Post Office Horizon Compensation Scheme

Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick Excerpts

Thursday 27th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick (CB)]

My Lords, it is a great privilege to be able to pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Elliott, for her wonderfully warm and family-loving speech, and for naming her children and family in such an affectionate and supportive way.

She will not know it, but we are both Sunderland lovers. Maybe that is the reason I was selected to pay tribute to her wonderful and seriously, gratifyingly positive maiden speech. I am wearing the tie of Sunderland Football Club. She will not know, but I have attended the Stadium of Light on six occasions and the Academy of Light of four occasions, taken there by the owners of Sunderland in order to see the great playing craft of so many of the players, in particular Jermain Defoe, from whom I have a shirt with the number 14—my number—and the signatures of all of the players of Sunderland Football Club. I was delighted and honoured to attend so many times in the noble Baroness’s home town and constituency.

Many of the tributes that are owed to the noble Baroness include for her deep love as a governor of schools and her passionate campaigning on the issue of asthma, which affects so many, both ourselves and those we know. I know she will bring enormous expertise to this House and the punch that an elected Member who is now here in the upper House can bring from having heard the painful rhetoric of constituents, especially on the issue that we are discussing today.

One other thing unites us. In my research—which was very slim, because so much is wonderfully written about the noble Baroness, Lady Elliott—I discovered that we also share the fact that she voted against all Brexit measures in the House of Commons, and I voted against them all here in the House of Lords. We both realised what another tragedy of injustice was being imposed on us by the miscreant Government of the time. On that, her great policy wisdom is well noted and I am sure the whole House will look forward to her ongoing strength of position and commitment and welcome her to the House of Lords.

This debate is essentially about compensation matters. We tend to interpret compensation as meaning money. I pay tribute to the noble Lords, Lord Arbuthnot and Lord Beamish, for their arduous, persistent fight on behalf of those whom many of us only became intimately aware of because of Alan Bates and the ITV drama. It really hit us in the eyes when we watched it, let alone when we listened to the BBC’s own documentary. Through the drama and the documentary, we became aware of something that was happening below our noses, so close we should have smelled it earlier but we just did not. There was such clever scheming by the Post Office and Fujitsu.

I have been looking at this through a slightly different lens—a lens which many in this House will know matters to me enormously. The offences Act, passed last year, which essentially annulled the prosecutions of the postmasters, uses these words, already quoted:

“Some were convicted and imprisoned. Some were made bankrupt”.

Malicious allegations were made against them.

“Some lost their homes. some suffered mental or physical health problems … Some were harried as thieves by their local communities. Some suffered breakdowns in relationships with their partners, children or other families and friends. Several died by suicide”.


There is another actor in this horror, besides the Post Office and Fujitsu: the courts. I realise by flagging this that I am treading on very delicate territory, but there were 700 convictions in cases provided by the Post Office and a further 283 sub-postmasters were prosecuted by others, including the CPS, totalling just short of 1,000 prosecutions. I am not sure of the exact number who went to prison. Could the Minister tell the House in her reply how many went to prison as a result of this crass injustice?

It raises the very ugly case that potentially 1,000 courts heard 1,000 cases and thought it was okay. At what point did the justice system, the Ministry of Justice or the Law Society ask, “What the hell is going on?” Why is every court so disconnected from every other one? If judges did not ask, “What, another one? I’ve read about this, I saw this, there was a note about this”, or if clerks did not bring this to their attention, what is the role of judges? Judges are meant to be highly intelligent, impartial adjudicators of the law and its principles. Those principles include intelligent, evidence-based prosecutions, not just taking by swallowing what has been brought by an institute of the state—notably the Post Office—backed up by its deceitful accompanying company, Fujitsu, which simply wanted to bury the detail.

I will ask a difficult question of the Minister: was the wool pulled over the eyes of the judges? What assessment have the committee, the Government or the Ministry of Justice made of the wrongs done by the courts? I believe that it is a matter not just of what needs to be paid out in compensation—that is clearly the real cause of this debate, although it is somewhat flagging—but of from whom the apologies should come. I would like to see handwritten apologies from every judge to every prosecuted individual, especially those who went to prison, and face-to-face meetings that accept that there was deceit at multiple levels of this procedure. We will not have honest justice if there is no honest apology, recognition and accountability. That lies with the courts, as well as with the Criminal Cases Review Commission—which has failed in multiple cases—and the Crown Prosecution Service.

I realise that this is a sensitive thing to ask, because we have a tradition in Britain that we do not question judges. Following a question raised in the other place recently by the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition about a deportation issue—and therefore an allocation of refugee status based on falsified information—immediately somebody representing the court stood up, because there was a criticism of a decision of the court, and said, “Don’t question our decisions”. But is that not exactly what this is about? How can there be a thousand cases with not a single judge saying, “Excuse me? Throw it out”? I am sufficiently aware of so many people’s cases that I know of some where the courts—the Old Bailey or the High Court—and the judge have decided on day 1 or day 2, or week 1, of a case that there is no substantial evidence from the prosecution. They concluded the case and released the individual. Why did that not happen here?

I am asking a sensitive and important question. I am asking the Minister—I realise this is not her area—to communicate to her colleagues in the Ministry of Justice that they ought to wake up to our so-called supremely effective independent judicial system and ask the hard questions about the intelligence and agility of the courts and judges to deal with cases of such manipulation.

As many noble Lords know, I spend a lot of time in prisons, and I was in a prison yesterday morning speaking with a man on a 32-year sentence. He has attempted on five occasions to have the Criminal Cases Review Commission assess his case based on falsified forensic data. It refuses to do so. The CCRC has just lost its chair; it has been a flappingly useless institution and needs to be completely renewed from top to bottom. It is another part of the system of injustice, emboldened by the state because we will not ask the hard questions.

Two years ago, we all heard the case of Andrew Malkinson. He was released finally, after 17 years, after a falsified rape case, in which he was innocent. He is still awaiting the compensation agreed by the High Court. As we think about how to improve the financial compensation due, which in my mind is Fujitsu’s bill and not the taxpayers’, we need to recognise that honour, dignity and respect for those falsely prosecuted—and especially those imprisoned and those who lost homes, property, savings and work—requires those who did that injustice to them to look them in the eyes and admit they were wrong. Only then can we restore transparency and honour to our justice system and bring dignity to the postmasters.