a light on this in a very dogged and determined way, and brought it certainly to my attention for the first time.
I welcome this opportunity to provide an update on the progress of the Horizon redress schemes and to discuss the contribution of Fujitsu to the costs of the scandal. This scandal was one of the worst miscarriages of justice in this country’s history. Redress for the postmasters whose lives were scarred by it is of great importance for the new Government. A number of noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Polak, and my noble friends Lord Beamish and Lady Elliott, gave very moving examples of the individuals impacted by the scandal and their lives being torn apart as a result. We recognise the devasting impact that the Post Office’s actions had on many postmasters’ lives, their families and their communities.
The Government remain focussed in our efforts to ensure that all postmasters receive full, fair and swift redress for the terrible ordeals to which they have been unjustly subject. That is why the Government have set aside around £1.8 billion for redress for the 2024-25 financial year onwards for those postmasters affected by this grievous miscarriage of justice. This is in addition to the around £200 million already paid to victims in previous years; this is not a ceiling but an estimate.
I turn now to the progress of the redress schemes. My department and Post Office Ltd publish monthly updates on progress. Since the end of June last year, the total amount of redress paid to victims of the Horizon scandal has more than doubled. Across this period, 1,409 more victims have settled their claims. Approximately £663 million has now been paid to over 4,300 claimants.
As we have identified, there are four separate redress schemes. This is by no means ideal, but, as noble Lords know, the reasons for it are historical. I will describe separately the progress of each scheme. I will start with the Horizon shortfall scheme, which covers postmasters who were not part of the group litigation and do not have a criminal conviction. It is run by Post Office Ltd, with funding, oversight and governance provided by the Department for Business and Trade. Approximately £315 million has been paid under this scheme. However, it has delivered redress too slowly, for two reasons. First, the scheme received many more applications than were originally anticipated: 7,000 and counting rather than a few hundred. Secondly, amounts are decided by a panel independent of the Post Office. This is intended to ensure fairness, but it makes the process slower. Combined with the huge volume of cases, this has caused real problems.
In March 2024, the Minister for Postal Affairs announced an optional fixed sum offer of £75,000 to those applicants who did not wish to complete a full claim. This has greatly accelerated progress. As well as providing speedy redress for those who accepted the offer, it has substantially shortened the queue for everyone else.
The Government have also acted to give postmasters assurance of fair redress. Many postmasters have had understandable concerns about any scheme run by the Post Office, even though redress offers are recommended by an independent panel, which the Post Office has never undercut. The noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, asked whether there was secret guidance to the Post Office lawyers on this issue. In response, I say that the principles of the Horizon shortfall scheme are public; offers are set by an independent panel, with a KC, an accountant and a retail expert. There is also a process to dispute the offer.
Baroness Ludford (LD)
I apologise for interrupting the Minister when we are time-pressed. Can she undertake to explore whether the Post Office really is operating to those published principles? The material that I have seen seems to give credible backing to the suggestion that it is not. Indeed, there is an exchange featuring Post Office lawyers saying that they are working on a contractual basis and not a consequences-of-loss basis, which is entirely different.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
I hear what the noble Baroness is saying. Perhaps if she has some of that evidence, she could share it with us. I am not dismissing what the noble Baroness said. If she has that evidence, we will of course look into it. It is important that justice is done in this case, and is seen to be done.
In light of these concerns, in September the Minister announced that the Government are setting up an appeal process for postmasters who are unhappy with the full assessments of their claims, as recommended by the Horizon Compensation Advisory Board. We expect to receive the first appeals in the spring. The Government have committed to covering the reasonable costs of postmasters obtaining legal advice at each stage of the appeals process. The Government are also actively looking at other ways in which the pace of redress can be sped up and have been supported by the recommendations from the advisory board and claimants’ lawyers in this area.
Post Office prosecutions of innocent postmasters were perhaps the most reprehensible part of this scandal. Some 111 of these unfortunate individuals had their convictions overturned by the courts. The Post Office set up the overturned convictions scheme to ensure that such people get fair redress for malicious prosecution and other losses. Approximately £65 million has been paid under this scheme. So far, 82 of the 111 exonerated people have submitted full and final claims for redress. In response, 73 redress offers have been made and 66 accepted and paid. This scheme provides the option of an upfront offer of £600,000 to claimants, ensuring swift redress is provided to those victims who do not wish to submit a full claim. This is larger than the fixed offer in the HSS, reflecting the greater harm done to those who were convicted. As of 3 January, 58 people have chosen to accept that offer.
The House will recall the widespread concern that people convicted as a result of the scandal were not being exonerated by the courts, often because the evidence had gone or because they could not face a further legal fight. These people were therefore exonerated en masse by Parliament in May of last year. As of 7 February, 557 individuals in England and Wales have been sent a letter, informing them that they have at least one conviction quashed by the Act. The devolved Administrations in Scotland and Northern Ireland are running parallel exercises.
In July last year, the Government launched the Horizon convictions redress scheme to address the suffering of these people, wherever they are in the UK. I am pleased to report that it has made excellent progress. Under this scheme, eligible applicants are entitled to an interim payment of £200,000. They can then opt to have their claims individually assessed or take the fixed offer of £600,000. The noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, said that 72% of people in this redress scheme have not yet been paid. Most of the costs of redress relates to convictions which were rightly overturned by Parliament. No full claims have yet been received from those individuals and the Government are not going to slow down the redress. When people claim and we get the full claims, we aim to make to make an offer within 40 working days in 90% of the cases.
As of 31 January, 383 initial interim claims had been received, of which 364 have been paid; 232 full claims have been received, with 208 of those paid and 24 offers accepted and awaiting payment. The department’s target is for the first offers to be provided in response to 90% of full claims within 40 working days of receipt. A total of £156 million, including interim payments, has been paid to eligible claimants under this scheme. BBC News recently ran a story of two more claimants having received their £600,000 claims. It is very good to hear those individual cases of justice being done, even if it has taken far too long.
This brings us to the GLO scheme—the group litigation scheme. The group litigation court order case celebrated in last year’s ITV drama provided redress which proved to be unequal and unfair when compared with that provided by the HSS. The GLO scheme is intended to put that right.
The scheme is delivered by the Department for Business and Trade rather than the Post Office. Last year, Sir Alan Bates expressed concern that the scheme was not delivering fast enough. The Government agreed, but the problem was that we were not receiving the full claims. However, those concerns have now been eased. Out of the 492 postmasters eligible for the scheme, the department has received 408 completed claims. When it receives claims, the department acts quickly. It aims to make offers in 90% of cases within 40 working days of receiving a completed claim. As of 31 January, 89% of offers were made within that target period.
If any postmaster cannot resolve their redress through such bilateral discussions, they can go to the scheme’s independent panel. So far, only five cases have required help from the panel. By contrast, 257 cases have been by agreement between the department and the postmaster, either in response to the first offer or a subsequent challenge. This demonstrates that the department is making fair offers.
A total of £128 million, including interim payments, has been paid to postmasters under the GLO scheme. The Government expect to have paid redress to the great majority of the GLO claimants by 31 March 2025.
My noble friend Lord Sikka raised a question about the DWP convictions. I can assure him that the Minister for Transformation is looking into this, a review is being established, and I hope to provide more information about that. My noble friend also raised questions about the Lost Chances charity. A meeting has been arranged between it and my colleague, Minister Thomas.
We have been talking about the Horizon redress schemes but, as noble Lords have pointed out, a predecessor system known as Capture also involved errors and bugs which affected some postmasters. I pay tribute to the tireless advocacy of my noble friend Lord Beamish on behalf of this group.
In response, the Minister announced on 17 December last year that the Government will be providing full and fair redress to postmasters who were victims of errors and bugs in the Capture programme. The Government will continue to discuss this work with my noble friend Lord Beamish, and we will return to the House in the spring with an update.
Fujitsu supplied the Horizon software at the heart of this scandal. The sorry tale of its introduction has been fully explored by Sir Wyn Williams’ public inquiry. The Government of course welcome Fujitsu’s acknowledgement of a moral obligation to contribute to the cost of the scandal and continue to talk regularly to Fujitsu about this. The Post Office Minister will be meeting Fujitsu’s Europe CEO shortly.
The noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, asked: if Fujitsu were in jail, would we be giving it the millions that we are currently giving it? It is of course true that Fujitsu has admitted wrongdoing, but at the moment we do not know whether it is criminal. Deciding on that before reviewing the evidence is part of what has caused the scandal, and we should not repeat it. In its apology, Fujitsu recognised that it has a civil liability, and this will be dealt with through the financial contributions which it has promised.
The noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, my noble friend Lord Monks, the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and others raised the issue of errors made by the Post Office auditors. The noble Lords have referred the performance of Post Office auditors to the Financial Reporting Council, and my department officials have also spoken to it. It is the right body to consider this, and the Government should not second-guess it. But, going back to the issue of Fujitsu’s contribution, the full amount cannot be determined until we have Sir Wyn Williams’ report, which will set out the full facts of what happened.
The noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, and my noble friends Lord Beamish and Lord Sikka raised the potential for an interim contribution from Fujitsu. I would say that it is too soon to decide on Fujitsu’s final contribution to the costs of the scandal, but I agree with noble Lords that an interim contribution would be very welcome and appropriate in these circumstances. Given the nature of the discussions that will need to take place on Fujitsu’s contribution, the Government will not be giving a running commentary on them. But I can promise that we will keep the House informed of progress at appropriate moments.
The Horizon system is still in place, unfortunately. A new version was introduced in the late 2010s, which the High Court accepted was “relatively robust”, but it is none the less very much in need of replacement. There can be no overnight fix for this lack of investment.
We are working with the Post Office to secure a new system which is fit for purpose, and which will not involve Fujitsu. In the meantime, the Post Office is, unfortunately, still dependent on the Horizon system to run its branches. I understand the widespread desire to see Fujitsu out of the Post Office picture immediately, but the only way to achieve this would be to shut down all local post offices and deny citizens the vital services which they provide. We do not think that we can do that, and so Fujitsu must remain for the time being. The Post Office has extended its contract until March 2026 but is looking to reduce its input as soon as possible.
Recognising its responsibility for the scandal, Fujitsu has voluntarily paused bidding for new government contracts. However, the Post Office is not the only area where government needs help which is only practicable to get from Fujitsu. So, while we agree with Fujitsu’s decision not to bid for government contracts in general, there will be situations where existing contracts need to be extended, or new ones begun, although generally in connection with existing services. Of course, we understand why that is undesirable, but it is being done only because currently there are no viable alternatives.
There have been allegations in the media that Fujitsu is seeking and receiving contracts beyond those limits. I assure the House that this is not the case. The Crown Representative and his team in the Cabinet Office, who oversee all the Government’s dealings with Fujitsu, are keeping a close watch on the situation.
I agree with noble Lords that individuals and companies responsible for the Horizon scandal must be held to account. The Metropolitan Police is keeping a close eye on the Williams inquiry and has a number of staff working on this. The noble Lord, Lord Hastings, asked about the involvement of law processes. The Solicitors Regulation Authority has said that it has more than 20 live investigations into solicitors and law firms relating to the scandal. There are other channels of accountability, too, and all of these need to be investigated in due course. My noble friend Lord Monks rightly raised the question of the wholesale culture change needed at the Post Office, and my noble friend Lord Sikka raised specific questions about the culpability of the directors. This will all be covered in Sir Wyn Williams’ report, which will establish what happened, what went wrong and why.
The noble Lord, Lord Beamish, raised the question of an independent body—
Lord Sikka (Lab)
I apologise to the Minister for interrupting. I know she has had a lot of questions to answer; I very much hope she will send detailed replies to a lot of the questions I asked. One matter was the case of 92 year-old Mrs Betty Brown, who, despite promises from the Minister six weeks ago, is still waiting for her compensation. Secondly, I asked whether the Minister could meet me and Mrs Gowri Jayakanthan, who had been refused any compensation and whose husband committed suicide, unfortunately, under pressure from Post Office allegations. Would the Minister be good enough to meet us, please?
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, I was going to go on to say that a number of noble Lords have asked very specific questions, and I will of course write. I will just deal quickly with the idea that there should be an independent body for redress in the future. That is certainly something that we are looking into, and it is a very helpful suggestion coming forward from the Horizon Compensation Advisory Board, among others.
Horizon was a terrible scandal, and it is right that we should continue to keep it in our minds through debates such as this. The Government are determined to learn the lessons from it, which is why Sir Williams’s report will be so important, to deliver full and fair compensation, as quickly as possible, to those postmasters who were so unjustly used. I thank noble Lords for this very helpful debate.
Lord Beamish (Lab)
I am grateful to noble Lords for their contributions. We have had an informed debate. The important thing about this scandal that I have recognised over the years is that you have to keep bringing it to the surface so that people do not forget the gravity of what we face.
I will pick up one point that the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, made about the judiciary. In reply, the Minister talked about solicitors, but the noble Lord—and I agree with him—was talking about the judiciary as an institution. When the last Government overturned the convictions, there was a huge hue and cry from the judicial establishment, saying how terrible it was that this was taking place. I suggest that people read some of the transcripts of the court cases and look at the role of judges.
The one that sticks in my mind is the Capture case of June Tooby. Her protestations that Capture was the problem were completely ignored and thrown out by the judge, who was not prepared even to hear the consideration. Although cases are being taken against solicitors, the judiciary needs to look at its role in this. There is no way this could have happened if a few inquiring minds had asked questions. I ask the justice department to look at that.
On the role of auditors, that is unfinished business. I am sorry, but I do not accept that it is good enough for the Government just to say that it is down to the regulators to look at that. Over the years, sub-postmasters kept asking what had happened to their money. The accountants did not know where the money was in the system, even though it was signed off—and no doubt Ernst & Young and others were paid millions of pounds for their advice.
I understand the position of the Government and others in wanting to wait for Sir Wyn Williams’s report to be published, but I think that is being used as an excuse. Most of the information is out there now, and certainly in Fujitsu’s case it is—it has admitted to its role in this.
I welcome the Minister’s support for my suggestion that Fujitsu should support and pay an interim payment. I just hope that, when Minister Thomas meets Fujitsu, he makes that point strongly. I also urge that, when the Secretary of State visits Japan next month, he raises that directly with the main board in Tokyo.
At the end of the day, the contribution that got to the heart of it was that of the noble Lord, Lord Polak—it was a human story. We all have those, and if you have met any of the victims, you can replicate those human stories. At the end of the day, this is about individuals who were hard-working, solid citizens. They were pillars of their local communities and were absolutely devastated and ruined by these acts against them.
In closing, all I would say is that compensation and changing the systems are important, but we should all remember that, at the end of the day, when the state gets things wrong, it is the individual citizens—people such as Rita, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Polak, who has gone through hell for the last few decades—we should think about.
Iranian Regime: British Citizens
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Lord Bishop of Chelmsford
To ask His Majesty’s Government what progress they are making to reduce the number of British citizens being held by the Iranian regime.
The Lord Bishop of Chelmsford
My Lords, I am grateful that time has been allocated to this debate and I look forward to the range of contributions, as well as to the Minister’s response.
I declare my personal interest in the subject. I come originally from Iran; I was born in the beautiful and historic city of Isfahan and I left as a teenager, with my family, following the impact of the Islamic revolution on the small Anglican Church community of which we were a part and, in particular, the attempt on my father’s life and the murder of my 24 year-old brother.
As I have said before in this Chamber, none of this has left me with ill will towards my homeland, but rather a profound sense of sadness at its current plight. I retain a deep love for Iran, its beauty and ancient civilization, and I have great respect for my fellow countryfolk, many of whom suffer in an increasingly intolerable situation or find themselves part of the growing diaspora community. I still hope one day to travel back to Iran, but for now this is not possible because of the current regime.
Many in Iran feel trapped. They are desperately seeking political change, but they face stark choices: submit to the unbearable strictures imposed on everyday life, attempt to leave or risk the realities of brutal and crushing suppression. The situation is intolerable, under a regime that has persecuted, imprisoned, tortured and killed so many people.
Noble Lords will be aware of the plight of Craig and Lindsay Foreman. I am sure that His Majesty’s Government are doing all they can to secure their release. As this is an extremely sensitive situation, I will refrain from commenting on their case further, other than to say that my thoughts and prayers are with the Foremans and their family at this difficult time. Unfortunately, the Foremans are not the first foreign or dual nationals to be held captive in Iran, and I fear they will not be the last.
While the Government’s travel advice is clear, I ask the Minister whether anything more can be done to communicate this advice to those working in the travel sector, so that they can advise prospective travellers of the very real risks.
I respectfully ask the Minister if he is willing to acknowledge the reality that these detainees are, to all intents and purposes, hostages. Let us call this situation out for what it is; other countries such as France are willing to do so. I cannot help thinking that the more that European and other countries speak, as well as act, with one voice, the greater the pressure on Iran to change its approach.
There are many foreign or dual nationals languishing in Iran’s jails, typically arrested on spurious allegations and denied access to a fair and free trial, contrary to international law. There have been at least 66 foreign individuals detained—held hostage—by Iranian authorities since 2010, 16 of whom had either British or dual nationality. The highly unjust detention of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was testament to Iran’s disregard for human rights and it exemplified the callous and cruel way in which the regime continues to treat foreigners, as well as its own citizens.
I have learned so much about tenacity, honesty, devotion and dignity from Richard Ratcliffe’s fight for his wife’s release, and from Nazanin herself since her return. I pay tribute to them both and thank them for their friendship. As much as I welcomed HMG’s efforts in that case, the long and painful process illustrated that securing the release of nationals or dual nationals is never straightforward.
Religious minorities are also systematically persecuted in Iran, and religious freedom is severely curtailed for everyone except Persian-speaking Shias. Having said that, basic civil and political restrictions impact the vast majority of the population, Shia or not, but Christians who have converted from Islam are among the most vulnerable to persecution. They are regularly arrested and can face lengthy imprisonment on bogus charges of acting against national security. I am also acutely aware that the now tiny Anglican community in Iran has still not been allowed to reopen its church buildings since they were closed during the pandemic. The pressure and the uncertainty about their future grow daily, even as numbers continue to dwindle.
Although this is not just a debate about religious freedom, it is incumbent on all of us to stand up, speak out and defend the freedom of religion or belief wherever we can. This freedom is essential for individuals and societies to flourish, and it is the cornerstone on which all human rights are supported. In a dangerous world, Iran presents a threat from many angles—threats that reach out across the globe and affect British national security. The longer the regime stays in power, the longer it can carry on suppressing its own people and being a destabilising presence in the Middle East and more widely.
I urge the Government to work as much as they can in harmony with other nations who also have hostages held in Iran to campaign for the release of all foreign and dual nationals currently in Iranian jails and to champion that which unites us: belief in democracy, freedom and tolerance. I understand that the Minister will not be able to comment in detail, but can he reassure the House that HMG will do everything they can to make sure that they are represented at the Foremans’ forthcoming trial? It is a right of any Government under international law, but one which Iran has been known to deny.
I am very grateful to have been able to highlight this case today and to discuss the plight of all those experiencing oppression in Iran. I pray for the release of all British and dual nationals who have been arbitrarily arrested in Iran and for all those who are suffering oppression because of the regime. I pray too for better days ahead for Iran and Iranians.
Baroness Northover (LD)
My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate for securing this debate and for her introduction to it. As she said, she has very personal knowledge of this regime. As she knows, I knew her brother when we were both students together. I remember still his return to Iran, thinking that he was safe.
It was with a sinking heart that I heard about these new cases in Iran. The battles that we had over Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who was wrongly detained for so many years, seemed to go on for ever. I am sure that she and her family thought the same. It was very clear that Iran was using her as a pawn—a hostage—to secure what it wished. The same was clearly true of Anoosheh Ashoori, as it was for citizens of other countries. And, as the right reverend Prelate has said, those in Iran are themselves under great pressure. We are glad that both of our dual nationals were finally released, but they lost years of their lives. We were always told that publicity did not help and to leave this to the diplomats, but it was Richard Ratcliffe’s efforts that brought his wife home.
It seems we do not know how many British nationals, including dual nationals, are being detained in Iran. However, as the right reverend Prelate said, over 60 foreign and dual nationals may have been detained there since 2010, 16 of whom apparently had British or dual British nationality. Could the Minister update us on the numbers of British citizens the Government believe are currently detained there?
The Iranians standardly accuse those whom they have detained of spying. Now we have the cases of Craig and Lindsay Foreman—tourists who trusted that they could safely explore the wonders of Iran on their journey to Australia. The FCDO rightly advises against such travel; one supposes that people may think that they are just ordinary citizens and that the Iranians are friendly people, so surely they will be of no interest to the country’s leaders, but innocent citizens can still be seen as useful pawns to such a regime.
The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has considered several cases in recent years, identifying “systemic arbitrary detention” in Iran and describing this as
“a serious violation of international law”.
We know that Iran has been under serious pressure in the current Middle East conflict, as have its proxies in neighbouring areas. Seizing innocent citizens of other countries may seem an easy way of securing leverage.
I ask the Minister for an update on the Canadian-led initiative, which we have discussed before and he was involved in, which seeks to tackle such hostage-taking by regimes. I note that this has now been endorsed by 80 countries, but what actions are recommended and what strategies are proposed? There is always the tension that ransoms paid, in whatever way, can encourage further taking of hostages. Other countries, though, go about the release of their citizens differently from how the UK approaches it.
When we were talking about Nazanin’s case, as the Minister will doubtless remember, there was discussion of the use of Magnitsky sanctions against individuals who played a part in her detention. Without going into particular sanctions, is this a route he still regards with favour? We knew that the revolutionary guard drove the taking of such hostages; what is the present Government’s view of the revolutionary guard?
As the cases dragged on in Iran, the Foreign Affairs Select Committee inquired in 2023 into such hostage-taking. It criticised the then Government for being
“too slow—or entirely unwilling—to call out countries guilty of state hostage taking”.
Among other things, it recommended the appointment of a director of arbitrary and complex detentions to advocate for detainees and their families. The then Government rejected this proposal. However, the new Government, in their manifesto, stated that they would strengthen support for British nationals abroad. They also promised to introduce a new legal right to consular assistance in cases of rights violations, which Redress and Prisoners Abroad have advocated. Can the Minister tell us when this will be introduced?
In November last year, the Foreign Secretary said that he hoped to announce the appointment of a special envoy for complex detention cases. However, he could not give a date for this. Several months on, will the Minister, facing this debate, now announce this?
Clearly, in the latest case, because these are not dual nationals, the UK should be able to get consular access, which Iran denies to dual nationals. Is that being granted?
We are in a world where the allies on whom we thought we could rely are now allying with those whom we identify as a threat to global stability. It is a topsy-turvy world, except that this is perhaps too warm a description. As international order is under threat, our citizens, as well as the national citizens of Iran who we have heard about, are potentially at greater risk. I look forward to the Minister’s response on how the new Government are addressing this.
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
My Lords, I thank my right reverend friend the Bishop of Chelmsford for tabling this debate and for the sensitive way in which she has introduced it. I add to hers my best wishes and prayers for the Foremans, their family and friends, and my thanks to the Minister and all those officials who are working so hard behind the scenes in the FCDO. I also extend my thanks to the ambassador in Tehran and to all those working at the embassy there. I am sure they are doing all they can to resolve this desperately sad situation.
Picking up on some of the comments that the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, has just made, I welcome the Government’s plan to create a special envoy for complex detention cases. Recent events have only highlighted the need for further support for British nationals detained overseas, and I look forward to hearing further details about this. The legal right to consular access promised in the Labour Party manifesto has already been referred to. When do the Government intend to introduce this? It would be an important, crucial step in strengthening the protection for British nationals detained abroad.
My colleague knows far better than me—indeed, she knows personally—the suffering of those under the Iran regime. In 2024, there were at least 901 executions, including 40 in a single week in December. There has been an increased number of women being executed. The use of the death penalty and of politically motivated executions is truly harrowing. Recently, I raised with His Majesty’s Government the cases of six Iranian men accused of “armed rebellion against the state”, all of whom have been sentenced to death. I also urge the Minister and his colleagues to do all they can to intervene in the cases of Behrouz Ehsani and Mehdi Hassani, who are at imminent risk of execution.
Broader issues of nuclear weapons and armaments are not my area of expertise at all, but what I have seen and heard recently regarding China’s support of Iran’s rearmament has caused me deep concern. An increasingly desperate Iranian regime is an increasingly dangerous one. It is facing civil unrest at home, the defeat of Hezbollah and setbacks because of Israel. It is critical that we take steps to prevent Iran’s nuclear escalation, including stricter sanctions on Iranian oil shipments to China.
I fully appreciate that the Minister may not be able to comment on some of the details of planned future sanctions or on the Foremans’ case. We understand that. I am grateful for all he is doing. I conclude by urging that we continue to do all we can as a nation to stand up for human rights, international law and, critically, democratic freedoms not only in Iran but in all those parts of the world where these are no longer found.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, I congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford on securing this important debate and on her clear exposition of the problems facing Britons in Iran, whether they be British-Iranian dual nationals or British nationals. It is a pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans. He has slightly broadened the debate, but it is utterly relevant that he has done so.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford spoke movingly of her own family’s experience of her brother’s death, the threat to life and having to flee the current regime in Iran. During the last 45 years, that regime has doubled down on its infamous and bloody approach to human rights.
As chair of the human rights committee for Liberal International, last week I attended the opening meeting of the UN Human Rights Committee and, the following day, the annual Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy, where we heard of many of the appalling practices of the Iranian Government, with moving testimony from the sister of Mahmoud Mehrabi. Mahmoud was sentenced to death in Isfahan for “corruption on earth through lies on Instagram” because he called out corruption by local officials. Mahan Mehrabi cited the 1,500 Iranians shot in three days during the November demonstrations, with thousands imprisoned and, like her brother, sentenced to death. We also heard of children aged 15 being sentenced to death and executed, which is clearly illegal under international law.
I start with these examples to reinforce the point that the Iranian treatment of British nationals is not, sadly, out of character with their barbaric human rights record. Worse, it is clear from evidence over the years that their behaviour of arresting foreign nationals and accusing them of spying is a standard tool for state kidnapping of foreigners in order to use them to blackmail other countries.
In that context, the most recent detention of Craig and Lindsay Foreman is another egregious detention on security charges and is depressingly familiar. Iran claims that, despite them saying they were tourists, they were spying. While I appreciate that the Foreign Office’s strong official advice is against all travel to Iran because British nationals and British-Iranian dual nationals are at
“significant risk of arrest, questioning or detention”,
what high-level representations are being made to help these two people swiftly, so that their detention is brief?
We know that in recent years, Iran has arrested dozens of Iranians with dual nationality or foreign permanent residency, mostly on spying and national security charges, of whom at least 15 have had links to the UK. They include Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, whom others have already spoken about. As my noble friend Lady Northover has said, Richard Ratcliffe’s campaign was absolutely outstanding, despite government advice not to say anything. She was released after six years in detention, including years in isolation, on the same day as Anoosheh Ashoori, three years ago in March. It is now clear that Iran used this as leverage for the debt for an order of tanks that was cancelled shortly after the 1979 Islamic revolution. The then Foreign Secretary in 2022, Liz Truss, confirmed that the debt issue had been resolved after highly complex negotiations. She said then that the money could be used only for humanitarian goods purchases. Can the Minister confirm whether this has happened?
Mehran Raoof, also an English national, remains in prison after spurious convictions. He was arrested in 2020 and remains in solitary confinement in violation of the absolute prohibition of torture and other ill-treatment. He is a prisoner of conscience and must immediately and unconditionally be released. A fortnight ago, the Arbitrary Detention and Hostage Affairs APPG heard about the different approach that the UK takes in these cases, compared with the US, Canada, France and others.
Morad Tahbaz, a UK and US national, was first arrested in 2019 and jailed. He was born in London and holds both British and US citizenship. He is the founder of the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation. He was released into home furlough in March 2022, but he was then rearrested two days later. Public pressure from the campaign group Bring Our Families Home, which works to bring home the wrongfully detained and hostages, ensured that US negotiators were able to have him released as part of a US-Iranian prisoner release scheme. The UK Government have a long practice of not negotiating for their own citizens in these circumstances. Are the new Government going to review this practice?
Finally, what pressure are the Government putting on the Iranian Government, via the UN and directly, to cease these abhorrent practices of kidnapping individuals, not just British nationals but Iranian citizens as well?
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend in a debate where only Bishops and Liberals have spoken so far. I am not sure that has ever happened before during my 12 years in this House. Therefore, it has been a very high-quality debate in my humble opinion. I commend the right reverend Prelate for bringing this debate to us.
I had the pleasure of being in my place during the right reverend Prelate’s maiden speech, when she spoke so powerfully of her family background and of the contemporary situation within Iran. It is absolutely right that this remains part of our proceedings and is at the top of our mind. With the tumultuous events happening in the world, we should not forget that there are, as she put it, whole swathes of people who are trapped, imprisoned politically and literally by a regime that denies the very basic human rights that we in this country take for granted.
I commend my noble friend Baroness Brinton for her work within the global network. I am convinced that, even though many young people in Iran see a regime where there is for them perhaps little hope, they will know that there are people around the world who are listening to their struggle, are watching the regime and ultimately will take action. It is therefore right that the Minister has been asked a number of questions about what actions the Government will be taking.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans was right to refer to the extreme use of the death penalty. There is unanimity in this House on opposition to the death penalty, but the extreme nature of it should focus all democratic Parliaments around the world on those who are unable to defend themselves in a very flawed judicial process.
We have debated on a number of occasions the malign involvement of Iran in its near neighbourhood, more recently within the Red Sea and the Middle East but also in north Africa and—an issue very close to my heart—in Sudan. We see on a daily basis the regime seeking to destabilise and to interfere in other nations.
To return to the domestic situation in Iran, all contributions have mentioned the profoundly moving work of Richard Ratcliffe in support of Nazanin; it has been an inspiration for anyone who has had the privilege of meeting them. I did so with their daughter, who was getting to know her mother again. On a very human scale, one of the consequences of Nazanin’s detention was that it was the detention of the mother of a very young child. Something that struck me was that after she was detained in 2016, six Foreign Secretaries had her file on their desk, but it was the different approach at ministerial level that led to a consensus, I hope, that there should be a more systematic way of approaching those who are denied basic access to consular services. We therefore support the Government in their efforts to establish an envoy for complex cases, but also a statutory underpinning of the right to consular access where there are human rights violations. Like others, I ask the Minister to confirm that progress is being made and in what timeframe we will see legislation brought forward, so that we can properly debate it and ultimately support it.
There are other measures that the Government can take, not just sanctions on the human rights aspect. I debated the Iran sanctions regime, as did the noble Lord, Lord Collins. We have a unique approach to our sanctions—a countrywide ability to have sanctions that are flexible and that can be activated immediately if the United States, Canada or the European Union does so. That reinforces the point, which has been made in the debate, that we should be working with our allies to put more pressure on the Iranian regime, especially when it comes to the flawed judicial processes that are abused by a political regime when such individuals are detained.
The UK could do more regarding the judiciary in Iran. In the debate in January last year, I asked the previous Government, specifically the noble Lord, Lord Benyon, to move on that issue. The US, under both the Biden and Trump Administrations, is seeking to exert pressure, and I hope the UK will follow.
I want to put on record that, because of the malign influence of Iran on its near neighbourhood, and because of those individuals who are struggling, there are two aspects of the policies of both the previous and current Governments that I hope we can reflect on. First, there continues to be no safe and legal routes for any Iranians, especially young Iranian women, if they are seeking refuge from persecution and trying to come to the UK. We know that the Iranian diaspora in the UK is strong, welcoming and stable, so anyone persecuted in Iran would be able to seek shelter here, but there is no safe and legal route. I hope the Minister might reconsider that and speak to Ministers in the Home Office. It is not too late, and it would make a meaningful difference. It would also provide hope for many individuals who see the UK as a potential area of refuge.
Finally, all the programmes that are currently scored as official development assistance in near-neighbourhood countries are defending human rights and those persecuted for promoting democracy and seeking resilience against interference. Those are the very programmes we want to see in place, because they are about the security of the United Kingdom, but they are going to be slashed. I hope that, at the very least, we can protect those programmes scored as ODA which are about national security and are pro-democracy.
The Earl of Courtown (Con)
My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford for bringing forward this important and timely debate, and I join with other noble Lords in congratulating her on her speech, which was informative and personal in so many different ways.
First and foremost, let us remember that it is our duty as a nation and a society to safeguard the freedoms, safety and well-being of our citizens wherever they may be in the world. In recent years, Iran has arrested dozens of Iranians with dual nationality or foreign permanent residency, mostly on spying and national security charges. At least 15 have had links to the United Kingdom. However, the most recent detentions are particularly concerning.
The Iranian regime has, as we are all too aware, a long-standing history of violating human rights. The imprisonment of innocent British citizens is a blatant example of such behaviour. These individuals are often detained on politically motivated charges, subjected to appalling conditions and denied their basic rights. Such actions must not be tolerated, and we must act with urgency to secure their release.
Although we cannot ignore the broader geopolitical context—the challenges posed, for example, by Iran’s nuclear ambitions, its role in destabilising the Middle East and its continued support of militant groups across the region—we must be resolute in our commitment to ensuring the safety and security of our citizens. We must also recognise that this issue is not just about diplomacy; it is about standing firm in our values. As a nation, we believe in the principles of justice, freedom and human dignity. When British citizens are wrongfully detained by a foreign Government, especially one that continue to undermine basic human rights, it is our duty to do everything we can to secure their release.
We must also ask ourselves whether stronger or more assertive actions are needed to send a clear message to Tehran that the arbitrary detention of British citizens will not be tolerated. If we are to ensure that those detained are returned to their families, we must consider all avenues. The Government must continue to press for the release of these citizens, and we as a Parliament must stand united in this call for justice. The United Kingdom has long been a champion of the rule of law and the rights of individuals across the world. It is incumbent on us to ensure that those principles are upheld at every opportunity.
Can the Minister provide an update on the specific diplomatic steps the Government are taking to secure the release of British citizens detained by the Iranian regime? Also, given that the right reverend Prelate mentioned human rights in the area, what additional measures are the Government considering to strengthen international pressure on Iran to adhere to basic human rights standards and release those held unjustly?
The noble Baroness, Lady Northover, mentioned, as did other noble Lords, consular access. I look forward to hearing an update from the Minister on that issue.
In addition, how are His Majesty’s Government working with international partners to prevent the detention of British citizens by hostile regimes? Are there opportunities for greater co-operation to address the issue in the future? This has been an interesting debate, and I am really glad to have taken part in it. I look forward to hearing the response from the Minister.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Collins of Highbury) (Lab)
My Lords, I too am grateful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chelmsford for securing this debate and for her personal reflections on her birthplace. I was also moved by her contribution on “Desert Island Discs”, which reflected on some of those issues and what a wonderful country Iran is. Sadly, it is being distorted by its current Government.
I am grateful for contributions from all noble Lords, many of whom have developed deep knowledge of this area, not least, as the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, said, in joint campaigns with Richard Ratcliffe, working together to ensure Nazanin’s release.
I will try to respond to all the points raised. As noble Lords are aware, Iran has a long history of seeking to exploit the detention of British and other foreign nationals. The regime’s actions sit within a wider set of malign behaviours—not least its continued repression of women and girls, human rights defenders and religious and ethnic minorities. Religious minorities, including Baha’is, Christians and Sunni Muslims, suffer discrimination in law and practice. This includes discrimination in access to education, employment, child adoption, political office and places of worship.
The Baha’i community continues to face arbitrary arrests, land expropriation and denial of burial rights, while Christians, as the right reverend Prelate said, face shocking sentencing and ongoing incarceration for the act of practising their faith. Iran must allow every individual their right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief, in accordance with its obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Since October 2022, we have sanctioned 94 individuals and entities for their human rights violations, including—to reassure the noble Lord, Lord Purvis—decision-makers responsible for Iran’s oppressive hijab laws and political and security officials involved in the crackdown on protesters. The United Kingdom’s dedicated Special Envoy on Freedom of Religion or Belief, David Smith, leads our work to promote tolerance and mutual respect.
Noble Lords have raised the horrific, consistently high rate of executions, which is, of course, a deliberate attempt to instil fear and stifle dissent. The United Kingdom is opposed to the death penalty in all circumstances as a matter of principle, and we make very clear representations on that. The UK has 450 sanctions in place, including designations against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and those responsible for Iran’s attack on Israel in October.
I turn to our advice about travel to Iran. British travellers are at significant risk of arrest and detention in Iran. Since 2022, we have used our public travel advice to advise against any travel there. Having a British passport or connections to the United Kingdom can be reason enough for the Iranian authorities to detain someone. The Foreign Office actively promotes its free travel advice service to travellers and industry alike. I understand that travel pages are viewed more than 28 million times per year. Nevertheless, we will look at what more could be done to ensure that the advice is seen as widely as possible.
I pay tribute to the right reverend Prelate for the care with which she has approached the subject of detention cases. They are among the most difficult, complex and sensitive cases handled by our officials and are enormously distressing for the families of those detained. For reasons that will be obvious to those familiar with the Iranian regime’s behaviour, I cannot make detailed comments on individual cases, nor can I refer to the possible numbers. Many of the individuals involved do not want publicity, but if noble Lords wish to speak to me privately, I will try to reassure them of what we are trying to do. I reassure the right reverend Prelate that the British embassy in Tehran is in contact with the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs about the recent case and we will continue to raise this directly with the Iranian authorities. A specialist team from the FCDO is in frequent contact with the family, providing regular updates and advice. This case will continue to be a priority for the Government.
As noble Lords referred to, including the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, and the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, the Government are committed to strengthening their support for British nationals abroad. We will, as they reminded me, introduce a new right to consular assistance in cases of human rights violations and will soon appoint an envoy for the most complex detention cases. To reassure noble Lords, work is under way on both, and we will come forward with details fairly soon.
I also reassure the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, that we work very closely with our international partners to tackle unfair detentions. As the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, mentioned, we signed the Canadian Declaration Against Arbitrary Detention in State-to-State Relations in 2021, helping protect citizens of all countries who live and work abroad. This is of course an issue of interest and importance to the House, and I welcome the creation in 2024 of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Arbitrary Detention and Hostage Affairs. I will work closely with it and keep it up to date on our progress.
I hear what the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, says about overseas development assistance. I reassure him that our first priority is security. For the security of this nation, we had to make some very difficult decisions this week, but they will not deflect from how we allocate and ensure that whatever assistance we give to those neighbouring countries is properly maintained. The Prime Minister made it clear that that will be a priority for the United Kingdom, particularly in relation to Sudan.
I conclude by assuring all noble Lords—
The Lord Bishop of Chelmsford
I am very grateful to the Minister for giving way. On the use of language, could he say a bit more about the reluctance to call this out for what it is and to refer to hostage taking, when other European countries are willing to do so?
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
I do not want to be drawn into using language that might be considered to refer to specific cases. I want to avoid that at this moment in time but, having signed the Canadian declaration, we are clear about the growth of this policy of state detention for those sorts of purposes.
In conclusion, supporting British nationals detained in Iran will remain an absolute priority for this Government, alongside advising against travel to Iran to prevent such incidents. We will continue to strengthen our consular support globally and, most importantly, we will work together with our international partners to build and sustain the international consensus against the use of detainees as leverage for other purposes.
Prenuptial Agreements
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Deech
That this House takes note of the law relating to prenuptial agreements.
Baroness Deech (CB)
My Lords, it may interest noble Lords to know that I am often taken to one side by elderly female Peers to beseech me to reform the law in this area. They are reluctant to marry, or remarry, long-term partners because of fearing the loss of assets should there be a subsequent break-up, a loss that would deprive the children of the first marriage of their expected inheritance. One might be surprised at the energy of the beating hearts under the ermine. One should not be, because the Office for National Statistics has shown that the number of so-called silver splitters—divorcees over 65—has increased by 75% in the last 20 years and lawyers are advising them to make prenuptial agreements, commonly known as “prenups”.
Those who have been through a divorce once do not want to experience the financial consequences a second time. Others decide not to remarry legally. Judging by the number of letters I get from members of the public when the possibility of reform is reported, they are well aware of, and intensely anxious about and upset by, financial provision law; that is, the law about splitting assets on divorce. I have never received a letter in support of the existing law on this topic.
A prenup is an agreement made between a couple, either before or during their marriage or civil partnership, which governs the way in which their assets are to be divided on divorce. Many foreign jurisdictions expect couples to enter such binding arrangements. They are not, however, legally binding in England and Wales, although the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Radmacher v Granatino that they should be upheld if fair and freely entered into. They are popular here with couples with inherited wealth, or wealth acquired before marriage; couples who have children from a previous relationship; foreign couples; same-sex couples; and young career people who have built up assets before they marry.
Various studies have tried to estimate the number of couples who do make prenups, albeit, as I said, with no guarantee that they will be respected by the courts. The estimates vary from 13% to 20%. Certainly, prenups have become more common in the last few years. They no longer feel unromantic, unusual or just for the rich. They do not predispose to divorce, which is an argument used in the past. Indeed, in countries where prenups are more common the divorce rate is lower than ours. Such agreements are more likely to provide less ongoing maintenance for a spouse, in keeping with the trend away from such support, but should—and usually do—provide for support for the children. All this applies equally to post-nups; that is, similar agreements entered into during an ongoing marriage. Couples believe these agreements to be binding, following the judgment in Radmacher v Granatino.
What is the problem that requires reform—and this debate? In summary, the Supreme Court judgment opened the door to challenges to those agreements by requiring them to be “fair”, a concept that lies in the eyes of the beholder judge. That has meant that excess judicial discretion has undermined their usefulness and led to constant challenges to the validity of agreements which the couple, having had legal advice at the outset, believed were valid, until advised that it might be worth attacking them when the break-up occurs and one of them wants a larger award than that provided for in the prenup.
There are many examples. A case called KA v MA, which concerned the effects of alleged duress, ended up with the wife getting £1.35 million to meet her housing costs on top of what she had already agreed, with £300,000 in legal costs. The rest of the fees had to come from that allocation to the wife, no doubt severely depleting it.
In another case, Ipekçi, the ex-husband had signed a prenup with his wife. She was the heir to the Avon cosmetics fortune. Nevertheless, he was still awarded £1.3 million for a house and an allowance for the rest of his life, in part because his legal advice was suspect. They met when he worked as a concierge at the Le Parker Meridien Hotel in New York. Later, he was employed at a well-known London hotel, at which I have stayed, but these things do not happen to me.
It is this doubt about enforceability that is wrecking the usefulness of prenups. The doubts centre on what is fair and what are the needs that some judges hold must nevertheless be met. The accumulation of cases leaves real doubts over the ability to predict the validity of any current prenups. Judges still insist on applying their own vision of what is fair and exercising the much-criticised set of factors in Section 25 of the Matrimonial Causes Act. Discretion, I am afraid, is what we know to be the source of the problems in financial provision law.
A problem in today’s divorce law is how to define the needs of the divorced spouse, usually from the wife’s perspective, and who should meet those needs. That is why that word needs clarification. Judges have given so many different interpretations that we do not have a workable standard, not even under the guidance of the Family Justice Council. Some judges are more parsimonious than others where there is a prenup, but they all agree on the need for housing where there are children, provided there are sufficient assets. What is fair, and whether that standard should be applied to a freely entered-into prenup, is another undermining issue.
So we come to reform. The Law Commission has done detailed and profound work in this field, as I shall describe and which I support. Nearly all the other organisations in the family law field have come out in favour of statutory enactment of the enforceability of prenups. It has even been suggested that we should follow the example of some civil code countries and expect engaged couples to see a lawyer and choose from a menu of financial models to govern their financial relationship during and after the marriage. Such discussions would be less intricate and cheaper than what people spend on an average wedding.
I have on several occasions taken a Bill through this House—the Divorce (Financial Provision) Bill—which would reform the whole of that law, not just prenups. In it, I suggested that prenups should be as binding as any other contract, provided that there was no duress, that the couple had legal advice before signing, and that there was full disclosure. But the Government have failed to act on this and have ignored the Law Commission’s recommendations to put prenups on a statutory basis. Think how much money and how much court time would be saved if the tens of thousands of prenups that are challenged now could be presumptively binding. Think how much money and court time could be saved if couples could avoid all the fees and general waiting times and aggravation of fighting in court over their assets on divorce if the law was reformed.
It is true that many couples settle before a court hearing, but they would have started proceedings, and that too is expenditure that could be avoided. Recent court statistics show that the court process can take from six to 12 months; that there were 44,563 financial provision applications in 2023; and that in 2024 they were up by 7%. Tens of thousands of cases might never have to come near court. Millions would be saved if the Government would reform the law.
In 2014, the Law Commission’s report on matrimonial property needs and agreements recommended that prenups should be put on a statutory footing and should be made by deed no less than 28 days before the marriage, after legal advice and with disclosure. In my view, it was unfortunate that there was a potentially destructive discretionary element in this proposal; namely, that the parties could not, by agreement, opt out of meeting financial needs, undefined.
Indeed, with advances in AI, it has been suggested by the pre-eminent family judge, Sir Nicholas Mostyn, that the time will soon be with us when AI can produce an agreement that would be bound to be upheld as valid, because AI would know what was meant by “needs”, and that would satisfy a judge. This country is lagging behind in achieving that cost-saving certainty. Scotland and New Zealand, for example, have legislated for binding prenups and have experienced no difficulties.
The Law Commission presented a draft Bill to enact its prenup recommendations, and it is oven-ready, as we say, needing only to be heated up to the right degree by this Government. Not only is the Bill ready but, in December 2024, the Law Commission reported again and recommended the statutory enactment of a prenup law. It has been 16 years since the fundamental decision in Radmacher and 10 years since the Law Commission prepared the ground for statutory reform. We are decades behind most other countries, wasting money and court time and upsetting couples’ legitimate expectations of certainty. If the Bill were enacted, it would persuade older couples to take the plunge; I envisage a queue of weddings taking place in St Mary Undercroft. It would bring us into line with Australia, Ontario, the French civil code, New Zealand and the Hague Convention on the Law applicable to Matrimonial Property Regimes. It would respect autonomy and the freedom of contract, but our Government have said no more than that they are considering the reform as part of a wider consideration of family law reform.
Governments have failed to take up reform because they are unable to address the issues of principle about who maintains whom, to what level and for how long, and the effect of social changes. The lawyers who act for the highest earners on divorce—with the honourable exception of the noble Baroness, Lady Shackleton—may well fear a loss of business, although I am sure that the wealthiest couples will always have complex arrangements that will require legal advice. At the other end of the scale, most couples do not get any legal aid for divorce, and are left without the knowledge and framework that they need at the most emotional time of their lives. A straightforward law on prenups would be of immense value to them.
Prenups are popular, harmless and protective. They offer an escape from the bad, unreformed financial provision law, and represent freedom of choice and contract. Why can we not legislate for them now? What has held it up is the ill-founded belief that all financial provision law must be reviewed and amended at the same time. That is simply not the case. Prenups are a free-standing area, and even if wholesale reform is delayed, enacting prenups would enable couples to avoid the uncertainty, expense and bitterness of the current law and any future law to come.
I mention future law because the Law Commission’s report of last December was only a “scoping” report. It put forward four models for reform, and, unfortunately, scoping gives the Government an excuse to do nothing. I wish that the Law Commission had been allowed to get on with a wholesale reform of financial provision law, which is now over 50 years old and costs the state and couples so much expense and aggravation. I hope that it will not be brushed under the carpet; it could take a long time to occur. The noble Baroness, Lady Shackleton, and I were promised a review of financial provision law within three years of the passing of the divorce Bill in 2020, and we dropped amendments to the Bill in reliance on that promise, which has not been fulfilled.
The current financial provision law—all of it, not just prenups—is so uncertain and unpredictable that it could well be said to be in breach of the rule of law. I urge the Government to get on with reforming it and to take up the challenge in the latest Law Commission report. In the meantime, will the Minister get on with putting prenups on a statutory basis? The Bill is ready and there is no reasonable opposition. We need to get on with this and not wait for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, which is wholesale reform of our antiquated financial provision law. I beg to move.
Baroness Shackleton of Belgravia (Con)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure and a privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, in this debate. I thank her very much for bringing it to the House’s attention.
First, I declare my interest as listed on the register: I am a solicitor of 45 years, specialising in family law. I wish to make it absolutely clear that nothing that I say in this speech reflects any of my current matters before the courts. Indeed, it could not, because, before the end of this legal year, I have five cases being argued which involve prenuptial contracts—two in the High Court, two in arbitration and one in the Court of Appeal. In some, it is argued that it is not appropriate to enforce, and in others that it is appropriate to do so. I am also a patron of a Marriage Foundation.
The origins of prenuptial contracts not being enforceable stems from the notion that it was unconscionable to contemplate the breakdown of a contract which is intended to last for life. That is possibly the reason why the words “prenuptial contract” are not specifically addressed in the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, as amended. The only reference to marital contracts in that Act is that the court has an overriding discretion to alter any contract made before, during or after a marriage. When the Matrimonial Causes Act was enacted, divorce was considered unusual and applied to few. Now, regrettably, there is hardly a family in the land which has not, in some shape or form, had to face the reality that many marriages do not last for ever.
The far-reaching changes to social norm over the years are themselves simply a sufficient base to call for reform of the law. Indeed, as Sir Paul Coleridge, a former High Court family judge, said in his address to a family law conference in 2013, when the MCA was 40 years old:
“Since family law is intended to regulate family life as it is lived now and not in the distant past, it follows that the current divorce and financial provision law … is no longer, I suggest, fit for purpose. It was designed in a wholly different era to deal with a wholly different society and way of life … The Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 with all its layers of crustacean growth needs to be humanely killed off and given a decent burial and the heroic efforts of the Supreme Court to maintain the life support system need to stop. The Act has, quite simply, had its day”.
That speech was made in 2013. The following year, two changes were made which are worth taking note of. The first was that the appeal system from the High Court judge to the Court of Appeal was altered, and the refusal of leave, quite frequently from a single family judge, was the end of the road. Prior to that, there was the ability to appeal against the refusal of leave and to be heard, quite frequently, by a non-family judge. The Supreme Court, which is largely composed of non-family judges, was the “life support system” to the Act to which Sir Paul Coleridge refers, but getting there now is almost impossible, as family judges in the Court of Appeal are marking their own homework, and that is not capable of challenge.
The second change was the Law Commission’s report, referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, Matrimonial Property, Needs and Agreements. It made recommendations for the introduction of binding nuptial agreements, which were referred to as “qualifying nuptial agreements”. These would be enforceable contracts that would not be subject to the scrutiny of the court, which would require certain procedural safeguards to be met, and which, importantly, could not be used to contract out of an obligation to meet financial needs. The 2014 report was commissioned as a direct consequence of the Supreme Court’s plea in Radmacher v Granatino—a case that I am all too familiar with, having been on the losing side—for Parliament to legislate in respect of these contracts.
Absent the implementation of guidance by Parliament in respect of nuptial agreements, we are back with the discretion of the tribunal. The clear message of Granatino that prenuptial contracts should be enforceable unless it would be unfair for them not to be leaves the fairness to the trial judge, which is totally discretionary. No prenuptial contract is able to prohibit children’s maintenance—the court has an overriding jurisdiction over that which cannot be ousted.
As a consequence of Granatino, there are many more prenuptial agreements in circulation, all stacking up, and when a divorce occurs there is an increasing number of cases awaiting adjudication—hence my five cases mentioned earlier. The very reason for entering a prenuptial contract is removed when the period of a marriage is the same as the length it takes to adjudicate the financial relief on divorce. People are entitled to know how the judges are going to exercise their discretion. The Law Commission provides enormous help in this respect and its recommendations should be enacted. The uncertainty of outcome would be reduced and the already overburdened courts would be relieved of some unnecessary work.
The idea that prenuptial contracts favour only the rich is not accurate. When a person of significant wealth is intending to get married and asks how their assets could be protected, the correct answer is: by not marrying. The financially weaker party is then left with no rights whatever, except when there are children of the family, when a claim under Schedule 1 to the Children Act is all that is available to them. If, however, the law of enforceability of prenuptial contracts was more certain, there would be a greater incentive to enter into marriage. Wearing my other hat as a patron of the Marriage Foundation, it is also in the interests of society that people are encouraged to get married in circumstances where evidence points to the fact that married relationships are more likely to endure, for the benefit of any children, than if the parties were mere cohabitees.
In other countries, it is commonplace on marriage for nuptial contracts to be entered into—typically community property or separation of property. The courts now have to grapple with the enforceability of these contracts.
I ask the Minister, rather than being distracted by the temptation to consider overall reform of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, to concentrate on the reasons why the Government cannot deal with this isolated stand-alone area of the law, which, as the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, says, is oven-ready. It is akin to having a leaking roof and water dripping down the walls, but not having the roof fixed until you have decided what colour to paint the walls. Eventually, the delay will cause the roof to collapse, with all the collateral damage that causes.
The development of ancillary relief is complex and there are no easy answers, as the most recent Law Commission paper has set out. Every Government seem to encourage alternative dispute resolutions, but these do not work when the law in itself is uncertain. All Governments shy away from grappling with this issue.
I have received significant support in my mission to make the law clearer from mediators, mostly notably Helen Adam, who attended a panel convened by Siobhan Baillie to consider reform of the current law. Helen, in exasperation, recently sent me a message. After conducting a mediation, she had sent her clients—parents of three young children—to solicitors for advice, where they were given entirely different advice and so were unable to settle in mediation. Those parents face the prospect of further costs, stress and acrimony in their legal proceedings ahead, none of which is in the interests of their young children. She says this happens all too regularly. In her last plea she writes:
“Maybe we need to get the press involved to get a Bates v the Post Office-type documentary, to bring this scandalous legal situation into the public domain”.
Delay is in nobody’s interests, least of all the minor children of the family, where the previous Government sought to expedite the dissolution of marriage by no-fault divorce without the promised follow-up of enacting any reform in relation to financial relief. Until the money is sorted out, the parents are not free to move forwards. At least if the law on prenups was more certain, mediators would have more success when dealing with these.
This brings me to my last point, which is the purpose of Parliament. I fully endorse the Lady Chief Justice’s protection of the judiciary: it can only enforce the existing law, and the appeal process is what protects litigants. When Parliament is invited by the Supreme Court to legislate, as it was in Granatino, and 14 years later nothing has happened, we have to look to ourselves in shame.
I conclude with two pleas. First, please can the Government address this matter and fix the leaking roof? There will be plenty of time to discuss the colour of the walls, but that too should not be pushed off too far into the long grass. Secondly, until this is resolved, please can the Government reinstate the appeal process by restoring the right to appeal against the refusal of leave by the Court of Appeal, so that the life-support system of the Supreme Court referred to by Sir Paul Coleridge is more accessible?
The Lord Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, for bringing the debate on this Motion and for raising such fundamentally important issues, which she set out so clearly. I also acknowledge with respect the considerable wisdom and insight of the noble Baroness, Lady Shackleton, on these matters.
It has been my personal privilege to prepare many couples for marriage over the years. It is a hopeful time, where couples seek to express unconditional love and trust, and commit to share all aspects of their life, both at the time and looking to the future, whatever it may hold. I believe it would be detrimental for all parties if prenuptial agreements were to become a normal part of preparing for marriage, whether religious or not—although I entirely acknowledge the arguments in favour of these agreements, particularly the clarity they provide in financial matters, especially where there are pre-existing children, and their role in reducing litigation upon divorce.
However, I urge the House to reflect on prenuptial agreements’ broader implications for the institution of marriage, its gift to wider society and the potential consequences for the financially weaker parties. Historically, marriage has been regarded as more than just a contractual arrangement between two individuals. If we are to put matrimonial nuptial agreements into statute, it may appear as if we are saying to couples who come to marry that, to save themselves legal costs and uncertainty, they should include in their preparations a plan also for their divorce.
Furthermore, although advocates argue that prenuptial agreements encourage fairness and discourage litigation, we must be mindful of the power imbalances that may arise, which can be emotional, psychological and, of course, financial. The reality is that such agreements often favour the wealthier party, leaving the financially weaker spouse—often women—at a disadvantage.
When there is some sort of pressure to marry, individuals may agree to terms that are significantly unfair or that fail to consider future circumstances, such as career sacrifices, child-rearing responsibilities, unexpected financial hardships or even unexpected windfalls. Therefore, I believe the courts should retain a measure of discretion to ensure that any final financial agreement is equitable, rather than being bound by contracts that may no longer reflect the realities of the marriage or divorce. For this reason, of the models set out by the Law Commission in December 2024, I would favour that which codifies the current case law while retaining wider judicial discretion.
Although it is true that courts currently have the authority to assess and override prenuptial agreements in cases of significant inequality, there remains a risk that their increasing normalisation may lead to undue pressure on prospective spouses to sign away their rights without fully comprehending the longer-term, more serious consequences. For example, many prenuptial agreements incorporate acknowledgements that each party is content with the financial information that has been provided and does not wish to ask further questions before signing. Yet I am sure it is likely, at times, that one partner may be anxious about asking further questions in a way that may imply a lack of trust and so risk undermining the relationship at a time when the focus, in preparing for marriage, is very much orientated towards joyful expectation.
Marriage is not merely an economic transaction. It is, above all a covenant: something good and beautiful. We must ensure that our legal framework continues to foster the values of partnership and protection for the vulnerable. Whatever our views across this House, I hope we can acknowledge the value of good preparation for marriage, drawing on the very large range of excellent resources and support that is available. That includes support offered by organisations such as Care for the Family, one of a number of charities that have dedicated themselves in recent years to supporting churches in particular across the country as they offer support to those preparing for marriage, whether they are part of the church or not. In addition, they go on offering resources to support relationships at later stages of family life and in parenting—especially when challenges inevitably arise and the strain on the relationship increases. Let us, as a House, in the midst of this debate, value the work that is done by many individuals, organisations and faith-based communities to support preparing for marriage.
Therefore, in conclusion, I urge the House to approach the matter of nuptial agreements with some caution, ensuring that any legal recognition that they receive does not come at the cost of transparent fairness and justice and the true spirit of marriage, as a most ancient and sacred institution given by God that, at its best, benefits the whole of society.
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
My Lords, I too am a patron of the Marriage Foundation and a former family judge who tried a lot of financial cases. I have to say to the noble Baroness, Lady Shackleton, that I am one of two Court of Appeal judges who managed to persuade them that there should be leave to appeal in family cases. But my experience in the past was that Court of Appeal family judges fairly regularly disagreed with High Court judges. So it is not a question of marking your own work: you are marking the work of somebody else in the same subject—therefore, with a great deal of experience.
I am very much in support of the idea of prenups becoming part of legislation. I am delighted that the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, has brought this debate. It is useful that we discuss this, and I hope it will put some degree of pressure on the Government to start thinking seriously about doing something useful. I entirely agree with the suggestion that there is no reason why this relatively simple part could not become part of the law without waiting for a much more complex situation in relation to the rest of family financial affairs—which, as has already been said, can be very complicated.
However, I have two concerns. I respectfully disagree with the right reverend Prelate on the idea that there should not be legislation, but he has made a significant point. There are two issues about which I would be concerned if prenups became part of the law without a degree of discretion for the court. Perhaps, as a judge, I have more faith in the judiciary than either of the noble Baronesses, Lady Deech and Lady Shackleton: that does not entirely surprise me.
The two issues are these. The first is the point so well made by the right reverend Prelate: when the agreement is made, there has to be transparency. You have to put on the table what you have and what you do not have because, from cases I have tried, I know that debts can be as important as assets. Before you enter an agreement, you need to know the state of affairs of both the intending spouses. If one side does not come clean, and it becomes obvious on divorce that there has been non-disclosure and a serious lack of transparency—I am talking not about £10,000 but about millions—or, in a family that does not have much money, that one has money stowed away somewhere that has only just come to light, in such a situation, the judge must have a discretion to put the matter right.
I do not see that discretion being applied in a case where the judge is satisfied that the prenup was entered into with both sides understanding what they were going into and with sufficient transparency for it to be fair at the moment of the agreement. As has been said, it is a contract, but it has to be a contract that can be put right by the judge in extremely unfair circumstances if one of the two spouses has not played fair. So I am looking not at fairness generally but at fairness in a lack of transparency.
The second point that I am concerned about comes at the moment of divorce, or generally just after. There are circumstances which change dramatically: that was my experience when I tried cases. A couple starts marriage in a particular situation and, at the point of divorce, one of the spouses has an extreme change of circumstance. I am looking at illness. You may have a prenup that says that both of them have jobs with relatively equal incomes and neither of them has much in the way of assets, but then you get to a point, 30 or 40 years later, when one of them has multiple sclerosis and is unable to work. At that moment, are you to say that the prenup should apply to the wife, or indeed to the husband—because there is no shortage of wives who earn as much, more or even much more than their husbands? I happen to be one of those.
I can see a situation in which my husband and I made an agreement, when we both started at the Bar with relatively similar incomes, and then I made much more money and became a senior judge and he got a serious illness and could not work. Would it be fair that he should not get a penny because that is what we agreed at the moment of marriage? In my view, there has to be some possibility for this to be looked at. I also look at another situation: if a couple had had reasonable assets when they married but then one of them went bankrupt. There are extreme situations.
I am asking that the judge have a residual discretion to deal with those two instances: the moment of going into the agreement, and the moment when the agreement comes into force. I therefore do not entirely agree with the noble Baronesses, Lady Deech, or indeed the noble Baroness, Lady Shackleton, in wanting a prenup never to be changed. But I do see the idea that for the majority of people who enter into such a prenup, that should be the beginning and end of what their financial affairs should be.
Lord Faulks (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, on securing this debate and on her persistence on this issue in the face of government inactivity. It is also a great privilege to follow the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, with her immense experience of these cases. I declare an interest as a practising barrister, and, although not one primarily concerned with family law, one who has a forthcoming case which concerns a prenuptial agreement entered into by a husband and wife, the issue being whether or not the parties are to be bound by that agreement.
The burden of what I wish to say is that it is high time Parliament intervened. The result of intervention should be fewer cases such as the one I have just referred to. There is evidence, referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Shackleton, that the courts are being increasingly troubled where one party or another to a marriage does not wish to be bound by a prenup, claiming that they did not enter into the agreement freely or that the circumstances have changed since the marriage, making it inequitable to rely on the agreement.
The law in relation to what used to be called “ancillary relief” on divorce gives the court a very wide discretion but gives it no clear guidelines as to how to apply that discretion. The Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 simply lists the vast number of factors that have to be taken into consideration. The result has been that the courts themselves have developed the law, which, although it has avoided some cases reaching court which might otherwise have done so, still leaves a considerable degree of uncertainty as to the outcome of proceedings that might be contested. I have here this very large volume from the Law Commission—the scoping paper referred to by a number of noble Lords. The Law Commission produced a clear and helpful summary of the issues, as one would expect, but did not come to any very firm conclusions as to what the appropriate legislative response to the uncertainty created by this wide discretion should be.
The Law Commission, however, has made some very clear suggestions for reform of prenuptial agreements. For a prenup to be “a qualifying nuptial agreement” it should be contractually valid on ordinary principles, it should be entered into by way of a deed, there should be disclosure of material financial information by both sides, and both sides should have independent legal advice. There is an additional proposal that such an agreement would not qualify if made less than 28 or 21 days before the marriage ceremony. I agree with all the other proposals, but I am slightly doubtful about the 28-day cooling off period. However, that is the sort of detail that could be ironed out during the passage of any Bill through Parliament.
Why has there been no response to what is now a series of quite old recommendations by the Law Commission? In 2014 the then relevant Minister, Simon Hughes, said there was insufficient time because there was to be a general election in 2015. I was a Minister in the MoJ at the time, although not one with responsibility for this particular area of the law, but I remember answering a question in your Lordships’ House and giving a similar answer to the one Simon Hughes had given. The answer given, on the other hand, by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bellamy, to a similar query in 2022 was that the Government were considering the matter in the context of a wider review.
In the meantime, as we have heard, the courts took some significant steps to clarify the position in the case of Radmacher v Granatino. The Supreme Court had decided by a majority of eight to one, and I quote one particular passage which summarises their view:
“It would be natural to infer that parties who entered in enter into an antenuptial agreement to which English law is likely to be applied intend that effect should be given to it”.
The dissenting voice was the formidable one of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale. On reading her judgment, she seems to have been concerned, understandably, that there was a possibility of a significant change in roles post marriage, which would mean that the agreement was unfair. I note the comments of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, about what might be regarded as a very significant change in circumstances. As I apprehend what she was suggesting, it is not meant to be a general discretion but a discretion in very exceptional circumstances. The risk, of course, of having a discretion at all is that it can mean we are back to square one, as it were. If there is to be that discretion, I would respectfully suggest that it be severely circumscribed and limited.
My submission to the Government is that the time for action has come. We are still four and a half years away from a general election; there is thus plenty of time for this sort of legislation. I acknowledge that law reform is not always high on the list of priorities of a Government trying to make a significant change in this country, but surely the time has come to respond. The Minister may not be a particular expert in this field—although he has great expertise in other fields, of course—but I ask him to take back to the department the concern already expressed in this debate, and that I suspect will be expressed in speeches after mine, and ask his colleagues to prioritise reform in this area as soon as possible.
The response of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bellamy, that reform should be part of a “wider picture”, is not one that I suggest the Government should make. It is very tempting to say, “Well, if you are going to address changes to financial provision on divorce, you want to tackle all the issues in one go”. But in the light of the ambivalence in the suggestions in the scoping report about more generally legislating, it would be most unwise simply to wait and produce legislation that covers all the uncertainty. It would be much more sensible, I suggest, to grapple with this relatively simple change to the law, which would be consistent with the law in continental Europe and probably in Scotland. It would also reflect, largely, the desires of those who consider entering into a prenup.
It is worth reminding noble Lords that it would not be compulsory to enter into a prenup, but where the parties have significant assets and are concerned about the future, particularly in the case of second marriages, as the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, said, the absence of legislation runs the risk of dissuading people from getting married at all—and not all of them, of course, are in your Lordships’ House. When I last looked, public policy remains in favour of marriage; it even finds reflection in the European Convention on Human Rights. I suggest to the Government that the time has come for action.
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, for bringing forward this important debate at the early stages of this Government; as the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, just pointed out, they have four and a half years to go. As my noble friend Lady Shackleton pointed out, this matter is always kicked into the long grass; it is therefore a good time for it to be brought out.
The Law Commission made recommendations in 2014, which it is currently reviewing, but calls to make properly drafted prenuptial agreements binding were made long before then, including by noble and learned Lords in this House, so it is hard to be optimistic about change, but, as a non-lawyer I want to take a slightly different tack. As an aside, I am in very good company with and have empathy for another non-lawyer, the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, who is preparing to respond to many legal eminences.
This Government have said that, for them to act, any measures will need to further one or more of their five missions. My argument is that making romantic relationships a little less romantic meets the opportunity mission test. Binding prenuptial agreements would, albeit indirectly, boost opportunity for children to do better. That is quite a leap, so I will elaborate. They would strengthen marriage by making it more intentional and less risky, thereby, it is to be hoped, helping to increase marriage rates throughout society. According to Louise Perry, more marriage would be better for women too, as they are the vulnerable party in our informal hook-up culture, where unplanned pregnancy means they are often left, literally, holding the baby.
Crucially, more marriage means more children benefit from the stability that the commitment of marriage brings to family life. Children of married parents are considerably less likely to experience their own relationship breakdown. This was emphasised by the Centre for Social Justice in its 2009 Family Law Review. Its starting point, unusually but importantly, was that any reform of family law needed to support family stability and address the prevailing culture of family breakdown. Then and now, this is the underlying social emergency at the root of and driving so many other social issues. Some 44% of children do not grow up with both their parents. Children who endure family breakdown are around twice as likely to experience homelessness, alcoholism and mental health issues; to get into trouble with the police or spend time in prison; to underachieve in education; not to live with the other parent of their children, and to become a teenage parent themselves.
Marriage makes a difference. The Millennium Cohort Study found that 88% of married parents were still together when their child was five years old compared to only 67% of parents who were cohabiting when their child was born. More starkly, children born to cohabiting parents were almost three times more likely not to be living with both their parents when they were five years old compared to children born to married parents. Attributing this difference in stability to marriage is often dismissed in favour of other coexisting factors that make people more likely to form lasting relationships, such as higher levels of income or education, but low-income married couples are significantly more stable than low-income cohabitees. How relationships are structured matters.
Anthropologically speaking, the whole effort of getting married, the ritual itself, the decision to commit and the explicit public nature of that commitment, and even the financial investment in marking that change of relationship status, are all qualitatively different from the slide into cohabitation which is very common. Psychologists such as Professors Scott Stanley and Galena Rhoades at the University of Denver have extensively studied how sliding into cohabitation differs from deciding to get married and how that affects relationship durability.
As we have heard, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale, in her minority judgment in Radmacher v Granatino, which tested the binding nature of a prenup, spoke of the importance of maintaining a distinction between marriage and cohabitation. She also said that Parliament, not judges, needed to make the law in this area. In 1998, the last Labour Government published Supporting Families, the UK’s first ever Green Paper on family policy, and made a strong case for doing this. It is worth repeating what they said then:
“allowing couples, either before or during their marriage, to make written agreements dealing with their financial affairs which would be legally binding on divorce … could give people more choice and allow them to take more responsibility for ordering their own lives. It could help them to build a solid foundation for their marriage by encouraging them to look at the financial issues they may face as husband and wife and reach agreement before they get married”.
This speaks of the greater intentionality that prenuptial arrangements bring to marriage; people think about the future. Indeed, this measure was included in the section in the policy proposals on supporting marriage—still a very valid aim of social policy. It pointed out:
“Providing greater security on property matters in this way could make it more likely that some people would marry, rather than simply live together … Nuptial agreements could also have the effect of protecting the children of first marriages, who can often be overlooked at the time of a second marriage—or a second divorce”.
In its Family Law Review, the CSJ points out:
“England and Wales is unusual across Westernised family law jurisdictions in not having binding pre-marriage agreements … or other marital agreements”.
While prenuptial agreements should not be mandated or normative, it is responsible to consider what a couple would want to happen in future circumstances. Arguably, when the couple are in flush of premarital romance and well disposed towards each other, that is a good time to think about how finances should pan out if things do not work out.
Of course, some strongly hold that premarital agreements plan for failure, reflect distrust and undermine the commitment of marriage. I would argue, as Labour did in 1998, that this intentionality and ability to plan address the realism of the future. Moreover, it is ironic that while it is possible to have a cohabitation agreement to protect assets if a relationship fails, married couples in England and Wales are subject to the very uncertain outcomes of our current divorce law, which can create many perverse incentives.
The CSJ lists many other advantages of making prenups legally binding, such as the greater security that they give to those re-entering marriage who have been scarred by divorce, lower legal costs, fewer delays as judges have not the need to determine arrangements from scratch, and international norms which mean that prenups are expected to have legal force. Disadvantages include the difficulties of predicting future events and including these in the agreement. The vulnerable, weaker party—or the one who is keener to marry—may feel obliged to sign despite possible downsides for them. This leads to the issue of how much residual discretion, which we have heard about, should be allowed to the courts not to treat prenups as binding in particular cases. The more the discretion, the greater the opportunity for fairness and justice, yet the greater the risk that agreements are not binding at all. The lesser the discretion, the more unfair outcomes there will be, even though there is fairness in upholding agreements. Hence, in 1998, the Government permitted a narrow discretionary factor of “significant injustice”. Judge-made law could elaborate the circumstances in which “significant injustice” may be found.
In conclusion, I ask the Minister whether this Government will make the prevention of parental relationship breakdown a key part of their mission to break down barriers to opportunity—and of course of their child poverty strategy. Poverty is a consequence of family breakdown as well as a cause of it. Bolstering marriage is essential, as the last Labour Government realised. Perhaps counterintuitively, making prenups binding is a low-cost tool in the box to do that.
Lord Meston (CB)
My Lords, I have practised in family law as a barrister for many years and latterly have worked as a family judge. I do not find it altogether easy to recognise the picture of how the law now works, as portrayed by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, but never mind; that is a debate for another day.
Given that the median duration of marriages ending in divorce is now just under 13 years, it is a good time to assess the effect on law and practice of the important decision of the Supreme Court in Radmacher 15 years ago. Typically, the parties to prenuptial agreements may legitimately wish to ring-fence inherited or previously acquired assets or, as the noble Baroness, Lady Shackleton, said, wish to ensure provision for children of previous relationships. Not surprisingly, agreements are now said to be popular with the farming community, with their particularly illiquid assets. All who enter into such agreements will naturally wish to avoid the costs and hazards of litigation.
The perception and use of prenuptial agreements have developed remarkably. They were felt by some to devalue a view of marriage for life, distastefully requiring the involvement of lawyers in what was supposed to be the happy period leading up to the marriage ceremony. They used to be seen as required only by wealthy older men after several unsuccessful trips around the matrimonial course, who wanted to protect themselves in case the latest candidate for matrimony turned out to be a gold-digger—at least, from the man’s point of view. They were also seen as disadvantaging women, who were asked to waive some or all of what they might expect to receive if the marriage later ended in divorce, and as allowing parties to contract out of the responsibility to meet each other’s needs.
In a classic American case, the very wealthy husband, 25 years older than the wife, presented her with an agreement only a few hours before the marriage ceremony, and threatened to cancel the marriage if she did not sign. She had sparse knowledge of his finances and did not have any independent advice, only a session with a lawyer selected by the husband. That lawyer, to his credit, advised her not to sign. However, in spite of that advice, she signed the agreement and the marriage went ahead. Thirteen years and two children later, there was a divorce and costly litigation across two state jurisdictions.
The decision of the Supreme Court in Radmacher has reduced the prospect of such a scenario in the United Kingdom. Rushed agreements with limited legal advice and limited disclosure, particularly if they appear unfair and very different from what the court might otherwise order, cannot expect to be upheld, and in reality can be worse than having no agreement at all.
The Law Commission’s later well-researched and reasoned recommendations in 2014 included the crucial requirements for there to be independent legal advice for each party and sufficient financial disclosure, and for the agreement to be completed at least 28 days before the wedding. Although those recommendations are not yet in statute, they undoubtedly already reflect current good practice and have helped to make agreements more popular and effective.
I noted with some surprise the doubt expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, questioning the need for a cooling-off period of 28 days. However, there is a need to protect those who get married in a fever, to quote the old song.
The remaining area of controversy concerns whether and in what circumstances the court might go beyond an agreement, freely and properly entered into, that would otherwise be expected to be binding upon the parties. There is a clear distinction between agreements unfair from the outset and agreements that may later operate unfairly if access to legal remedies is severely restricted. It was recommended by the commission that the court’s jurisdiction to make provision for needs should not be ousted by qualifying agreements, so that no party would be left unjustifiably without resources following separation. To that extent, the mere fact of an agreement cannot make fair what may otherwise appear or become particularly unfair.
The Law Commission said there was little evidence of how agreements operate in practice and that it would be helpful to have more relevant information about how popular they are, how they are treated in litigation and how many cases settle on the basis of agreements. I suggest that it would also be helpful to have reliable overall evidence of the difference between the outcomes that prenups produce and the outcomes that the court would otherwise direct. I suspect that the majority of prenups are not seen by the courts because the couples involved manage to stay married and leave the agreement in a drawer, and that many other agreements are seen by the courts only because the parties simply wish to comply with it by submitting it in support of an agreed order, to reflect what has been agreed.
It is likely that those prenups that are challenged, at least by those with enough money to do so, come before the court only because of inadequate drafting or unforeseen changes in circumstances, or because of an irresistible dispute about jurisdiction if the agreement was made outside England and Wales. However, I seriously question the number of challenges that was suggested by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, but statistics will prove one or other of us right or wrong.
Carefully prepared agreements, although unromantic and transactional, can provide couples with a sense of security and certainty, reducing some of the acrimony and expense in the event of later permanent separation, and reducing the temptation to divert or conceal assets ahead of a divorce. Specialist legal practitioners can now help parties to achieve fair, realistic and civilised agreements, capable of later revision, that the courts will uphold. Indeed, if in doubt, the parties can now ask the court for an early decision as to whether the agreement is determinative of their financial affairs.
Nevertheless, there remain parties who sign agreements and marry, having ignored, rejected or not understood good legal advice that they could or would be better off marrying without the agreement. The Law Commission described the argument for autonomy as strong but as raising concerns that some may still enter an agreement unwillingly or with unrealistic optimism. The chances of that are not likely to be much diminished by any legislation. As the right reverend Prelate suggested, contractual autonomy has to be seen in the peculiarly emotional context of these agreements.
It is clearly premature to anticipate a final report by the Law Commission on the much wider question of whether and how substantial reform of financial remedies legislation should be undertaken, and any decision by the Government on that. Paragraph 7.98 of the commission’s recent scoping report suggests that, if there is not to be major change, its recommendations relating to agreements could be implemented straightaway, but, if major changes are expected, the recommendations about agreements will need to be reconsidered. We should be grateful to the noble Baroness for making us think hard about that.
If there are major wholesale changes, many existing agreements could well need postnuptial revision and renegotiation. An important component of any good advice is what a court might do in the absence of a prenup to protect the economically weaker party. Until it is clear what the law is to be in the foreseeable future, it will be hard to give satisfactory advice to those who need it about what might happen at a much later date.
If reforms are undertaken piecemeal, with prenups legislated for in advance of substantive law reforms, there is a risk that some agreements based on the substantive law in force when the agreement was reached would become unfair, and so would either produce an unfair result or have to be renegotiated, if the parties were willing to do so, failing which they might have to go to court. However, I accept that, to some extent, that risk exists irrespective of whether the law relating to prenups is reformed as the noble Baroness has proposed, and irrespective of changes that may be further down the track
Accordingly, meanwhile, until clarity is reached and a decision is made about how we should proceed, I suggest that the approach that has developed following Radmacher now works well, and that the family courts can and should be trusted to continue to deal with individual cases as required.
Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, for bringing today’s debate and for her tenacity on this issue and the wider issues of family law reform.
With the Law Commission’s recent report, Celebrating Marriage: A New Weddings Law, and its ongoing work on the issue of financial remedies on divorce or dissolution, which includes reviewing its own 2014 report on the matter, it seems we might be on the cusp of much legislative work in this area. So I too would be grateful to know whether His Majesty’s Government’s position, which I agree with, remains that all these issues about financial remedies should be dealt with together. If there is limited legislative time, which is often what the Government say, I reiterate the point I have made at Oral Questions that the greatest injustice to be dealt with in this area is currently those people entering a religious wedding ceremony that, when conducted, turns out not to be valid under UK law.
For participants, especially women, even the current remedies of Section 25 of the MCA are but a dream. Many are left destitute, particularly if they then have adult children, where there is no Schedule 1 claim. I accept that that law is not as well baked, or oven ready, as the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, said. However, I do think that for those women it should have priority.
On the subject of today’s debate, I wonder whether the comment by a previous Minister, my noble and learned friend Lord Bellamy, that prenuptials are the province of a “small and privileged cohort” is correct. As the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, has outlined, and if the Co-op Legal Services statistics are in any way accurate, about a fifth of married couples may have such an arrangement at the moment.
If you google “prenuptial agreement” in the UK, the AI answer is that, as per the case of Radmacher v Granatino, your prenup will be relevant as long as you entered into it freely with full disclosure, you have legal advice, and it is not unfair. I accept the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Shackleton, about the breadth of the discretion for “unfair”. That will be comforting to read if, say, your prenup entitles you only to a return plane ticket to the Philippines—only you and not any of your children. Yes, this has been a case. All the reform suggestions outlined would present a remedy for this. I presume it would be prima facie evidence of duress under the proposal outlined by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech. But many people will just look now to AI, so a law change will change that answer when someone looks up a prenuptial agreement.
Can I be assured by His Majesty’s Government that any reforms will have a comprehensive publicity campaign so that the public, particularly vulnerable groups, understand any change? One has only to look at how many people think common-law marriage exists as a legal concept to see how necessary awareness is. I also ask His Majesty’s Government to look at what is covered in the citizenship curriculum. Surely young people need to know and understand an institution, and its legal ramifications, that so many will eventually enter.
Despite much Law Commission work, there remain areas of the prenuptial jurisdiction that have not yet been discovered or considered. It is one of the privileges of being in your Lordships’ House that you are approached to raise issues that the Government may need to consider. Unfortunately for this nation of pet lovers and owners, the law still treats pets as mere chattels. They are treated as property for the purposes of Section 25.
There are currently about 13 million dogs and about 10 million cats as pets, so it is actually not a minority issue. The United Kingdom is becoming something of an outlier legally in relation to this. I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Meston, from his role at the International Academy of Family Lawyers, will be aware of this as well. The recent decision of District Judge Crisp in FI v DO on 20 December last year in the Manchester family court outlined what might become a test for other cases to decide, as in that case, who gets custody of the dog.
But the most interesting part of that judgment was this:
“The dog is a chattel. At times it seemed to me that I was in the realms of a Children Act application which featured the dog when the wife was cross examined about the dog’s welfare and shared care arrangements. I set this out because I have no doubt that if this feature could have been agreed other matters may have been able to be agreed”.
Such, of course, was the emotional attachment that this couple had to the dog that they were in court. A change in the law could avoid some litigation, I would hope.
On 28 January this year, District Judge Hatvany put a blog piece titled Of Dogs and Divorce on the Financial Remedies Journal website, which said:
“Our legal system has a reputation for being the finest on the planet. Yet in court, the legal test for who gets to keep the family dog is the same as that for any other inanimate content of the family home. The roots of this absurdity lie in the common law, which insists that pets are properly no different in principle from furniture even though we all know that this does not reflect reality. This probably stems back to mediaeval times when dogs were kept for hunting and cats for mousing, but in the 21st century it’s laughably outdated. In other jurisdictions, courts are beginning to recognise that pets aren’t just property. There seems to be no effective mechanism in English courts, however, for resolving the issue of who gets the family dog”.
I am informed that this niche professional journal got a large response to this blog piece on pets. When I was weighing up whether to sign up to speak on this Motion in such eminent company, I was reassured that “You and Yours” on Radio 4 this Monday had the subject matter of “pet-nups”. Do His Majesty’s Government have a view on pets in prenuptial agreements and on whether they should continue to be considered chattels? Is the committee that your Lordships established under the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022 looking at this matter?
This is happening in other jurisdictions. Colombia amended its law in 2016 and its case law recognises that emotional bonds to animals within families do not equate to making animals equivalent to humans. Proposals are apparently afoot to amend the Italian legal code to
“regulate the custody of family pets upon separation or divorce”,
and New York has a best interests test on deciding the custody of a companion animal. In many of these changes, the jurisprudence stems from a recognition of the sentience of animals, so it looks like the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022 might inadvertently have started us on this journey. These changes also recognise humans’ emotional connection to animals and move away from the division that anything non-human is merely an object. I hope His Majesty’s Government will look at these comparators to see whether they have affected prenuptial arrangements in those jurisdictions.
I thank the working group on pets and divorce, barrister Sarah Lucy Cooper and solicitor Estella Newbold-Brown for their work on this and for drawing this to my attention. This group also has the support of the previously mentioned High Court judge, Sir Nicholas Mostyn, and the Kennel Club. Will His Majesty’s Government agree to meet them to understand the solutions in this area of the law and how often it is an issue in proceedings?
In principle, I share the sentiments of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale, in her vigorous dissenting judgment in Radmacher. I also note the comments of the right reverend Prelate that this is a covenant, not a contract. It reminds me so much of the wisdom we used to receive from the late Lord Sacks in explaining to us the difference between covenants and contracts. I am pleased to learn that there would be an irreducible minimum here: a spouse would not be left so destitute as to be dependent on public funds and an agreement should not be allowed to leave the burden on the taxpayer rather than on the other spouse who has means.
As I conclude, I realise that I may have gone from the sublime to the ridiculous—from women who are left destitute and without remedy as they are not legally married to the custody of family pets—but this reflects the variation and breadth of issues that the breakdown of a marriage or civil partnership can reveal and the issues that the Government need to consider when legislating for a prenuptial, or pet-nuptial, agreement.
Lord St John of Bletso (CB)
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Deech for her tenacity in campaigning for the reform of this area of family law. Unlike my distinguished friends next to me, my noble friend Lord Meston and my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss, I am not a family law judge. I have simply been a divorce lawyer in South Africa, practising under the corpus juris civilis in Roman-Dutch law. I shall not speak for 11 minutes and will keep my comments brief.
When we debated my noble friend Lady Deech’s Private Member’s Bill, the Divorce (Financial Provision) Bill, way back in 2018, we were led at the time to believe that, following the Law Commission report, prenuptial agreements would soon be placed on a statutory footing and be enforceable. That was subject, of course, to both parties entering the agreement without duress, it being fair, it being reasonable and both parties receiving independent legal advice before signing the agreement. Sadly, seven years later, prenuptial agreements are still not enforced by courts in England and Wales, and the can is constantly being kicked down the road.
If I can revert to my experience of being a divorce lawyer in South Africa, where we refer to prenuptial agreements as antenuptial agreements, they have worked very well for decades. It does pose a problem when South Africans move across to the United Kingdom: if a couple were, sadly, to divorce in this country, they would not be able to get divorced with that prenuptial agreement.
I am also very familiar with the Radmacher v Granatino case in 2010, which many noble Lords have mentioned, and I am also cognisant of the fact that London has the reputation of now being the divorce capital of the world. Clearly, public attitudes have changed, and the public is now broadly supportive of prenups.
The time has come to simplify divorce processes, reduce the emotional strain and, with that, reduce the costs. Simpler, streamlined procedures would benefit both divorcing parties as well as the legal system. While many lawyers advocate for reforms to make the process more efficient, I accept that opinions differ, based on personal practice, experience and client consultations. My noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss made a very powerful point about change in circumstances, and to that degree I support post-nuptial agreements.
Clearly, there needs to be a balance between efficiency, fairness and adaptability. For prenups to be enforceable, there needs to be full disclosure and transparency of both parties’ assets and liabilities and the financial condition of both parties. Also, both parties need to have independent legal advice, and have it weeks—if not possibly months—before they get married. Prenups should be signed by both parties voluntarily, and the terms should be free, fair and reasonable.
Pivotal to any reform must be the consideration of children’s needs, ensuring that the financial provisions for the welfare and needs of children are at the very centre of any settlement. To this end, maintenance provisions for children born in the course of marriage would need to be determined separately to the prenup. I would also encourage promotion of financial disputes outside of the courts, through what are called ADRs, including mediation and collaborative law, aiming to reduce the burden on the legal system and the emotional stress of both parties.
In the context of prenuptial agreements, inheritance, gifts and premarital property can generally be included or excluded based on specific terms of both parties. I do not have the answer to this, and it reinforces the need for disclosure and transparency. I also agree with the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, that we need to promote public awareness of these changes, ensuring that individuals are aware of their rights and obligations within a marriage or cohabitation context. The bottom line is that huge amounts of money are being spent on negotiating financial settlements in acrimonious divorces—I speak as one who has been divorced—which often ignore the best interests in the marriage.
I am totally in favour of providing safeguards and protections, but the time has come to simplify the proceedings and bring in more certainty and more enforceability. We constantly hear from Ministers at the Dispatch Box that, “All options are being considered, and a response will be given in due course”. I hope that, when the Minister winds up the debate, we can get a clearer timetable for prenuptial agreements to be finally incorporated into family law and be enforceable.
Baroness Featherstone (LD)
My Lords, what a very interesting debate. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, on securing it. I have no legal training. I am not sure if I am the only person speaking in this debate who is not a lawyer or a judge of some sort, but I am speaking here on human grounds and common sense, and as a bitter divorcee.
It is a bit sad—I agree with the right reverend Prelate—to think that marriage, which is, or was, a lifetime commitment to another until death do them part, has now to enable a division of chattels, should that marriage end in divorce, even before entering the said marriage, but we are where we are. In 2023, there were 76,089 divorces in the UK, which is about 38% of marriages ending in divorce. This is down from 113,505 divorces in 2021, when 46% of marriages ended in divorce. So we should welcome anything which makes this challenging process better, safer, fairer, easier and less traumatic.
Even though, currently, the courts almost always uphold prenups so long as they are fair, who knows what outcome you will get? Based on the rate of divorce and the contributions from noble Lords who have spoken in the debate today, it seems to me that the time has come for the legitimate status of prenups to be enacted. There are clear pros, as identified by many of your Lordships who have spoken so far, but I am concerned that the negatives have not been erased. What happens when a prenup—which now will have the rule of law on its side—is unfairly drawn but is now a legal contract agreed to by both parties? The noble Baroness referred to that. How will we know the status of the individual agreeing or signing, whether they were coerced, or whether they knew the consequence?
I am particularly concerned about women because, in general, it is still women who earn less, even if they work full-time; it is still women who give up work for the early years after having a baby; it is still women who lose their place in promotions due to absence; and it is still women who are not employed, despite employers theoretically not being allowed to ask a young woman if she intends to have children.
On the other hand, prenups do offer financial protection and ensure that a woman’s personal assets from inheritance or business ownership of investments remain protected in divorce. They can shield a woman from debt, including her husband’s debt, after divorce. They can clarify how finances will be handled in the marriage, and they can support career sacrifices where the woman gives up work to look after the children while the husband furthers his career. Legal battles can be reduced. I am definitely a bit “on the one hand, on the other hand”, but I do come to a conclusion in favour of prenups being legalised.
A fair prenup that takes everything into consideration might be a very good thing, but my concern is even more agitated by the formation of the prenup itself. They may be poorly negotiated, particularly if one partner is wealthy or more powerful. Some prenups waive or limit alimony, which is problematic when a woman has sacrificed her career for marriage. The current protection under default marital laws might protect her better than a prenup, which might restrict her rights. She might be pressurised into signing a prenup—again, if the partner is wealthy or legally savvy, as are many noble Lords who have spoken today. Women would have to be able to have independent legal representation and to afford it, and that might be a challenge as well.
Therefore, if prenups are to become legal, I would want a number of safeguards against those negatives, because it appeared to me from my research for this debate that a prenup may favour whoever negotiates it better or who can afford the better legal adviser. Of course, the key to the success of this is to have strong legal representation and not sign anything under pressure. In the Radmacher v Granatino case, which has been raised by many noble Lords in the House, and with which I am now familiar, the prenup was actually upheld, but it set the precedent for what courts consider fair or unfair.
Then there are the costs: the cost of obtaining legal advice for a prenuptial agreement in the UK obviously varies, based on the complexity of the assets involved, the reputation and location of the solicitor, and the specific needs of the couple.
For straightforward cases with minimal assets, there may be fixed fees starting from £500. Agreements of moderate complexity—those involving more detailed financial arrangements—may cost between £2,000 and £4,000. For high-complexity cases—those with intricate assets, business interests or international considerations—costs can start at £5,000, without a ceiling.
Then there is asset complexity; the more complex the financial situation, the more time and expertise will be required to draft the agreement. In my experience —forgive me for saying this—lawyers always find extra things to charge for. The other issues are legal representation, as both parties need independent legal advice, which doubles the costs; negotiation time, as extended negotiations or revisions can increase fees; and geographical location, as solicitor fees vary depending on where they are in the UK.
Thankfully, some platforms are coming along that offer prenuptial agreement services at a fixed fee of £1,500—the total for both parties—aiming to make it more affordable and accessible. Each member of the couple will have to consult with a qualified family law solicitor to obtain a precise quote tailored to specific circumstances. Costs are significant, but, obviously, if this is to become legal, a well-drafted prenuptial agreement providing clarity could save considerable expenses, as has been mentioned, where divorces can cost a fortune.
As it stands, prenups that would or should be thrown out are those that leave one party in financial hardship; those that were signed under duress, without legal advice or with hidden or misrepresented finances; and those where time has changed the circumstances in which the prenup was agreed. We have not discussed many of the soft challenges. They include the potential for a prenup to undermine trust in a marriage; the sense that the couple feels that it is a bit like planning for a divorce—which, in this day and age, in my view is quite wise; the potential to create a power imbalance; the fact that it can be emotionally hurtful; and the idea that it might look and feel like an insurance policy. On the other hand, prenups can strengthen trust, encourage open communication, prevent future conflict, strengthen a relationship by setting out clear expectations, protect both partners fairly and show maturity and responsibility.
In summation, if prenups are to become legal entities, which I believe they should, they must have some indispensable clauses: on full financial disclosure; on independent legal advice; on no coercion or duress; on asset protection and separation; on debt liability; on spousal maintenance; on inheritance and family assets; and on future children. There should also be a sunset clause ensuring a revisiting of a prenup after a certain number of years. As has been said, they should also be signed at least 28 days before a wedding.
In conclusion, if a prenup is written one-sidedly, the wealthier or more powerful partner will benefit. However, if it is fair and negotiated well, both parties can benefit by protecting personal assets while ensuring financial fairness. That is what we and the Government must aim for. I am much persuaded by the arguments of the noble Baroness, Lady Deech. It is time to make prenups legal.
Lord Keen of Elie (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, for securing this debate. I begin with the advantage, shared with the Minister, of never having practised in the area of family law; accordingly, we can both bring a fresh eye to this long-running saga.
I find myself almost entirely in agreement with the observations made by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, particularly on the need to bring forward suitable statutory provision for prenuptial contracts—and I use that word advisedly. I also agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Shackleton, who followed the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, on her point about the scope of a prenuptial agreement and its inability to forbid or exclude child maintenance.
I entirely agree with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord St John of Bletso, that, clearly, children and their maintenance should not be part of such prenuptial agreements. There should be separate provision for the maintenance of children, when it is required, and that is reflected in, for example, the law of Scotland—which I will come on to address in a different context—where there is express provision for a periodic allowance for children up to a certain age that cannot be excluded by any prenuptial agreement.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwell pointed out that of course marriage is not just an economic transaction. But, as the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, made clear, those entering into matrimony need to take responsibility for the financial consequences of marriage. Accordingly, there is no reason why we should not look at the economic aspects of that relationship and the way in which it is going to be addressed.
While supporting prenuptial agreements on a statutory footing, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, expressed the view that there should be some means of addressing changes in circumstances. I cannot find myself in agreement with that. It seems to me that we would be merely exchanging one set of discretions for another—a point the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, touched upon. At present, the court has very wide discretion. I am not sure that replacing that with a narrower discretion is the appropriate way forward.
The noble Lord, Lord Meston, has the advantage on me with regard to his scope of family law. But I cannot find myself agreeing with his inclination towards the status quo. It does seem to me that the time has come for action. Indeed, the time for action has passed. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, on the matter of awareness, but I will not seek to elaborate on the issue of chattels. I leave that to others to consider. I also agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, that, if we are to put in place a statutory basis for prenuptial agreements, we need to have certain safeguards.
There is no compelling logic to a person leaving a marriage wealthier than when they entered it. I do not agree with the reference made by the noble Lord, Lord Meston, to some expectation upon divorce. I do not see why that should be taken into account. A prenuptial agreement is neither unique nor, in our present social position, to be regarded as unconscionable. It is an example of what is known to the law as a contract. A contract made between two competent and consenting persons should be enforced in the absence of fraud, coercion or misrepresentation. On the point made by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, if there is material non-disclosure, that should be grounds for voiding any such agreement.
Adults entering a relationship should be free to decide for themselves the consequences and terms on which they may terminate that relationship. The same logic applies here as would apply to other forms of business or professional relationship, albeit acknowledging —as the right reverend Prelate pointed out—that marriage is not just an economic transaction. Parties should be entitled to agree that their existing wealth should never form part of what is termed “matrimonial property”. Parties anticipating their respective contributions to the common wealth during a marriage should be entitled to agree how their matrimonial property should be dealt with in the event of divorce.
At present, the law of England and Wales is a muddle of uncertainty, fed by discretion. Since 2010, we have been told that a prenuptial agreement may be enforced if regarded as fair—but, fair, we are told, at the time it is being implemented: that is, at the time of divorce, taking into account many changes in circumstances. That is part of the problem, because anyone who has entered into a prenuptial agreement, with which they are unhappy many years later, will simply say, “Well, it was fair at the time, but I don’t think it’s fair now”—thus, recourse to the courts, to litigation and to legal costs. That temptation to challenge will always be there and ultimately will only benefit the lawyers.
If I leased a car for five years, I could ask whether at the time of the lease the contract was fair. But to apply that test five years later, when the vehicle has lost its bloom, has become less reliable and is inclined to break down—rather like some marriages—seems inappropriate, in my submission. In the law of Scotland, a prenuptial agreement is treated as what it is: a contract. There is a statutory test of fairness and reasonableness, but it is applied to the contract at the time it was entered into, which is both logical and consistent with legal theory.
Section 16 of the Family Law (Scotland) Act states that the court may set aside or vary such an agreement if it was not fair and reasonable at the time it was entered into. A modest statutory amendment could bring England and Wales into line with the more developed and logical jurisprudence of Scotland. I therefore invite the Minister to indicate whether, and indeed when, the Government will address this issue, which has been outstanding now for more than 14 years.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Timpson) (Lab)
My Lords, I begin by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, for securing this important and timely debate about a topic that has a real impact on people’s lives. I also thank the noble Baroness for taking the time to talk to me last week, and I thank noble Lords for the important issues they have raised today and for their kindness to me.
I am participating in this debate on behalf of my noble friend Lord Ponsonby. I must therefore declare at the outset that I am not an expert on these matters, save that my wife and I celebrated our 28th wedding anniversary last week.
As the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham set out so clearly in their remarks, marriage is a hugely important institution and the foundation of many happy relationships. That said, marriages and civil partnerships can of course break down. I wish to recognise, as many do, that divorce can be one of the most stressful and difficult times in people’s lives.
I will start with some context. As your Lordships will know, it is almost three years since our divorce law underwent its most significant change in half a century. The introduction of no-fault divorce now allows couples to end their marriage or civil partnership without having to blame each other. No-fault divorce has removed the legal requirement for conflict. As Juliet Harvey, then national chair of Resolution, said, one year after no-fault divorce was introduced:
“This historic change marked the end of the blame game for divorcing couples”.
It is perhaps fitting that the Bill introducing these measures passed with cross-party support both here and in the other place, gaining Royal Assent on 25 June 2020. At this point I must reference the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, who played a crucial role in taking the Bill through this House. From speaking with officials in my department, I know how much they enjoyed working with him on this legislation.
I know that the noble Baronesses, Lady Deech and Lady Shackleton, take the view that no-fault divorce is just one part of the divorce reform story and remain concerned about the law that relates to a divorcing couple’s finances. This leads me to the specifics of the Motion tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, which asks the House to take note of the law relating to prenups. I am aware that many of your Lordships will know the legal background. However, for the benefit of those who may be less familiar, including myself a week ago, I will give an overview of how the law in this area has developed.
In the 19th century, the courts concluded that agreements relating to a couple’s future hypothetical separation were invalid. This was because at the time, it was a public policy concern that these sorts of agreements might encourage separation or divorce. As the noble Baronesses, Lady Deech and Lady Shackleton, mentioned, in the landmark 2010 case of Radmacher v Granatino, the Supreme Court decided that a couple should be held to their prenup and post-nup agreement, if it is freely entered into, with a full appreciation of the circumstances, unless it would be unfair to do so. The current law continues as set out in the Radmacher case.
Central to developing law in this area, the courts have considered how to protect the finances of those who are vulnerable, including children, and how to make sure that vulnerable individuals are not coerced into signing prenups.
Your Lordships will of course be aware that the previous Government asked the Law Commission to conduct a review of the law on prenup and post-nup agreements. Its report was published in 2014 and recommended the introduction of “qualifying nuptial agreements”. These agreements would be enforced by the courts in specific circumstances. However, couples would not be able to use them to prevent each other providing for each other’s financial needs, including those of their children.
We have come back into government just over 10 years after the Law Commission’s report on this subject was published. The report regrettably never received a full response from the previous Government. I know this has been a source of frustration to the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and the noble Lords, Lord St John and Lord Faulks, and I can assure your Lordships that this Government are looking into the issue with utmost care.
It would be remiss of me not to mention at this stage another report that the previous Government did not respond to, which was the Law Commission’s 2022 report on wedding reform. Again, I assure noble Lords that this Government are looking into this issue, including in relation to humanist weddings, and will provide an update in the coming months.
Since 2014, the Law Commission has however done further work on the law relating to financial settlements following divorce. In December last year, it published an important scoping paper, which outlined its assessment that there are problems with the current law, and possible ways the law could be fundamentally reformed. The Law Commission further outlined how changing the law on prenups and post-nups could form part of wider financial remedies reform. I know that my noble friend Lord Ponsonby has been reviewing the recent report and will be setting out next steps in due course.
I also wish to assure your Lordships that the Government have an ambitious reform agenda for unmarried couples. This includes delivering our manifesto commitment to strengthen rights and protections for cohabitants. We are working on delivering this manifesto commitment, and plan to launch a consultation later in the year.
The noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, will see that cohabitation reform will address some of the issues raised in respect of religious-only marriage. I am afraid that, on the subject of pets in the family, it is not my pet subject.
The noble Lord, Lord St John, was right to express the importance of mediation, and may be pleased to hear that we have also committed to funding the mediation voucher scheme until at least March 2026. This scheme has helped over 37,000 families to date. Mediation helps couples take a less adversarial approach to making agreements following separation.
I have heard the calls in this debate, including from the noble Baronesses, Lady Deech and Lady Shackleton, and the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, that prenups be dealt with separately from wider reform and that we legislate for them now. The Law Commission does not see prenups as a discrete issue, but, as I have heard today, some noble Lords disagree. The Government will take all these views in the round before setting out their position.
It may be helpful if I set out for your Lordships what the Law Commission says in its 2024 report. It says that any reform on the basis of its 2014 prenup and post-nup proposals would depend on the type of wider financial reforms that could be put in place. The Law Commission takes this view for a couple of reasons. First, it is of the view that it would be unnecessarily complicated to enact its 2014 proposals now, if future reforms would apply different rules for prenups and post-nups that would come into being at a later date. This would result in different law applying to different agreements, depending on the timing of those agreements being put in place.
Secondly, the 2014 proposals for prenups and post-nups were based on the central role of financial needs in the current law. The Law Commission said that any legislation is likely to need to be unpicked if there is future wider reform of financial remedies. I absolutely assure your Lordships that the Government are considering the Law Commission’s 2024 report and the issue of prenups in this context.
This debate is invaluable and timely. I know that my noble friend Lord Ponsonby and his team of officials will take on board the range of perspectives heard today in the Chamber when considering next steps. In fact, I am looking forward to meeting him on Monday, and I reassure the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, that I will take his comments back to the department, and maybe to the colleagues he knew very well when he was there.
I thank the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss for her contribution to this debate. Given her lifetime of service to family justice, including as President of the Family Division, it is important to have her careful and considered input on this topic today. I am grateful to the noble and learned Baroness for highlighting the need for fairness and transparency for prenups. The Law Commission’s 2014 report recommended that a couple must have received important information about each other’s finances when making a prenup. We will certainly be looking into this recommendation in depth.
The Law Commission’s 2014 report addressed the issue of the family court having the discretion to intervene if there has been a major change in circumstances, by recommending that a couple would not be able to contract out of providing for each other’s needs on divorce. This is a very important issue, one that I assure noble Lords that my noble friend Lord Ponsonby will think very carefully about.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Meston, for raising important questions about the formation of prenups. In particular, there is the question that the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, also raised about fairness for a spouse who may have signed a prenup without anticipating what the future might hold. No young couple getting married can precisely predict the future. They may win the lottery, or their health may deteriorate to a point where they can no longer work. No one can be certain about how life will pan out.
The Law Commission’s 2014 report considered this issue and recommended qualifying nuptial agreements. These types of prenups would not allow a couple to contract out of meeting each other’s financial needs on divorce. The Law Commission recommended this type of prenup to ensure that needs that have arisen because of unforeseen circumstances are not ignored by the court just because there is a prenup in place.
As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, is aware, the definition of “needs” in financial cases on divorce has been the subject of much case law. As I previously stated, the Law Commission does not see prenups as a discrete issue. However, the Government will take on board all the views your Lordships have raised today in considering next steps.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, for his contribution to this debate. I know how important these issues are to him and acknowledge his continued efforts to make sure that my department works across government to ensure the best outcomes for families who are separating.
As I have already said, and as was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Shackleton, and the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, marriage is very important in our society and is the foundation of many successful relationships. I listened with interest to the noble Lord’s perspective that prenups would boost the marriage institution, and I am sure that my noble friend Lord Ponsonby will be interested in this point too. I will write to the noble Baroness, Lady Shackleton, on her question about appeals.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, and the right reverend Prelate for raising the important issue of the impacts of prenups on women. This is an important policy question. I am aware that the Law Commission considered this specific point in its 2014 report and made recommendations in relation to protecting spouses’ financial needs when they divorce. The safeguard recommended was that parties cannot contract out of meeting each other’s needs when they divorce.
I further thank the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, for his suggestion that the prevention of parental breakdown should form part of the Government’s opportunity mission. The Government already do much to support separating couples. The Department for Work and Pensions is delivering the Reducing Parental Conflict programme to reduce parental conflict and improve children’s outcomes. Through this programme, funding is made available to local authorities in England that work in partnership with a range of experts from relationship and family charities. The Government will now consider these recommendations in the context of the Law Commission’s 2024 financial remedies review.
The noble Baronesses, Lady Deech and Lady Shackleton, rightly expressed the need to reduce court delays. These delays have a significant impact on families, and we are committed to improving court timeliness. In 2014, the Law Commission said that its recommendations for prenups and post-nups may reduce the number of financial provision cases going before the courts in general. We will look at this further as part of our consideration of the Law Commission’s 2024 report.
Your Lordships will, I am sure, be pleased to know that the Government are already taking action to reduce delays in financial cases. We are supporting the Family Procedure Rule Committee to launch a new express pilot for financial cases in particular regions. This pilot will reduce the number of court hearings in lower-value financial cases from three to two. As part of this, dispute resolution would be the central focus of the first hearing.
The noble Baroness, Lady Deech, will, I hope, be pleased to know that the Government continue to explore the use of technologies such as AI to improve the efficiency of courts and legal processes. The Ministry of Justice has established a new justice AI unit, led by the department’s first AI officer, to develop a comprehensive AI strategy for the department and its agencies. I confirm that our chief AI officer is a very popular person for everybody to meet.
The Law Commission says, in its 2024 report, that any reform on the basis of its 2014 prenup and post-nup proposals would depend on the types of wider financial reforms. The Law Commission does not, therefore, see prenups as a discrete issue. As I have heard today, some noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Meston, disagree. The Government will take all these views in the round before setting out their position.
Today’s debate serves as a reminder that the law relating to prenups raises complex questions about the role that the courts and couples should take in the division of financial assets when divorcing. I understand the frustrations of the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, that the previous Government had little enthusiasm to address prenups. I hope my repeated assurances in this debate that this Government are carefully considering the Law Commission’s December report have been helpful. As referenced earlier, I know that my noble friend Lord Ponsonby has been reviewing the recent report and will be setting out our views in due course.
It has been extremely helpful to have this debate. In fact, it is the first time that I have heard the words “romance” and “love” in a debate. I have thoroughly enjoyed my time dealing with family justice matters and I will take what I have learned back to my noble friend Lord Ponsonby on Monday. I hope he thinks I have done this topic justice—if noble Lords will excuse the pun.
I hope I have covered all the points raised today and that your Lordships will forgive me if I have not. If anything has been missed, I will write on those issues.
In closing, I reiterate my thanks to the noble Baroness for tabling this Motion. It is because this issue is so important, both for couples and their children, that the Government must take the time to get this right.
Baroness Deech (CB)
My Lords, as a mere academic lawyer, I am grateful to and impressed by all the real lawyers who brought their wisdom to bear in this debate. I say to the Government that their commendable concern for financial prudence ought to guide them in this respect: there is no doubt that couples and courts will be spared unnecessary expense if they go ahead and legislate.
I will pick up a number of points, and I hope noble Lords will forgive me if I do not address all of them, bearing in mind the time. I was moved to hear the right reverend Prelate talk about marriage, but it is not its financial elements and prenups that have degraded—as he might say—marriage to the level at which he and others have expressed concern. Marriage has been emptied of all its former aspirations by changes in the law. The recent change in divorce law, while welcomed by many, means that one can get a divorce without presenting any reasons and relatively quickly. That sort of change must do more to affect a couple’s entry or not into marriage than anything about the finances that may face them when that marriage comes to an end.
I wish, like the right reverend Prelate and others do, that divorce was not so common, but it is so we have to be realistic. The burden of many impoverished divorcees falls on the state anyway. No amount of contracts or provision for settling financial matters in the court takes us away from the fact that many couples have few assets and that their divorce means two sets of housing rather than one, an increased reliance on state benefits and that whatever is paid as maintenance is clawed back in universal credit. The presence or not of prenups will do little to affect that financial element.
I absolutely agree with all noble Lords who have expressed concern for children. Children cannot and should not be part of prenups or post-nups, because those are agreements between two adults. I do not think we have shown enough concern for children. I have read many judgments concerning wealthy couples, running to many dozens of pages, and on the last half-page is a throwaway comment about so much per month or week for the children and their school fees. That is it. There is no concern about how the huge amounts expended on legal fees detract from the children or general concern about how many fathers—it is usually fathers—are allowed to walk away from their responsibilities to their children without any recourse and without state child maintenance legislation having much effect at all. It is high time we took more concern for children’s financial situation in divorce.
I do not think that we should worry too much about the cost of making a prenup, as the noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, spelled out, because those costs are but a pinprick compared to what people have to spend when they enter into an acrimonious divorce which needs to go to court. Nor should we be concerned about this convoluted argument that the Law Commission put forward that, if the overall law were to change, one would have to go back and alter the prenup law. After all, the law relating to money and divorce keeps on changing. Every time there is a Supreme Court judgment or a Court of Appeal judgment, things change profoundly and might require couples to revisit their prenup, so I do not think that is a firm argument. I urge the Government once again to go ahead and enact prenups because that will save money all round and it is a discrete issue, as most people have said. In fact, virtually everyone here this evening has said that prenups should be enacted statutorily.
As for cohabitation, if one changes the law relating to cohabiting couples now without reforming the law relating to financial provision, then cohabiting couples going to court will find themselves caught up in the same network of inefficient, uncertain financial provision as existing married couples do. There is no reason to delay statutory enactment of prenups law. The Minister—whichever Minister—will find in the Ministry of Justice files and files gathering dust. I have dealt with seven different Ministers over this issue over several decades and somewhere there is foot-dragging which is no longer justified. The Government want to save money, to help couples and to support children. Now is the time to do that, so I end by urging the Minister to go back to the ministry and tell them to get on with it.
Grenfell Tower Inquiry: Phase 2 Report
(1 day, 2 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for bringing this Statement repeat to your Lordships’ House. Sir Martin Moore-Bick and his team are to be congratulated on the work they did on the Grenfell Tower inquiry and the Government are right to have accepted the report’s recommendations. The Deputy Prime Minister, speaking in the other place, rightly recognised the suffering of the victims, the bereaved families, the survivors and those in the immediate Grenfell community.
When I was a Minister in government, I worked closely with the Grenfell community and my heart goes out to them. Their bravery and determination in campaigning for change so that this never happens again have been exemplary and, as always, I pay tribute to them all. As my honourable friend the shadow Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government said yesterday,
“The tragedy of Grenfell, which claimed 72 innocent lives—54 adults and 18 children—will always remain a scar on our national conscience”.—[Official Report, Commons, 26/2/25; col. 779.]
We on these Benches offer our sincere apologies to the bereaved, the survivors and the Grenfell community for the failures that led to that horrific night in June 2017.
Sir Martin Moore-Bick’s findings are damning, revealing decades of systemic failure, dishonesty and negligence. They are a damning indictment of successive Governments, regulators and the industry. I welcome the Government’s decision to accept 58 of the recommendations and it is right that Ministers have committed to act on them.
We support the creation of a single construction regulator, the appointment of a chief construction adviser and the consolidation of fire safety functions under one department. These reforms are long overdue. We also support steps to professionalise fire engineers and to reform the construction products sector. The systematic dishonesty from firms such as Arconic, Kingspan and Celotex revealed by the inquiry is appalling, and government must respond robustly.
The Government’s response is promising, but they must deliver proper accountability. Unlimited fines and prison sentences for rogue executives and, where appropriate, government officials cannot remain mere rhetoric. We need action urgently, and the Official Opposition will be following this closely to ensure Ministers act in a timely way.
Can the Minister explain why the Government have not accepted the inquiry’s recommendation for a single regulator to oversee the testing and certification of construction products, leaving that instead with the existing assessment bodies? We know that the Building Research Establishment was criticised strongly by the inquiry, so what steps are the Government taking to address the concerns?
We also welcome the remediation acceleration plan, but we know that the targets rely on voluntary engagement from developers. Can the Minister explain what options are available to Ministers where developers fail to comply, and will Ministers work to deliver solutions for non-qualifying leaseholders and those at risk as a consequence of other fire safety defects? No resident should be left behind.
We have concerns about the phased approach to implementation stretching beyond 2028—the Grenfell community has waited long enough for change. Can the Minister explain the reason for the delay of another parliamentary term for full delivery?
Finally, we fully support the Metropolitan Police investigation, but this must be delivered more quickly. Those who profited from cutting corners or were criminally negligent must face consequences, whether through fines or criminal sanctions. Can the Minister confirm whether the Government have reviewed existing legislation to ensure we have the appropriate laws in place to prosecute similar criminal negligence in the future?
The tragedy of Grenfell must be a turning point, and we support the Government in seeking to deliver a legacy of safety, transparency and respect for every resident. We are committed to working with this Government on a cross-party basis to meet that promise. As always, my thoughts and prayers are with Grenfell and their community.
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, 72 people died in the Grenfell Tower fire seven years ago in the most horrifying of circumstances. This phase 2 report on the Grenfell Tower inquiry from Martin Moore-Bick is an excellent analysis and provides a strong challenge to the Government for the decisions they need to make.
It is therefore disappointing that the Secretary of State’s Statement fails to be absolutely clear that the recommendation from the inquiry will be implemented in full. Instead, the words used are that the Government
“accept the findings … and will take forward … the recommendations”.
That is simply unacceptable.
The inquiry exposed a culture of greed and indifference, which must be rooted out of all the organisations associated with this wholly avoidable tragedy—I emphasise that it was wholly avoidable. The Government have a duty to ensure that all buildings with flammable cladding, and where the constructors deliberately omitted fire safety features, are fully remediated, and that the cost is borne entirely by those responsible for those failings.
Leaseholders must not be required to pay anything. Living in a building that is not safe is itself a cause of immense anxiety. Added to that is the scandal of huge rises in insurance costs and service charges, when leaseholders should not be paying anything.
The ministry’s figures show that 9,000 to 12,000 buildings of above 11 metres will need remediation, yet only 4,771 have so far been identified—of which less than half have had work started. The National Audit Office has called for the costs of this work, over and above that funded by the taxpayer, to be placed on developers. That is absolutely right. Can the Minister explain how the costs of this essential work are to be met? For information, the estimate is around £7 billion.
I turn to the 58 recommendations in the report. It recommended a single construction adviser, which the Government have accepted and will appoint. I fully support that. However, Dame Judith Hackitt’s report of 2018, made immediately following the Grenfell Tower fire, also recommended that there be a formal log of every element during construction work, including building improvements which may follow. The report recommended that that log should be signed off by the person responsible for the work. This seems to be the fundamental change that is needed. Can the Minister advise whether this particular change is to be implemented?
One of the other key changes proposed by the Hackitt report was that the overall responsibility for building control should return to the local authority for independent oversight. Can the Minister explain why the Statement simply refers to a “review” of building control? Currently, constructors can appoint their own building inspector. The failure of that system is seen in the fire safety corner-cutting in Grenfell Tower and in many other buildings. Does the Minister agree that an independent building inspector is a key change that has to be made?
The failure of the regulatory system that enabled flammable cladding to be added to the walls of many high-rise blocks is at the heart of this scandal, yet the Statement has little to encourage us to believe that essential reform is coming. The Government have published a construction products Green Paper, which is positive but long overdue. The safety of construction products partly depends on the testing regime, which was exposed in the report as being deficient. What are the Government’s intentions for the future of the Building Research Establishment?
Finally, the report refers to “higher-risk buildings”. It states that
“to define a building as ‘higher risk’ by reference only to its height is … arbitrary”,
and recommends that the use of the building is vitally important. Are the Government intending to review the definition as a matter of urgency, as required by the recommendations in the report?
What is needed now is a sense of urgency and purpose. It is more than seven years since that dreadful fire. Survivors need to see that radical change is being made. The tragedy of 72 lives cruelly ended must not have been in vain.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Lord Khan of Burnley) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank your Lordships for your comments today. I know that I speak for all of us when I say that what happened on that terrible night in June 2017 must never be allowed to happen again. It was a national tragedy and an immensely personal tragedy: 72 innocent people, 18 of them children, lost their lives. The Grenfell inquiry exposed damning and painful evidence of political, corporate and individual failings over decades. I thank the inquiry chair, Sir Martin Moore-Bick, and his team, for their hard work over seven years to shine a light on these failings. Yesterday in the other place, the Deputy Prime Minister announced the Government’s response to the Grenfell Tower inquiry’s final report and apologised on behalf of the British state.
I want to say again how deeply sorry I am and this Government are for the failures that led to the tragedy. We accept that the inquiry’s final report must be a catalyst for a long-lasting system change. That message has been re-emphasised by the points raised today. That is why the Government accept the findings of the report and will take forward all the recommendations. Our response addresses all the recommendations and sets out wider reforms of social housing and the construction sector. Alongside this, we published a construction products Green Paper with detailed proposals for rigorous system-wide reform to address the critical gaps in how construction products are regulated.
Reforming construction products means that safety will come first. The culture that allowed the tragedy to happen will be transformed. We are focused on prioritising residents, ensuring that industry builds safe homes and providing transparency and accountability. In doing so, we will rebuild trust. The Government commit to publishing progress on implementing the inquiry recommendations every quarter from mid-2026. Also, we will provide an additional update to Parliament. The Government’s response is explicit on the need to bring about the transformational change that the people of this country deserve. As the Deputy Prime Minister said yesterday, to have anyone anywhere living in an unsafe home is one person too many. Yesterday I joined the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister Norris in meeting the bereaved and victims of the horrible tragedy. It was an emotional and difficult experience, but they need justice.
I will now focus on the issues raised by the noble Baronesses, Lady Scott and Lady Pinnock. On why we are not committing to meet the inquiry’s recommendation on the single regulator, we accept the inquiry’s recommendation and will create a single construction regulator. However, we must avoid creating a conflict of interest within the regulator. We do not believe it appropriate for a single regulator to undertake testing and certification of construction products and issue certificates of compliance. This would create a new conflict of interest within the regulator. It would set the rules, test and issue certificates, and police compliances with those rules. Through our Green Paper, we are putting forward wider measures to significantly strengthen conformity assessment in order to provide the confidence and rigour that is essential as part of that system-wide reform.
We are acting now through the regulators to ensure that enforcement action is taken against safety breaches and that new buildings meet our more rigorous standards. The new building safety regime is stopping bad designs becoming bad buildings. The inquiry exposed regulation of the construction industry as too complex and fragmented. Merging responsibility for regulating construction products and professionals, and monitoring the operation of building regulations, provides the best basis for a regulatory system with clear standards, no regulatory conflict and clarity and certainty on how the industry must conduct itself. In autumn 2025, we will set out further details of the pathway to establish the single regulator.
On the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, made, the Government accept all the inquiry’s findings and will take action on every recommendation directed at us. There are 58 in total. Where we have accepted nine recommendations in principle, we will deliver the intended outcome in a slightly different way, to ensure that it meets the aims and is a lasting success. We want to be clear that the Government accept all the inquiry’s findings and will take forward action on every recommendation.
The noble Baroness, Lady Scott, mentioned the remediation acceleration plan. I want to update the House. We are focused on speeding up remediation. The plan will create certainty about which buildings need remediation and who is responsible for that. The plan will make obligations for assessing, completing and regulating remediation clearer, with severe consequences for non-compliance, and give residents greater control in situations of acute harm where landlords have neglected their responsibilities. We will update regularly on that process. The legislative commitments are detailed in the remediation action plan.
On construction products, the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, asked what action the Government are taking to address criticisms over the key institutions found culpable in their role. The Government have taken full account of the criticisms in the inquiry report, including those of identified institutions. We are addressing those criticisms through the government response to recommendations, as set out in the Green Paper, as part of the measures for system-wide reform.
Baroness Sanderson of Welton (Con)
My Lords, I welcome the news that the Government have accepted all 58 of Sir Martin Moore-Bick’s recommendations—at least, I welcome it in principle, in the same way that the Government have accepted some of the key recommendations in principle.
Recommendation 25 asks
“that it be made a legal requirement for the Government to maintain a publicly accessible record of recommendations by select committees, coroners and public inquiries together with a description of the steps taken in response”.
The Government say they will establish a record on GOV.UK of all recommendations made by public inquiries since 2024, that they will consider making that a legal requirement, and that Ministers will commit to updating Parliament on progress on implementing recommendations.
The problem with this is that it is no different from what happens now. In all the inquiries that I have been involved with, we always get updates on GOV.UK, and, frankly, they do not satisfy anyone because they tend to be dry and unintelligible. Ministers come to Parliament to update us, as the Minister is doing now, but there is no mention of the suggestion that the Government need to detail the steps taken in response to recommendations. Instead, the Government talk about the recommendation of the House of Lords Statutory Inquiries Committee to establish a new committee to deliver that accountability. I sat on that committee and the response from the Government to that was, “This is a matter for Parliament”. I am not clear what is different now and where this gets us. If the Minister could explain that to me, I would be very grateful.
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for the points that she has eloquently raised. I did not mention this, but I pay tribute to the noble Baronesses, Lady Scott and Lady Pinnock, for the work they have done for many years on this issue, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, in her role as a government Minister in this area. I also pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Sanderson, for her work with the bereaved and victims’ families in this area.
On her particular points, we are taking forward the inquiry’s recommendation on oversight. There needs to be better accountability for and oversight of how recommendations are implemented. We totally accept that. Robust oversight of the Government’s implementation of the response is essential for this and for all public inquiries. The system needs to be improved, and we are taking forward the inquiry’s recommendations on oversight.
We will create a publicly accessible record on GOV.UK of recommendations made by public inquiries since 2024. We will consider making this a legal requirement as part of a wider review of the inquiry framework. My department will publish quarterly progress updates regarding the Grenfell inquiry recommendations on GOV.UK until they have all been delivered. We will report annually to Parliament, to enable Members to scrutinise our progress and hold us to account.
I say to the noble Baroness that my office is always available, and I am happy to sit down with her and noble Lords across the House if there is anything pertinent that they think the Government need to be doing more of.
Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)
My Lords, my point follows on nicely from that of the noble Baroness, Lady Sanderson. I do not find the Minister’s response totally satisfactory because, in the Government’s response to the Grenfell inquiry report, they accept the need for “robust” scrutiny of the implementation of the recommendations of both public inquiries and inquests. But transparency and accessibility by means of a public record of recommendations is not the same as robust scrutiny of implementation—they are two different things.
Both your Lordships’ Statutory Inquiries Select Committee and the Grenfell inquiry said there should be scrutiny by Parliament, and the Government’s response is silent on that crucial point. Without that, we are, frankly, no further forward. We have seen the disaster that happened at Grenfell following a failure to implement the recommendations of the Lakanal House inquest and the coroner’s prevention of future deaths report. If we had had robust scrutiny of implementation following the Lakanal House disaster, Grenfell probably would not have happened and certainly 72 lives would not have been lost. So are the Government prepared to accept that there needs to be scrutiny of implementation of public inquiry recommendations and inquest recommendations by Parliament?
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for making that point. The Government are committed to ensure lasting transparency and accountability by creating a publicly accessible record of all public inquiry recommendations. We need to learn from past mistakes to stop them being repeated and ensure that a clear process is there on reforms. As I said in my previous answer, we will report back to Parliament annually, ensure we have quarterly updates on GOV.UK and continue to meet families and victims.
I was with victims yesterday with the Deputy Prime Minister, listening to the concerns and, naturally, frustrations. Lasting transparency is important; we also want to commit to enforcing a legal duty of candour through a new Hillsborough law. Your Lordships may recall that this is something we have talked about. We need to compel public authorities to disclose the truth, ensuring transparency in major incidents, such as the one mentioned by the noble Lord. We want to hold those responsible for failings to account, and we are committed to that.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Fire Safety and Rescue. I thank the Minister for the information on PEEPs. When is “later in 2025”? It would be useful to know, and I look forward to seeing the detail. I remain concerned that the detail is not quite as clear as some of us with disabilities would like.
Following on from the other points noble Lords have made about the recommendations in principle, with recommendations 43 and 48 it seems that the Government are not quite doing it in full because it sounds like, first, it is onerous and, secondly, it might cost money. Yet one is dealing with voluntary organisations as first responders, and the second, and in my view much more important one, is about codifying the training required for local authorities and other category 1 responders. Why are they only in principle and not accepted in full, with the resources needed?
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
My Lords, on the question on PEEPs, the Government have committed funding this year, 2025-26, to begin this important work by supporting social housing providers to deliver residential PEEPs for their renters. Future years funding will be considered at the upcoming spending review. I will come back to the noble Baroness on which part of the year in particular.
The noble Baroness asked why we are not accepting those recommendations in full. I want to be clear: we accept all the inquiry’s findings and will address all the recommendations. However, we have to look at how we work through the recommendations. The commitment is clear—we accept them in principle. But there are different ways of dealing with this. As I said to her on the previous issue about the single regulator, there are some conflicts and we want to make sure that we do this, which is long-lasting, sustainable, makes a difference to people’s lives, and makes people feel comfortable and confident in the system as something they believe in.
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, I want briefly to highlight that the Grenfell United bereaved families and survivors group said that a single construction regulator could be a significant step forward if it was well resourced and tough on industry failure. How will His Majesty’s Government ensure that the new regulator will be totally independent and have impartial oversight?
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Earl makes a good point. We will create a new single construction regulator to bring together oversight and enforcement. This will close gaps in regulation and ensure that those responsible for building safety are held to account. We accept the recommendations and will respond to them. That is something we are working on but, as I said earlier, we have to work through this. As we accept the recommendations in full, we need to do it in a way that does not have any conflicts of interest. It will take time, but rest assured that, for the issue the noble Earl raised, we will take that back, feed it into the system and ensure that we cover the pertinent points he raised.
Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)
My Lords, given the rigour, skill and knowledge shown by Sir Martin Moore-Bick, and taking into account the question asked earlier by my noble friend, will the Government consider inviting Sir Martin in one year’s time and in two years’ time to prepare a short report on the implementation of his recommendations? I am sure that the public and this House would deem it to be of great value.
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, as always, makes a very important point. We are working on the response to Sir Martin’s report. We accept the inquiry’s findings and will address all the recommendations. I will take that suggestion away and we will have conversations to ensure that we deal with the recommendations and work through all of them. We will explore the opportunity for noble Lords, if not here then in another setting, to have an opportunity to listen to Sir Martin’s recommendations and how the Government are doing.
The Earl of Lytton (CB)
My Lords, I welcome the report from Sir Martin Moore-Bick and the Government’s Statement, but there is a legacy issue from what was put in place by the previous Government in terms of support measures for a defined range of properties considered most at risk following the tragedy. In light of the measures put in place concerning remediation under PAS 9980, which is the relevant standard, can the Minister explain what steps are now proposed to prevent that proportionate approach—bearing in mind there is an issue between critical life safety on the one hand and the safety of the building on the other hand? Those are two different risks. What does he propose to prevent that proportionate standard? There is also the issue of the lack of the Building Safety Regulator powers in relation to avoiding full remediation responsibilities where building regulation standards at the time of construction had not been met. The problem is continuing to impede remediation and to trap innocent homeowners with high insurance costs. I wonder if he could comment on that. He may need to write to me.
Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)
My Lords, I kindly accept the invitation to write to the noble Earl, due to the specific nature of the very important question he raised.