Post Office (Horizon System) Compensation Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

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

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, this Bill is welcome because we needed to see some action from the Government. It is very good, but of course there are a lot of questions that remain to be answered. I am curious about how many of these will get an answer over the next few years.

Where did the sub-postmasters’ money go? Did it pay for the bonuses of those who prosecuted them? Did Fujitsu ever get fined or even suffer any consequences for the failures of the Horizon system? Is it going to suffer in the future? At the moment, the taxpayer is covering the cost of the government redress scheme, but when do we get some of that money back from the people who made a profit or claimed a bonus as a result of destroying the lives of thousands of sub-postmasters?

What are the lessons we should learn, not just from this horrendous injustice but from the common themes of numerous modern scandals? We have had Hillsborough, which turned victims into pariahs as the establishment closed ranks. There was the “spy cops” scandal, with its denial of systematic abuse and cover-up, and the institutional racism of the Windrush scandal, which has its echoes in the racial profiling of sub-postmasters. All these are examples of how the establishment closes ranks and blocks progress. There is no recognition of how our democracy is failing to deliver for ordinary people.

There are so many awful things about the scandal of how the Post Office treated its sub-postmasters: the lies and threats used to isolate people and make them feel alone; the vicious use of courts to silence complaints about a flawed computer system; a system of corporate bonuses designed to encourage malicious acts against innocent people; and, of course, legal teams and professionals who lost their moral compass. This is David versus Goliath: a Goliath that was a private corporation, backed by the state and able to destroy people’s lives one by one. At least 236 sub-postmasters were sent to prison for offences they did not commit. Many have died poor and some committed suicide. Over 3,000 had their names dragged through the mud.

It is absolutely incredible that the sub-postmasters have had the resilience to get together and win. I am in awe of their tenacity and their patience—except, of course, they have not won yet. In the last decade, they have been deceived and messed around with previous compensation schemes. Fujitsu remains a favoured government contractor. In fact, it has won nearly 200 public sector contracts worth nearly £7 billion. When the sub-postmasters are cleared and their names are removed from the criminal records database, guess who has the contract to do that? Fujitsu. Is it, perhaps, too big to fail? Is it considered irreplaceable, or are there other reasons for continuing to use it?

It was the Post Office that relentlessly persecuted the sub-postmasters, but Fujitsu provided the expert witnesses in court to declare that it was the “Fort Knox” of software. It effectively pointed the blame at the sub-postmasters and away from the company, yet it now acknowledges that there were bugs and errors right from the start. Why, then, has Fujitsu been involved in £4.9 billion of solo and joint public sector contracts after the December 2019 ruling, including £3.6 billion during Sunak’s time as Chancellor and now Prime Minister?

Is it the close ties with Conservative Party donors, such as Simon Blagden, who stepped down as non-executive director at Fujitsu UK in 2019? He was a man who, along with companies he is associated with, has donated £376,000 to the Tories since 2005. Or the 2019 donation by Fujitsu Services Ltd of £14,000—peanuts, really—or the £21,000 to the Conservatives to run the Blue Room at their conference in 2015?

I am now going to offer some solutions, because I do not like to criticise without coming up with something positive to say afterwards. I suggest that the Government now take three immediate steps. They should hand back donations from those linked with Fujitsu. That is a role for the Conservative Party. They should have a moratorium on Fujitsu public sector contracts until the public inquiry reports. There should be a pause in using Fujitsu until we understand exactly what it did. They should pay the redress money as soon as possible, but get back as much from Fujitsu as possible. I see no reason why the taxpayer should carry the burden of most of the redress money. I would really like to point out that there are more questions raised now than answered. It would look very good from the Government’s point of view if they could, perhaps, answer some of those questions before the public inquiry does.