Future of the Post Office

Debate between Baroness Jones of Whitchurch and Lord Beamish

Monday 18th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

First, I pay tribute to the noble Lord for all the work he has done on this over the years. Nobody knows the challenges better than he does, and I absolutely agree: there is potentially a rosy future for post offices in exactly the way he described—as a network of basic service provision hubs, in addition to the banking hubs that we also see expanding. We need to ensure that we get the finances of this right, but we can all see the potential of the Post Office network to provide far more than it already does. It can provide a community hub, in the way that we were just talking about, but also a public service hub. Particularly as we move towards a lot of services being digital and online, post offices will have a role to provide for people who are digitally excluded in some way, so that they have that point of contact and a person can help them access those services, face to face. They have an essential role in the future, in the way that the noble Lord talked of.

[Lord Beamish (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a member of the Post Office Horizon Compensation Advisory Board. Along with my good friend the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, I have been campaigning on this for over 15 years, and the toxic culture of the Post Office is very clear to me. It goes very deep. From the Post Office inquiry, it is clear that individual investigators pursued individual sub-postmasters in a vicious way.

What has been done to ensure that those individuals no longer work for the Post Office? Separately, what role have the Government taken regarding Fujitsu? Have they approached Fujitsu to ensure that it pays proper compensation for its role in this national scandal?

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

I pay tribute to my noble friend for his considerable work campaigning on this issue. We all owe him a debt of gratitude for that. He is right that there is a toxic culture from the top down. I, and my department, believe that the new leadership at the Post Office will address that issue from the top down. That is partly to do with some of the individuals who are still there, and we are waiting for the result of the inquiry before we can potentially take any action against them. There are issues too about the senior pay of too many people at the Post Office. Quite frankly, we need to rationalise it and make it fit for the 21st century from the top down. That is the way we are approaching this issue.

With regard to Fujitsu, again, my noble friend will know that we are trying to find a way to embed a new system that will replace Horizon. Work is ongoing to make sure that this is happening; it is not happening as quickly as we would like. Fujitsu is, in a sense, still providing some of the services because we do not have an alternative to provide them at the moment. The sooner we can get a modern IT system that is fit for purpose into the Post Office the better. We are working towards being able to do that.