Renewable Energy

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Tuesday 15th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The noble Lord will understand that the spending review is of course a matter for the Treasury and that I cannot comment ahead of its decisions. However, we are prioritising investment in the renewables sector. We are accelerating new capacity through the contracts for difference scheme, which gives us certainty to drive private sector investment and has been very successful in driving down costs.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab) [V]]

I am grateful to the Minister for that Answer. Do the Government have any plans to go above the 65% renewables target in this NIC report? Secondly—[Inaudible]—the Government not to build any more nuclear power stations. Based on Hinkley Point’s mushrooming costs, which are even higher than HS2’s, they would do better to carry on with more renewables, as the report shows that their costs are coming down significantly.

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I think I caught most of that question. The noble Lord is correct that renewables such as wind and solar are now some of the cheapest forms of generation per unit. These technologies are key to meeting net zero but will need to be complemented by other sources of power, including nuclear, which are available when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine.

Trade Bill

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 8th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to introduce the House in this debate to the Luxembourg Rail Protocol, which needs a minor amendment to the Trade Bill. It would enable the Government to move forward with ratification, which would help rail operators and manufacturers encourage foreign investment into the UK and support UK exports of rail equipment. It mirrors something which has existed for some years in the air sector, and it is caused by a problem of getting finance for things that move and can be taken away.

To introduce it very quickly, the Luxembourg Rail Protocol to the Cape Town convention is an international treaty which will make it easier and cheaper for the private sector to finance all types of railway rolling stock, from locomotives to passenger and freight wagons, metro trains and trams, and so on. I believe from earlier discussions that it has government and cross-party support, and it needs a statutory instrument, as long as that is authorised by primary legislation. The protocol to the Cape Town convention creates a new global system for protecting and prioritising creditor rights in relation to secured financing or leasing of all types of rolling stock. This includes a facility to register security interests in an international registry, and it is the first common global system for uniquely identifying rail equipment. As noble Lords will know, rail equipment, like aircraft, has a habit of being moved if it is in the owner’s interest to do so.

It reduces creditor risk, the legal cost of financing and the cost of capital, and will relieve central and local government of the burden of financing or underwriting the procurement of new rail equipment. It will also provide the opportunity for government to refinance cost-effectively existing equipment. Of course, for exporters of rail equipment, which we hope will continue and grow after Brexit, the treaty will make manufacturers more competitive, particularly by levelling the playing field against Chinese competition, which many industries fear quite a lot. It will create valuable new markets and facilitate lower risks.

As I said, the UK has already adopted the Cape Town convention’s protocol applying to aircraft. It has signed but not ratified the rail protocol. Post Covid, this is all very important, so I propose to put down a few small amendments to Clause 2 to allow this convention to be ratified within the wider definition of the implementation of international trade agreements.

Post Office: Horizon Accounting System

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I have spoken to the chief executive of the Post Office, as has my ministerial colleague who is responsible for this matter. We are conveying the strongest possible message that the Post Office of course needs to have a strong and robust relationship with its sub-postmasters.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to be here; I thought I might have to be scratched as my train was late. The Minister has said that there was a substantial award against the Post Office, but every noble Lord who has spoken has pointed out that most of that went on legal fees. Is it not the duty of the Government to properly compensate the people who have incurred this loss?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I am pleased that the noble Lord’s train was not late. I understand the frustration expressed by noble Lords. When I first saw the award, I shared some of that frustration, but that was the process and that was the judicial outcome. There is a separate historical shortfall scheme, which the Post Office is following. We believe that this is the appropriate way for compensation to be awarded.

Competition and Markets Authority

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Thursday 25th June 2020 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Berkeley]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to ensure that the interests of (1) consumers, and (2) businesses, in the United Kingdom, are independently and fairly looked after following the resignation of the Chairman of the Competition and Markets Authority.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lord Callanan) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government are committed to ensuring that markets work well for consumers and businesses and have already ensured that the Competition and Markets Authority has significant powers to investigate and act if it finds that companies are behaving anti-competitively in a market. The CMA will continue to carry out its important functions. We will announce next steps on recruitment for a new chair in due course.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer. Does he agree that, for the CMA to do its job properly and enable business to plan in relation to Brexit, the Government must have a robust, updated and properly structured competition policy? I heard what he said, but how will this be achieved? On the latest information I have, the CMA responded with a comprehensive plan on 21 February 2019. Since then, there has been nothing until a letter to the chair of the EU Select Committee arrived at 11.02 this morning; I declare an interest as a member of its sub-committee. Will the Government urgently introduce legislation on competition policies to support consumers in the UK and UK business?

Post Office: Horizon Accounting System

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Tuesday 25th February 2020 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Lord Berkeley]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they intend to take in response to the judgment in Bates v Post Office [2019] EWHC 3408; and whether they intend to take any action against the directors responsible for the Horizon Accounting System.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, I am pleased to have secured this debate. It comes only a couple of weeks after a very useful Starred Question from the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, who has been working on this campaign for years. Good luck to him. I also pay tribute to the journalist Nick Wallis and Private Eye, who have been keeping this issue going. It is a 10-year campaign for justice by hundreds of sub-postmasters who have been really badly treated by the Post Office.

I will concentrate on how those who have suffered will be compensated and what action, if any, will be taken against the perpetrators. Noble Lords will know that the number of personal tragedies has grown over the years. I will quote just one about Mr Gary Brown from Rawcliffe in Yorkshire, who produced a very long and sad description of what happened. After several years of the Horizon system charging him for what he did not owe, he ended up with a till £32,000 short, which, for a small trader, is appalling. The computer said that he was short, so what did he do? He called the auditors. The Post Office interviewed him and searched his house. In the end, he had to sell his house and he was desolate, all because Royal Mail refused to believe that its Horizon system was faulty.

Luckily, Mr Brown and others suddenly discovered they were not alone. He was among hundreds of sub-postmasters from the 11,000-odd branches who were suffering from these accounting discrepancies. Many complained that they were not to blame and that the Horizon system was at fault. Many were accused of stealing money. That is a really serious accusation for a small business. Some had to pay the Post Office tens of thousands of pounds and many lost their businesses, but they formed this group of 500-odd sub-postmasters to take forward a campaign, which culminated in a judgment last December, which we have talked about before but we need to talk about again.

The judgment is against the Post Office and has some pretty horrible comments about Fujitsu. Mr Justice Fraser saved some of his harshest words for Fujitsu, which runs Horizon. To quote Private Eye, he found that

“‘on too many occasions’ Fujitsu personnel knowingly entered incorrect codes when closing enquiries, blaming ‘user error’ when they had already concluded this wasn’t the case.”

That is a criminal thing to do to these small businesses.

It is worth quoting some of Mr Justice Fraser’s judgment. He said:

“The approach by the Post Office to the evidence of someone such as Mr Latif demonstrates a simple institutional obstinacy or refusal to consider any possible alternatives to their view of Horizon, which was maintained regardless of the weight of factual evidence to the contrary.”


This went on for a year, when the Post Office tried to get Mr Justice Fraser removed because he did not agree with it—it is wonderful to get rid of a judge if you do not like him. He concluded:

“This approach by the Post Office has amounted, in reality, to bare assertions and denials that ignore what has actually occurred … It amounts to the 21st century equivalent of maintaining that the earth is flat.”


That is a pretty strong judgment. After many attempts, the Post Office finally had to give up and accept that this was the answer.

So who is to blame, and what next? The Post Office is managed by BEIS, and one has to ask who was on watch over these 10 years. We started off with the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, and then it was Vince Cable, then Sajid Javid and of course there were many junior Ministers—I will not read out a long list of them. But what did they do about their company on our behalf, which was abusing its position and defrauding perhaps 10,000 postmasters of their health and livelihood?

I have not found any serious apologies for this yet. When we discussed this in a Starred Question on 4 February, the noble Lord, Lord Duncan, apologised and the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, also mentioned that she had been a Minister. They were genuine, but who was running the Post Office then? It was Adam Crozier from 2003 to 2010. Moya Greene took over and split the Post Office and the Royal Mail and then Paula Vennells was in charge from 2012 to 2019. She was quoted in some of the Government’s public relations papers as the chief executive who took the Post Office from a £120 million loss to breaking even. According to the Daily Mail, she was paid £3.7 million in six years. But, more importantly, she was presiding over a company that tried every means at its disposal to deny, obfuscate and challenge in court any attempt by the sub-postmasters to get an independent inquiry into the failures of the IT system and compensation, which is pretty rich. Of course, as ever, because she then left, she has been promoted to run something in the health service.

The judge found against the Post Office on all counts and awarded the postmasters £58 million, but it was quite clear that most of that will go on legal costs. How can you achieve £58 million in legal costs? Of course you had a Post Office that kept on challenging things. Fujitsu also behaved in a manner that might be seen to be criminal or dishonest—I do not know—but it is a question that needs to be answered. Maybe there should be an independent public inquiry. That is the only answer.

So what will the Government do to provide some proper compensation to the victims of the failure—it may be fraud and greed—of the company that we as taxpayers are supposed to own? It is easier to spin out legal processes for years and avoid blaming anyone in the Post Office, officials, Ministers and so forth, but should there be a public inquiry? Should there be action against Fujitsu over Horizon? I do not know. But the postmasters, who reasonably believed that the Government and their company—our company—would behave in an open, honest and transparent way, have been very badly let down. They deserve urgent and generous compensation.

I welcome the helpful remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Duncan, the other day as far as they went, and I hope that our new Minister will be equally helpful and supportive of an urgent resolution. But there is also a need for the Government and Parliament to review how senior people, who clearly failed and brought their companies into disrepute, are moved and promoted, while those whom they destroyed are left to suffer with nowhere to go.

I have one last thought. Ten years ago, the Royal Mail included the Post Office, which now issues stamps with the Queen’s head on them, so one might expect the Queen and other members of the Royal Family to feel some attachment to the Post Office. As noble Lords know, I have had some questions about royal and Duchy finances, but I have never had cause to question their business ethics or employment practices—and I would not. But we can be sure that they would never stoop to such appalling treatment of their lowest paid staff as forcing them into penury or worse as their Government have done. This should have been the approach of Ministers and directors of the Post Office. They failed miserably and we must make amends. The Government must make amends and compensate all those affected.