Asked by: Lord Sikka (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether all the flaws in the Horizon IT system operated by the Post Office and referred to in the High Court judgement in Alan Bates and Others v Post Office Limited [2019] EWHC 3408 (QB) have since been rectified.
Answered by Lord Offord of Garvel
There have been several versions of Horizon since its introduction in 1999 and the current version of the system, introduced from 2017, was found in the Group Litigation to be reliable, relative to comparable systems. Post Office continue to make improvements to the system and will be moving away from Horizon to a new IT system. The Government is providing funding to support this programme. In the meantime, Horizon remains in place. Fujitsu's role in the Horizon scandal is one of the issues being examined by the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry. Post Office Limited has entered into a standstill agreement with Fujitsu.
Asked by: Lord Sikka (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether the Post Office entered into a standstill agreement with Fujitsu over the flaws found in the Horizon IT system.
Answered by Lord Offord of Garvel
There have been several versions of Horizon since its introduction in 1999 and the current version of the system, introduced from 2017, was found in the Group Litigation to be reliable, relative to comparable systems. Post Office continue to make improvements to the system and will be moving away from Horizon to a new IT system. The Government is providing funding to support this programme. In the meantime, Horizon remains in place. Fujitsu's role in the Horizon scandal is one of the issues being examined by the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry. Post Office Limited has entered into a standstill agreement with Fujitsu.
Asked by: Lord Sikka (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether, further to reports by the forensic accounting company Second Sight, any Minister, civil servant, or director appointed by the Government advised the Post Office to make provision for contingent liabilities in its annual financial statements; and if so, on what dates such recommendations were made.
Answered by Lord Offord of Garvel
In the timeframe available to us, we have not been able to identify any Minister, civil servant, or director appointed by the Government advising the Post Office to make provision for contingent liabilities in its annual financial statements. The Post Office Board is collectively responsible for approving what is in the Accounts.
Asked by: Lord Sikka (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask His Majesty's Government how much they have given to the Post Office in subsidies in each of the years since 2000.
Answered by Lord Offord of Garvel
The Postal Services Act 2011 established Post Office Limited as a company independent of Royal Mail Group. The following table sets out the subsidies awarded by Government to Post Office Limited since the 2011/12 Financial Year. The funding covers annual network subsidy payments, investment funding and from 2021/22 funding for Horizon compensation payments.
Financial Year | Total (£m) |
2011/12 | 180 |
2012/13 | 410 |
2013/14 | 415 |
2014/15 | 330 |
2015/16 | 280 |
2016/17 | 220 |
2017/18 | 140 |
2018/19 | 228 |
2019/20 | 92 |
2020/21 | 50 |
2021/22 | 233 (of which £52m was a commercial loan) |
2022/23 | 137 |
Asked by: Lord Sikka (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Markham on 31 January (HL1876), stating that “If a patient dies whilst on an elective waiting list, the corresponding patient pathway should be removed from the list and recorded appropriately”, how many corresponding patient pathways entries have been removed from the records after the death of a patient.
Answered by Lord Markham
The data requested is recorded, however it is not reviewed routinely or centrally and is therefore subject to less validation than official statistics. Issues regarding the quality and completeness of this data mean it is not at an adequate level to inform a response.
Asked by: Lord Sikka (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask His Majesty's Government when they first became aware of the prosecutions being brought against sub-postmasters for alleged deficits arising from deficiencies in the Horizon software system.
Answered by Lord Offord of Garvel
This is a matter for the statutory Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry. It would be wrong to prejudice its work.
983 Post Office-related convictions have been identified during the relevant period. Not all of these will be directly related to the Horizon system.
Asked by: Lord Sikka (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask His Majesty's Government how much funding they approved for prosecutions of sub-postmasters by the Post Office, if any.
Answered by Lord Offord of Garvel
The Government has not provided funding for prosecution of sub-postmasters.
Asked by: Lord Sikka (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask His Majesty's Government what information they have about the application by the Post Office in 2019 to recuse Mr Justice Fraser from the High Court case of Bates and Others vs Post Office Ltd.
Answered by Lord Offord of Garvel
This is a matter which we expect that the statutory Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry under Sir Wyn Williams will examine. The Government is cooperating fully with the Inquiry’s work and should not pre-judge its findings.
Asked by: Lord Sikka (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many director nominations or appointments they have made or approved to the board of the Post Office in each of the years since 2000.
Answered by Lord Offord of Garvel
Nominations to the Board of Post Office Limited are generally made by Post Office Limited’s Nominations Committee (‘NomCo’, a sub-Committee of the Post Office Board) with the resulting appointments confirmed by the Board, on the advice of the NomCo. The Shareholder Representative Non-Executive Director sits on NomCo, and the Shareholder (the Department for Business and Trade) approves the appointment. The exceptions to these processes are the appointment of the Shareholder Non-Executive Director and the appointment of the Chair, which are made by the Shareholder.
A historic record of appointments, as set out on Companies House, is provided below.
Name | Position | Occupation | Appointment date | Resignation date |
Ms Maria Luisa Cassoni | Director | Director | 01/02/2001 | 17/06/2002 |
Mr Peter Michael Corbett | Director | Director | 13/11/2001 | 01/07/2009 |
Mr John Basil Larkins | Director | Director | 13/11/2001 | 25/04/2002 |
Mr David William Miller | Director | Director | 13/11/2001 | 31/07/2006 |
Mr Paul Andrew Rich | Director | Director | 13/11/2001 | 15/04/2002 |
Mr Allan Leslie Leighton | Director | Director | 08/01/2002 | 25/03/2009 |
Mr David Mills | Director | Director | 15/04/2002 | 31/12/2005 |
Mr Alan John Munro Barrie | Director | Director | 03/09/2002 | 08/06/2004 |
Mr John Charles Main | Director | Director | 03/09/2002 | 01/07/2003 |
Mr Gordon Ramsay Steele | Director | Director | 03/09/2002 | 31/01/2006 |
Elmar Toime | Director | Director | 10/04/2003 | 16/11/2004 |
Mr Michael Hodgkinson | Director | Director | 01/05/2003 | 31/08/2007 |
Mr John Barnetson Anderson | Director | Director | 01/07/2003 | 14/04/2007 |
Mr Stephen Graham Halliday | Director | Director | 20/08/2003 | 31/07/2006 |
Mr Brian Joseph Goggin | Director | Director | 01/09/2004 | 21/07/2006 |
Mr Alan Ronald Cook | Director | Director | 22/02/2005 | 15/03/2010 |
Mr Richard Phillip Francis | Director | Director | 02/03/2005 | 02/05/2008 |
Ms Sue Rachel Whalley | Director | Director | 01/09/2006 | 05/11/2009 |
Mr David Ian Glynn | Director | Director | 26/10/2006 | 31/10/2009 |
Mr Gary Hockey Morley | Director | Director | 26/10/2006 | 31/10/2009 |
Ms Deborah Lois Moore | Director | Director | 12/06/2007 | 31/10/2009 |
Mr Michael Thomas Young | Director | Director | 01/08/2008 | 31/10/2009 |
Mr Donald Hood Brydon | Director | Director | 01/05/2009 | 22/09/2011 |
Mr Michael John Moores | Director | Director | 01/07/2009 | 10/06/2011 |
Mr David John Smith | Director | Director | 06/04/2010 | 13/06/2011 |
Moya Marguerite Greene | Director | Director | 18/10/2010 | 17/12/2010 |
Mr Arthur Leslie Owen | Director | Director | 18/10/2010 | 15/03/2012 |
Ms Paula Anne Vennells | Director | Director | 18/10/2010 | 30/04/2019 |
Mr Matthew Lester | Director | Director | 17/12/2010 | 01/11/2011 |
Ms Alice Elizabeth Perkins | Director | Director | 21/07/2011 | 31/07/2015 |
Mr Christopher Mark Day | Director | Director | 22/09/2011 | 28/01/2015 |
Mr Neil McCausland | Director | Director | 22/09/2011 | 30/09/2015 |
Ms Virginia Anne Holmes | Director | Director | 04/04/2012 | 27/03/2018 |
Ms Susannah Jemima Storey | Director | Civil Servant | 18/04/2012 | 26/03/2014 |
Mr Alasdair Marnoch | Director | Director | 23/05/2012 | 31/07/2015 |
Mr Timothy Franklin | Director | Director | 19/09/2012 | 31/12/2019 |
Mr Richard John Callard | Director | Director | 26/03/2014 | 27/03/2018 |
Mr Alisdair Charles John Cameron | Director | Chief Financial Officer | 28/01/2015 | NA |
Mr Timothy Charles Parker | Director | Chairman | 01/10/2015 | 30/09/2022 |
Mr Kenneth Stanely McCall | Director | Director | 21/01/2016 | 26/01/2022 |
Ms Carla Rosaline Stent | Director | Director | 21/01/2016 | 17/02/2023 |
Mr Thomas Knut Glenn Cooper | Director | Non Executive Director | 27/03/2018 | 11/05/2023 |
Ms Shirine Khoury-Haq | Director | Director | 24/05/2018 | 18/07/2019 |
Mr Nicholas James Read | Director | Chief Executive Officer | 16/09/2019 | NA |
Zarin Homi Patel | Director | Non Executive Director | 26/11/2019 | 13/03/2023 |
Ms Lisa Harrington | Director | Director | 08/04/2020 | 01/06/2023 |
Mr Sarfaraz Gulam Ismail | Director | Director | 03/06/2021 | NA |
Mr Elliot Marc Jacobs | Director | Director | 03/06/2021 | NA |
Mr Brian Gaunt | Director | Director | 25/01/2022 | NA |
Mr Henry Eric Staunton | Director | Chairman | 01/12/2022 | 27/01/2024 |
Mr Simon Jeffreys | Director | Non Executive Director | 23/03/2023 | NA |
Ms Amanda Jane Burton | Director | Director | 27/04/2023 | NA |
Ms Lorna Rachel Gratton | Director | Director | 12/05/2023 | NA |
Mr Andrew Atta Darfoor | Director | Director | 20/06/2023 | NA |
Asked by: Lord Sikka (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask His Majesty's Government what conflict of interest risk assessment was made regarding the appointment of Simon Jeffreys as a board member of the Crown Prosecution Service and a non-executive director of the Post Office.
Answered by Lord Offord of Garvel
When appointments are made, conflicts are routinely addressed as part of the appointments process. The Companies Act sets out that a director must avoid situations where they have conflicts which conflict with the interests of the company and they must disclose conflicts of interest. As per the Companies Act requirements, any conflicts are disclosed in the company's Annual Report and Accounts, as is the mechanism for managing any conflict.