Horizon: Compensation and Convictions

Debate between Lord Offord of Garvel and Baroness Fox of Buckley

Wednesday 10th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for that contribution. On the lawyers, that is certainly a point well made—it is quite extraordinary how much has been made out of this so far by the lawyers. That is why my colleague, Minister Hollinrake, has been so assiduous in coming up with a plan which allows for compensation to be paid immediately—whether that is the £75,000 minimum to the GLO group or the £600,000 for those who are having their convictions overturned—without the need to have any more legal input. That is a very important part of the process. If any claimant feels that they want to make a bigger claim than that, they will need to interact with lawyers again to do so; again, we have given a tariff and a certain cap, which will at least minimise that. On the wider point from my noble friend Lord Forsyth, I completely agree that this highlights serious flaws in the corporate governance of the Post Office, and in the role of the board and its interaction with government officials of whichever colour and creed. We need to have a serious look at this. Once we have gone through the Williams inquiry, I believe that this will be worthy of much further consideration in this House.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, one of the reasons this has resonated so widely is not just because it was a brilliant drama but because so many ordinary people recognise what it feels like to be fighting the establishment and getting nowhere. We have all spent hours shouting at the phone on those helplines on the computer—that is in relation not just to HMRC but to the NHS and everything you deal with—but people were also treated as though they were criminals, not believed, and gaslit by these experts who know what they are talking about.

Anyway, there is an issue here. The whole establishment, not just the Post Office but the judiciary, seems to have a lot to answer for. I therefore ask, if the judges believed the computer, how we feel about the fact that the police national computer is maintained by Fujitsu. Britain’s criminal records database is run by Fujitsu. It has all the details of convictions, cautions, fingerprints, DNA data and—something I have been banging on about for a while—non-crime hate, when you have not committed a crime but you are on a database run by the police. Fujitsu has it. I do not feel safe in these circumstances, and I identify with the little man against the establishment.

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

I completely concur with the noble Baroness’s sentiments. Emotions run high at this moment, and quite rightly because we have seen a lot of very decent innocent people treated very badly over such a long period; it is quite extraordinary. We are now at a point where we are facing this issue. We are going to move fast to get compensation into place. Let us get the inquiry under way, and out of that will flow a lot of further debate.