Post Office (Horizon System) Compensation Bill

Baroness Hoey Excerpts

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

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, it is a huge pleasure to follow the noble Lord, who has probably spoken for those people watching and listening tonight. What he is saying is that there needs to be a real, deep-rooted look at how we work generally within Government and in Parliament, and particularly with the civil servants. I agree so much about the Post Office board.

I thank the Minister for his very sincere and clear outline of the Bill. It is rare on a Second Reading to get so much agreement between everyone. One or two things I would not necessarily agree with, but most of what has been said tonight I absolutely agree with. This is the first time for a little while that I have seen a Bill that actually includes Northern Ireland. I thank the Government for this because of course dozens of people went to prison in Northern Ireland too. I am very pleased about that.

The Bill is about compensation, but the reality, as has been said by other noble Lords, is that no amount of money will bring those people who took their own lives back to their families, no amount of money will replace the time that people spent in prison, and no amount of money will help take away that terrible trauma we know those men and women felt when they knew that their local community—which they had loved, trusted and worked with—was looking at them in a different way, because there was always this idea that there was no smoke without fire. The point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, and her explanation of exoneration is so important. It is not just about compensation. Money cannot replace all of those things. However, of course it is important that we deal with that quickly, and that is why it is good also that the time limit is being extended if necessary.

I want to say a few words about Fujitsu. I find it shocking that today we saw Fujitsu’s European boss, Paul Patterson, tell MPs, as has already been mentioned:

“We were involved from the very start. We did have bugs and errors in the system and we did help the Post Office in their prosecutions of the sub-postmasters and for that we are truly sorry”.


Fujitsu’s website says:

“For over 40 years, Fujitsu has been a trusted provider to the public sector through the delivery of nationally critical services”.


I say to the Government that it is inexplicable to me that they could continue to give contracts at this stage to that company. Paul Patterson also said today, “We all make mistakes”, but the reality is that Fujitsu lied. That is not making a mistake.

On the moral obligation to contribute to the compensation scheme that has been mentioned, we have to be clear that Fujitsu is going to be made to pay huge amounts of money. As the noble Baroness said, it should not be the taxpayer picking up the tab; it should come from those who were at fault.

I am sorry if it seems as though I always come back to Northern Ireland, but Fujitsu has the contract for the Trader Support Service. I got an answer to my Question about how much it has been paid. It is a Fujitsu-led consortium and it is very expensive: so far, from August 2020 to August 2023, it has spent £411.6 million on the scheme. Apparently, Fujitsu suggested when it got the contract that it had the capacity to make the Irish Sea border work smoothly, and that is why it got all this public money.

However, hauliers are already saying that despite getting this huge amount of government money, Fujitsu is not providing a smooth service. The wonderful technology that it went on about is still struggling to deal with things such as mixed loads going across and the whole way that groupage works. We need to ask why Fujitsu was given that contract, why it cannot now have that contract removed, whether it can deliver and whether it has been overpaid. If the Government were simply to restore Article 6, that money could be given to many of the people who have suffered under the Horizon scheme and under the overall control of Fujitsu.

Tonight is important because we are moving on. I welcome that things have moved so quickly in the last short while. I add my tribute to all noble Lords who have been talking about this and trying to do something about it for many years, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot. I hope that we can now work out the compensation, but accountability is the crucial bit. We cannot let these people get away with this. We cannot let them continue to think that they can simply go back to people who complain about anything to do with the public sector and tell them that they know best and technology knows best.

I welcome this measure. I am glad that we have been able, finally, to move it forward as quickly as we can.