Post Office (Horizon System) Compensation Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

2nd reading & Committee negatived & 3rd reading
Tuesday 16th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, we have had an extraordinary debate on compensation, exoneration and accountability, but this very short, two-clause paving legislation to grant the power to incur expenditure in relation to compensation for the victims—the postmasters and postmistresses—is absolutely vital. However, the detail that we have been discussing is not in this Bill. For the short term, the actual scheme for this particular compensation package is something that I hope the Government will take notice of. But there is time for politicians of all parties to review the entire nature of compensation schemes and the way they work. This is just one of many schemes that have gone wrong in the administration, and we must look at that.

We were reminded by the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, of the repeated abuse of the human rights of the postmasters in this whole process over the years. They were let down by organisation after organisation. We must have the postmasters at the heart of any debate that we have about this. It is an appalling miscarriage of justice. We were reminded of the personal sacrifice of many postmasters by the noble Lord, Lord Weir, and the risks that they face before they have to start looking at their accounting packages—but worse is that they are still waiting for justice and many, as we have heard, are waiting to receive compensation or redress.

My noble friend Lord Palmer talked about the presumption of innocence, and that must be essential for getting to exoneration. The postmasters, led by the absolutely admirable Alan Bates—who is as modest as the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot—have fought for decades to get to the truth of what happened and to clear their names. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, referred to lobby correspondents and other media, but there have been some extraordinary journalists over the years. He referred to Rebecca Thomson and Karl Flinders of Computer Weekly, but Private Eye has covered this story for decades, as has Nick Wallis at the BBC, and John Sweeney’s “Panorama” in 2015 was done at an absolutely key time.

All of that happened before Paula Vennells was even the chief executive of the Post Office. I am very grateful for the comments that the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, made about politicians. One of the problems with how our press works at the moment is that there tends to be one person that they talk about. There have been other chief executives and other senior directors of Post Office Ltd during the really difficult time when it was becoming apparent behind the scenes that there were problems. Today is not just about those who need to be held accountable in the future, but that must happen in due course. The contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, about the role of auditors, was very timely and very important. This would not be the first audit scandal of the last few years.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, quoted from today’s comments by Fujitsu. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said it had been 20 years, but it is clear that the problems started just after Peter Lilley MP signed off the pilot in 1994. Even then, the pilot postmasters were reporting problems—in 1995, 1996 and 1997. It goes right back. This is not party-political. I am just making the point that Fujitsu and the Post Office both knew that there were problems before the rollout started in 1999.

The Father of the House, Sir Peter Bottomley, said last week:

“The titanic error was the belief in technology”.—[Official Report, Commons, 8/1/24; col. 86.]


However, every day, including today—the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, mentioned Fujitsu’s testimony to the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee—more is revealed about what the company knew, even from prior to the rollout, as I have just mentioned. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, talked about the chief executive admitting today that funds that postmasters were forced to pay may have gone into executive pay. If that is true, it is an absolute disgrace.

The noble Lord, Lord Browne, and others, talked about computer problems. I am married to an engineer. He is not a software engineer, but he deals with software in the things that he designs. One of my foster children is a software engineer. They look at each other with raised eyebrows and talk about “garbage in, garbage out”. “Garbage in” is done by people, not by computers. The problem that the noble Lord, Lord Browne, raises, is, “Will that happen in the future?” We have to hold Fujitsu to account for those errors, which it then clearly did nothing about. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said that he felt ashamed. I feel ashamed too. I want to quote from Professor Graham Zellick KC, the former chairman of the Criminal Cases Review Commission. He was angrier than we are. He said:

““I am enraged. I think this is deplorable. It is inexcusable. It is a failure of public administration and government without precedent. It makes one’s blood boil”.


I hope that we continue with that strength of feeling as we move into the next stage and the drama moves out of the limelight, because we must learn lessons from this. The Secret Barrister—some noble Lords may follow him on Twitter/X—said:

“As the issue of compensation for miscarriages of justice is rightly in the news, it’s timely to note that in 2014, the government changed the law to make it all but impossible for people wrongly convicted and imprisoned to claim compensation”.


Much has already been said in this debate, but I want to go on to talk briefly about the future. Various Members have talked about the problems that people in the HSS—the Horizon shortfall scheme, now known as the historic shortfall scheme—have had with the application form. The noble Lord, Lord Sikka, referred to a case where someone claimed only £15.75 because he did not understand the form; there was a reference in it to looking at Appendix 1, but it was so impenetrable that he thought it did not apply to him.

Another case cited by Dan Neidle, who runs Tax Policy Associates, concerned someone who was made bankrupt, lost his post office in a fire sale and has been offered £8,000. The numbers of people receiving offers from Post Office Ltd for compensation are good, but if compensation is at that level, it is not good and it is inappropriate. We need a more transparent mechanism to streamline the current complex arrangements, which Government after Government have created with crisis after crisis, to have what amounts to two and a half schemes running—the GLO and the HSS scheme and then the new review scheme that was announced 10 days ago.

Dan Neidle says we should probably follow the example of employment tribunals. For example, why are sub-postmasters not allowed a grant for legal advice before they put in their applications? They should be. There should be a larger fixed amount for damages; cases are different, but everyone who has been involved, whether they have been convicted or not, has lost income, often their job and their home, and been unable to work at the level they were working at before because of the threats they were under. Redress needs to reflect their loss of earnings. They should also receive the very specific amounts of money that they were forced to pay back—not compensation. They should be paid back the money they had to pay in error. The idea of those who were convicted and imprisoned having to pay charges for bed and breakfast from their compensation is an absolute outrage that should not be allowed. On occasion, there will be specific damage above and beyond that outlined which might, for example, cover a suicide in a family or those who have had strokes.

Finally, we should consider a complete change to the way in which these compensation schemes operate. Next week in Committee on the Victims and Prisoners Bill, we have an amendment on the infected blood scheme. We are still waiting for the details of the interim payments. The first young people were infected in the mid-1970s—it cannot go on like this. Others have spoken about the Windrush scheme; I would raise Hillsborough and Grenfell, where there are similarly complex arrangements. Surely, now is the time to consult on future arrangements for compensation schemes, including whether they should remain with government or be independent, so we can be sure that we have a reliable, independent, swift and fair scheme that cannot be constantly adjusted, ignored or delayed, particularly by politicians.