Post Office: Capture System

Debate between Lord Hain and Baroness Jones of Whitchurch

Thursday 12th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for that. The proposal for the Horizon cases from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett, related to the Lord Chancellor taking a power to refer cases to the Court of Appeal, and putting in place a statutory presumption that any convictions are unsafe unless there is evidence to the contrary. As noble Lords will know, this would represent a significant departure from existing appeals processes, and any further exploration of such an approach would need careful consideration, not just for this case but potentially for others. That is not to say we are dismissing it; it would be under review. I emphasise that, unlike Horizon, we do not yet have evidence that the flaws in the Capture system resulted in wrongful convictions. In fact, the Kroll report is clear on this point, stating:

“Kroll does not provide comment on whether any convictions arising from sub-postmasters using Capture could be considered unsafe”.


Part of the problem with the Kroll report is that because it related to the 1990s it had some difficulty in getting the documentation to assess whether that was the case.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, can I ask Ministers to be absolutely sure that there is no cover-up, as happened so scandalously with Horizon? Surely the plight of the sub-postmasters under Capture, as the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, said, is exactly the same as under Horizon, except that the convicted Capture sub-postmasters were badly treated more than 20 years ago and have suffered ever since without any redress. All that time, the accounting officer for the Post Office was a Civil Service Permanent Secretary and the Government had their own appointee on the Post Office board. Will Ministers ensure that these sub-postmasters get the justice denied to them for so long and are not forced to go to court to do so?

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I hope my noble friend will bear with us, because we are coming back with a response on the Capture system next week, so I am sorry I am not able to answer on the detail of that. On the current ownership and governance arrangements, we are committed to a Green Paper looking at those relationships between the Post Office and the Government. It will be published in the early part of next year and will address issues about the involvement and representation on the board that my noble friend has raised.

Queen’s Speech

Debate between Lord Hain and Baroness Jones of Whitchurch

Thursday 17th October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

Absolutely. That was a world crisis that we were dealing with, and would have carried on dealing with if we had been given the opportunity. The Government’s response to that crisis, which was to drive down austerity for nine years, has done nothing to improve the economy, as we have seen and as I have just outlined. So I do not think we can take lessons from the current Government on how to maintain economic security.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My noble friend might also remind the noble Baroness who interjected on her that until the financial crisis borrowing was actually at record lows— lower than we inherited from the Major Government—and the national debt was low. We were running sound public finances. It was the global credit crunch that blew that out of the water, not Labour government policies.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

I am grateful to my noble friend, and of course I concur with his analysis.

I want to talk about what we believe is the Government’s legacy on the biggest crisis of our generation: the impact of climate change. Of course we welcome the announcement of the new Environment Bill, which is very long-awaited, and we look forward to giving it robust and energetic scrutiny when it arrives in this House. We will want to see legally binding targets on air quality, water, waste and biodiversity, and we want to ensure that the Office for Environmental Protection has the necessary powers to hold the Government and public authorities properly to account.

However, the Bill deals with only one department’s contribution to improving our environment and cutting carbon emissions, when what is needed is a whole-government plan on a transformative scale to tackle the climate change emergency. According to the Committee on Climate Change, the UK is way off target to meet its fourth carbon budget of 2023 to 2027 and its fifth carbon budget of 2028 to 2032. Last year the committee set out 25 headline policy actions for the year ahead, but 12 months later only one has been delivered in full and 10 of the actions have not even shown partial progress. The noble Lord, Lord Deben, who chairs the committee, was absolutely right when he said recently, “The whole thing is run by the Government like ‘Dad’s Army’. We can’t possibly go on with this ramshackle system. It doesn’t begin to face the issues”.

The young people of this country understand the climate change emergency all too well, and even some of us crusties understand why the time for action is now. Sadly, the Government consistently fail to give the issue the priority it demands, and this Queen’s Speech represents another failed opportunity. For example, in energy, the collapse of the Government’s new nuclear programme, combined with their opposition to onshore wind and their removal of support for other forms of energy, raises huge questions about how we will source our energy by 2030 and beyond. The Government’s offshore wind sector deal is a helpful step, but there are no consequences if the targets are not met. As we know, the Government’s closure of access to the feed-in tariff for solar power sabotaged the industry before it really got going, with new installations falling by some 90%.

Meanwhile, the Government have failed to capitalise on the enormous potential of tidal power, with first the Severn barrage and now the Swansea Bay project failing to win government support. Instead, the Government seem intent on promoting fracking in the face of overwhelming local opposition to the air pollution, earthquakes and risks to local water quality that it would bring about. Where is the energy Bill in this Queen’s Speech that would deliver the transformation to renewables essential to meeting our climate change targets?

Similarly, we know that transport is the most emitting sector of the UK responsibility, responsible for 27% of our greenhouse gas emissions. Yet it is also the worst performing sector when it comes to reducing carbon emissions, which continue to increase as a result of traffic growth and a lack of public transport alternatives. The lack of electric charging structures for cars continues to hold back our transition to cleaner vehicles. The Government’s Road to Zero strategy to decarbonise road transport, with a plan to end the sale of petrol and diesel cars by 2040, is widely considered weak and unambitious. Clearly, what we need is a major push for electric vehicles and charging points, incentivised by a scrappage scheme for the most polluting vehicles. This would help to deliver our carbon reductions, as well as tackle the scourge of air pollution that is poisoning our children’s health. Where is the transport Bill in this Queen’s Speech, which would have delivered our transformation to a world-leading clean transport economy?

We also need to ensure that agriculture plays its part in reducing greenhouse gases. Intensive agriculture currently contributes nearly 10% of our carbon emissions. Of course, this was an issue beginning to be addressed in the agriculture Bill, which this Government seem in no hurry to debate. However, we welcome the shift in the Bill from supporting land ownership to the principle of delivering public money for public benefit, to improve our natural environment, restore habitats, plant trees and tackle carbon emissions. Sustainable food production is a vital component of that, including action to rethink our diets and understand the provenance and nutritional value of the food we eat, and its impact on biodiversity.

However, this Government have already lost the confidence of farmers, with continuing uncertainty about future funding and punitive no-deal tariffs which would make our farm products uncompetitive. The agriculture Bill will fail in its objectives if we do not prevent farmers and food manufacturers being undercut after Brexit by countries with lower employment, animal welfare and environmental standards.

There is an alternative to a future of economic decline and climate change devastation. This is why, when the election is called, our party will put forward a programme that is truly transformative. It will build an economy that works for all. It will deliver a comprehensive industrial strategy with a national investment bank and regional development banks to help unlock £250 billion of investment for businesses. It will tackle the climate emergency with robust new deadlines for action and a target of 2030 for net zero emissions. It will invest in renewable energy, utilising the full potential of offshore wind, solar and tidal projects. It will harness the huge opportunities that a green economy can bring, with new jobs and investment putting us at the forefront of global innovation.

These are the kind of radical reforms needed to kickstart our economy. I look forward to hearing the contributions from other noble Lords, particularly the maiden speeches we will hear today. I am sure noble Lords will add their expertise to the list of necessary and radical reforms needed today.