Sub-postmasters: Compensation

Lord McNicol of West Kilbride Excerpts

Thursday 5th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan]

The noble Baroness makes an important point. In the near future, a scheme will be announced with the aim of addressing the historic shortfalls for postmasters who are not part of the group litigation. The Government will challenge and monitor the progress of this scheme. There is also the important issue of people convicted of offences: 57 cases have been referred to the Criminal Cases Review Commission. If a case is referred to the Court of Appeal and a conviction is overturned, there are avenues for people to pursue compensation there as well.

[Lord McNicol of West Kilbride (Lab)]

My Lords, I want to follow up on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot. At Prime Minister’s Questions, as has been said, the Prime Minister committed to an independent inquiry on the back of a Question from Kate Osborne about whether he would launch such an inquiry. The Prime Minister said that he would follow up on that but No. 10 communications later said that no decisions had been taken with regard to a specific independent inquiry. I was not clear from the Minister’s earlier answer whether we are going to progress with an independent inquiry to get to the bottom of this matter. We had a very good debate in the Moses Room on it last week, and a lot of information came out. Can the Minister say whether there will be an independent inquiry and, if so, what its timescale will be?

[Lord Callanan]

We agree that there needs to be a full examination, with due rigour, of what happened and what the next steps will be, but I cannot go further than the answer that I gave earlier to my noble friend—that, as soon as we can, we will announce the next steps following the Prime Minister’s announcement.