Post Office Ltd

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Tuesday 30th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

In the Commons on 10 January, the Prime Minister promised that postmasters would be cleared and compensated swiftly. That same day, Minister Kevin Hollinrake said at the Dispatch Box that all compensation should be paid by August, which is encouraging after many years of delay. However, last Sunday, the Secretary of State Kemi Badenoch said on the BBC that setting a deadline is “not a priority” and that getting the money out and sorting out the governance of the Post Office is the critical thing. Which is it—that the compensation should be paid by August, or that a deadline is not a priority?

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her question. We have to clarify that what we are doing here is separating their compensation, so that it is done as immediately and expeditiously as possible. Then we will do fact-finding through the inquiry and accountability will follow. The Prime Minister and Secretary of State have said that there will be no deadline put in place, partly because this is a complex process that requires the postmasters to co-operate and come forward. Of the 2,417 postmasters in the HSS scheme, 100% have received offers, of which 80% have been accepted. We are making great progress.

Post Office (Horizon System) Compensation Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

2nd reading & Committee negatived & 3rd reading
Tuesday 16th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, we have had an extraordinary debate on compensation, exoneration and accountability, but this very short, two-clause paving legislation to grant the power to incur expenditure in relation to compensation for the victims—the postmasters and postmistresses—is absolutely vital. However, the detail that we have been discussing is not in this Bill. For the short term, the actual scheme for this particular compensation package is something that I hope the Government will take notice of. But there is time for politicians of all parties to review the entire nature of compensation schemes and the way they work. This is just one of many schemes that have gone wrong in the administration, and we must look at that.

We were reminded by the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, of the repeated abuse of the human rights of the postmasters in this whole process over the years. They were let down by organisation after organisation. We must have the postmasters at the heart of any debate that we have about this. It is an appalling miscarriage of justice. We were reminded of the personal sacrifice of many postmasters by the noble Lord, Lord Weir, and the risks that they face before they have to start looking at their accounting packages—but worse is that they are still waiting for justice and many, as we have heard, are waiting to receive compensation or redress.

My noble friend Lord Palmer talked about the presumption of innocence, and that must be essential for getting to exoneration. The postmasters, led by the absolutely admirable Alan Bates—who is as modest as the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot—have fought for decades to get to the truth of what happened and to clear their names. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, referred to lobby correspondents and other media, but there have been some extraordinary journalists over the years. He referred to Rebecca Thomson and Karl Flinders of Computer Weekly, but Private Eye has covered this story for decades, as has Nick Wallis at the BBC, and John Sweeney’s “Panorama” in 2015 was done at an absolutely key time.

All of that happened before Paula Vennells was even the chief executive of the Post Office. I am very grateful for the comments that the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, made about politicians. One of the problems with how our press works at the moment is that there tends to be one person that they talk about. There have been other chief executives and other senior directors of Post Office Ltd during the really difficult time when it was becoming apparent behind the scenes that there were problems. Today is not just about those who need to be held accountable in the future, but that must happen in due course. The contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, about the role of auditors, was very timely and very important. This would not be the first audit scandal of the last few years.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, quoted from today’s comments by Fujitsu. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said it had been 20 years, but it is clear that the problems started just after Peter Lilley MP signed off the pilot in 1994. Even then, the pilot postmasters were reporting problems—in 1995, 1996 and 1997. It goes right back. This is not party-political. I am just making the point that Fujitsu and the Post Office both knew that there were problems before the rollout started in 1999.

The Father of the House, Sir Peter Bottomley, said last week:

“The titanic error was the belief in technology”.—[Official Report, Commons, 8/1/24; col. 86.]


However, every day, including today—the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, mentioned Fujitsu’s testimony to the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee—more is revealed about what the company knew, even from prior to the rollout, as I have just mentioned. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, talked about the chief executive admitting today that funds that postmasters were forced to pay may have gone into executive pay. If that is true, it is an absolute disgrace.

The noble Lord, Lord Browne, and others, talked about computer problems. I am married to an engineer. He is not a software engineer, but he deals with software in the things that he designs. One of my foster children is a software engineer. They look at each other with raised eyebrows and talk about “garbage in, garbage out”. “Garbage in” is done by people, not by computers. The problem that the noble Lord, Lord Browne, raises, is, “Will that happen in the future?” We have to hold Fujitsu to account for those errors, which it then clearly did nothing about. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said that he felt ashamed. I feel ashamed too. I want to quote from Professor Graham Zellick KC, the former chairman of the Criminal Cases Review Commission. He was angrier than we are. He said:

““I am enraged. I think this is deplorable. It is inexcusable. It is a failure of public administration and government without precedent. It makes one’s blood boil”.


I hope that we continue with that strength of feeling as we move into the next stage and the drama moves out of the limelight, because we must learn lessons from this. The Secret Barrister—some noble Lords may follow him on Twitter/X—said:

“As the issue of compensation for miscarriages of justice is rightly in the news, it’s timely to note that in 2014, the government changed the law to make it all but impossible for people wrongly convicted and imprisoned to claim compensation”.


Much has already been said in this debate, but I want to go on to talk briefly about the future. Various Members have talked about the problems that people in the HSS—the Horizon shortfall scheme, now known as the historic shortfall scheme—have had with the application form. The noble Lord, Lord Sikka, referred to a case where someone claimed only £15.75 because he did not understand the form; there was a reference in it to looking at Appendix 1, but it was so impenetrable that he thought it did not apply to him.

Another case cited by Dan Neidle, who runs Tax Policy Associates, concerned someone who was made bankrupt, lost his post office in a fire sale and has been offered £8,000. The numbers of people receiving offers from Post Office Ltd for compensation are good, but if compensation is at that level, it is not good and it is inappropriate. We need a more transparent mechanism to streamline the current complex arrangements, which Government after Government have created with crisis after crisis, to have what amounts to two and a half schemes running—the GLO and the HSS scheme and then the new review scheme that was announced 10 days ago.

Dan Neidle says we should probably follow the example of employment tribunals. For example, why are sub-postmasters not allowed a grant for legal advice before they put in their applications? They should be. There should be a larger fixed amount for damages; cases are different, but everyone who has been involved, whether they have been convicted or not, has lost income, often their job and their home, and been unable to work at the level they were working at before because of the threats they were under. Redress needs to reflect their loss of earnings. They should also receive the very specific amounts of money that they were forced to pay back—not compensation. They should be paid back the money they had to pay in error. The idea of those who were convicted and imprisoned having to pay charges for bed and breakfast from their compensation is an absolute outrage that should not be allowed. On occasion, there will be specific damage above and beyond that outlined which might, for example, cover a suicide in a family or those who have had strokes.

Finally, we should consider a complete change to the way in which these compensation schemes operate. Next week in Committee on the Victims and Prisoners Bill, we have an amendment on the infected blood scheme. We are still waiting for the details of the interim payments. The first young people were infected in the mid-1970s—it cannot go on like this. Others have spoken about the Windrush scheme; I would raise Hillsborough and Grenfell, where there are similarly complex arrangements. Surely, now is the time to consult on future arrangements for compensation schemes, including whether they should remain with government or be independent, so we can be sure that we have a reliable, independent, swift and fair scheme that cannot be constantly adjusted, ignored or delayed, particularly by politicians.

Employment Rights (Amendment, Revocation and Transitional Provision) Regulations 2023

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Wednesday 13th December 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in this debate. It is a particular pleasure to be under the chairmanship of my noble friend Lord Stansgate. We are long-term colleagues; we worked together many years ago. As I said, it is a pleasure to see him in the chair.

My noble friend Lord Hendy has really said it all. I have very little to add, but I will say something specifically about the TUPE regulations to make it clear to the Minister and the Government in general that people do care, that these provisions are important and valid, and that they deliver real benefits to workers.

No doubt the Minister will tell us in his reply that the changes proposed are very limited, which raises the question of why the Government are bothering to make these changes. There is no evidence presented to us that in any way suggests that there was an upswell of demand to get rid of these provisions. It is as if the civil servants—the officials—were told, “We’ve got to show that we’re doing something with these new powers”. On this provision, the TUPE part—I make no comment on the other parts of the regulations—it is as if they were told, “Let’s work out what’s the smallest change we can possibly make to claim that Brexit is having some advantage”. What is that big advantage? Some people are not necessarily going to be consulted if they had been consulted previously.

The results of the consultation as presented to us were very much as one would expect. When asked, “Would you like to get rid of this requirement?”, some people said “Yes, we would”. Equally, there were a lot more people who said, “No, we still need these protections”. In truth, the consultation told us nothing that we did not already know.

I emphasise that the changes are limited, but I am still against them on the grounds of death by a thousand cuts. If you come back and chip away at workers’ rights time after time, sooner or later you find that there are serious depredations in the protection that we rightly provide for working people. Will the Minister repeat, for the purposes of this Committee, the reassuring remarks that were made in the Government’s response to the consultation? In particular, they said:

“The government agrees that the TUPE regulations provide important protections for employees, and they provide a strong legal framework for staff transfers”


and went on to say that

“workers’ rights will continue to be protected”.

Earlier in that response, talking specifically about the concerns many trade unions had expressed that this was an incremental move against their rights, the Government stated:

“In response to concerns about the TULRCA, the government would like to reassure respondents that the reforms we are proposing will not affect how”


the Act

“works. Employers will still be prohibited from undermining collective bargaining in breach of Section 145B”

of that Act. Will the Minister simply reassure this Committee that the Government stick by those commitments?

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I will make two very brief interventions on this. There is not much left to say, following the noble Lords, Lord Hendy and Lord Davies of Brixton, but it is important just to note a couple of things.

First, from these Benches, we contest the assumption of the Government that implementing the 2019 judgment to the CJEU, known as the CCOO case, would be

“disproportionate, particularly while the economy is recovering from the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the impacts of war in Ukraine”.

I can completely understand the concern about the effect of the pandemic. Having been health spokesperson during the first three years of it, I really understand why that is the case. But I struggle to understand exactly what the effect of the war in Ukraine is on record keeping by employers. I would be grateful if the Minister could give me some guidance on that, because I do not see a logic.

Secondly, the Government keep talking about using artificial intelligence to reduce bureaucracy. Many companies already use such systems. The hand-written timekeeping systems that I used in my youth are long gone. Even the spreadsheets of a decade ago are gone. One now fills in something that feeds straight back into a database that runs the organisation. It takes far more information than just the 15 minutes of work, or whatever it is, on a particular project, and it is then used to assess the progress of the company and the progress of individuals—whether some of that is right or not is another matter, but it is there. It seems to me that a Government who are arguing that we should be focusing on using AI are—by saying, “Actually, we’re assuming there is a massive burden”—not keeping up with what is happening in the workplace at the moment. So can the Minister explain this massive burden, in the light of the way that records are currently kept by most organisations?