Post Office Court of Appeal Judgment

Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town Excerpts

Wednesday 28th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

I start by paying tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, and others, including “Panorama” and Nick Wallis on Radio 4, whose championing of the postmasters’ cause helped, finally, to move this towards a just outcome.

Like other noble Lords, I have heard this dismal story many times, but I still have that mixture of shock, horror, shame and some anger with every new hearing. How is it possible that no one in a position of authority noticed that, all of a sudden, hundreds of some of the most upright and respected members of local communities had, almost at the same time, taken it on themselves to start pilfering? How come nobody thought to ask some simple questions? How come the Post Office, adding insult to injury, continued to pursue loyal employees, often with expensive lawyers, long after it was clear that something was amiss? This has been perhaps the most widespread legal miscarriage of justice that I know of; justice has been a long time coming.

Naturally, we welcome the Court of Appeal’s ruling overturning the convictions of 39 postmasters, but, as Lord Justice Holroyde said, the Post Office

“knew there were serious issues about the reliability of Horizon”

and had a “clear duty to investigate” the system’s defects. Despite this, the Post Office

“consistently asserted that Horizon was robust and reliable”,

and

“effectively steamrolled over any sub-postmaster who sought to challenge its accuracy”.

Was the Post Office not curious about this sudden outbreak of illegality? Did it not read the specialist press? As early as 2015, possibly before, Computer Weekly was warning of problems and, even worse, it now reports that Fujitsu bosses knew about Horizon’s flaws all along, yet allowed it to be rolled out to the Post Office network, despite being told that it was not fit for purpose. Back in 2019, a High Court judge ruled that Horizon was “not remotely reliable” for the first 10 years of its existence, which was obvious to Fujitsu and surely evident to the Post Office. Even when the Post Office knew that there were “serious issues” about the reliability of the system, it continued bringing

“serious criminal charges against the sub-postmasters on the basis of Horizon data”

and “effectively steamrolled” anyone who challenged its accuracy.

Even after the High Court vindicated postmasters in 2019, the Government refused to intervene, allowing the Post Office to abuse its power over postmasters. Will the Minister acknowledge the Government’s failure of oversight?

The Post Office let individual postmasters pay a terrible price for its incompetence and cowardice. Seema Misra, falsely accused of stealing £75,000, was sentenced to 15 months in jail while pregnant with her second child. Rubbina Shaheen, accused of stealing over £40,000, spent 12 months in jail. Jo Hamilton, accused of taking £36,000, gave up her shop and, because of her criminal record, found it impossible to get another job. While these convictions have finally been quashed, the hurt, damage and enormous costs remain—to say nothing about those who died before they could be vindicated by last week’s ruling.

So there are questions that the Government must answer. Why are Ministers refusing a statutory inquiry, with subpoena powers and a remit to consider compensation? Given that postmasters are having to spend some of their compensation on legal fees, will the Minister confirm that additional support will be made available to cover such costs? What steps will the Government take to hold Fujitsu to account? Given that it was found to be complicit in covering up the software bugs that led to the false Post Office prosecutions, will it be asked to pay for the monstrous damage that it has done to hundreds of lives?

Given the acknowledgement in the Minister’s letter that steps need to be taken to ensure fair compensation, will he promise—not just undertake, but promise to this House—that it will be done speedily, generously and with no more of the foot-dragging that has besmirched this whole saga? Does the Minister agree that there should now be a criminal investigation into potential wrongdoing, given the knowing cover-ups that led to false prosecutions?

There is one other point I want to make. These postmasters were criminalised by a culture that assumed that technology is infallible and workers dishonest. Given that in future, technology will play an ever-larger role in the world of work, stringent protections will be needed against this “computer says” culture. We must not get to the point where directors, and Governments, automatically side with technology over their workers—or, indeed, over claimants or consumers. If ever technology is trusted without question, or there is inadequate human oversight and challenge, I fear that this will not be the last time that individuals are unfairly treated by a Big Brother who is neither infallible nor accountable.

This has been a sad story. It now rests with the Government to provide fast and full compensation, and to put right the ills that many people have suffered.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for bringing this Statement to your Lordships’ House, and for his two letters to all Peers over the last five weeks. I should say that I have been a member of the Post Offices APPG for some time.

Looking back, the Government have said that they will determine what went wrong. Of course, we absolutely support that. To this end, their route has been to ask Sir Wyn Williams to lead the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry. The inquiry, they say, will work

“to fully understand these events, gather available evidence and ensure lessons have been learnt so that this cannot occur again.”

I am sure that this will be a thorough investigation, which will shine a bright light on systems and programmes, and their implementation. But can the Minister reassure us that it will also illuminate the overriding issue of how this business behaved? As the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, has just eloquently set out, the moral shortcomings of the management are central to why this happened. To fully understand this issue, as the Government want to, they need a thorough appraisal of the management culture of the Post Office. It is changing the culture that makes sure that something never happens again, not updating an operating system or rewriting a computer programme.

Can the Minister please make available the full terms of reference according to which Sir Wyn will conduct his inquiry? Government communications include the phrase:

“The Government look forward to receiving Sir Wyn’s report in the summer”.


Does the Minister expect the report to be completed by this summer, or have I misunderstood? If so, what support will the investigation have to run to such a tight timetable? I am concerned because this is not a statutory inquiry. What will happen if individuals retain lawyers to represent their interests? How will Sir Wyn proceed in those circumstances?

I echo the praise given by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, to the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom. He has tenaciously pursued this issue, and in February last year he asked a question of the then Under-Secretary of State at BEIS, the noble Lord, Lord Duncan of Springbank:

“To ask Her Majesty’s Government what recent assessment they have made of the Post Office’s powers to conduct prosecutions.”-


The response was that

“the Post Office’s powers to bring a private prosecution, which fall under section 6(1) of the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985, are not specific to that company.”—[Official Report, 4/2/20; col. 1709.]

I forewarned the Minister that I would bring this up, because my understanding is that while it has not been granted investigative powers, the Post Office has regularly undertaken joint investigations with the police and other investigative bodies that do have statutory investigating powers. It was granted access to the national police computer system for intelligence and prosecution purposes; it had financial investigators appointed by the National Crime Agency for the purpose of undertaking financial investigations for restraint and confiscation proceedings; and Royal Mail was included in the list of relevant public authorities, under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, designated to grant authorisations for the carrying out of directed surveillance to investigate crime. The Minister’s views on that would be welcome. Is it really still appropriate that this organisation should enjoy those powers?

This is by no means the end of the road, as the Statement makes clear. In yesterday’s debate in the House of Commons, my honourable friend Christine Jardine MP asked the Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Paul Scully, to give an assurance that the Government will commit to treating each of the former sub-postmasters as individuals. The Minister acknowledged that, as well as those prosecuted, there were those whose lives had been blighted by incorrect accusations. I am pleased to report that he acknowledged the human cost. However, it is not clear to me what this acknowledgment means in practice. How will the Government embark on treating everybody individually? As part of the settlement, we have the historical shortfall scheme and it has been explained that this had received over 2,400 applications when it closed last August. First, although this is more than the Post Office anticipated, is the Minister satisfied that everybody who could have applied for this was aware of it and did? Secondly, the Minister was clear that Her Majesty’s Government will support the Post Office with resources. We of course endorse that. We do not yet know what form compensation will take and how it will be calculated. However, in a Written Answer, the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, said:

“we will not spend more of taxpayer’s money than is necessary to ensure that the Scheme meets its objectives.”

That sounds like a management expectation exercise and is a bit ominous. This is not an area, or a time, for penny pinching.

However financially generous the scheme turns out to be, the Government have to be clear that they can never fully compensate for the emotional and social damage that has been visited on many thousands of innocent people in this country.