Post Office: Horizon Accounting System Debate
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Earl of Erroll
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Post Office: Horizon Accounting System
Earl of Erroll Excerpts(4 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Callanan
First, I offer my congratulations to my noble friend on his 50 years of exemplary service, as indeed I do to the Lord Speaker. I can only agree with my noble friend. We need to get to the bottom of this quickly. We need to get on with it, and the best way of doing that is through an independent review.
The Earl of Erroll (CB) [V]
Why has this taken five years since these miscarriages of justice were revealed to Parliament in an Adjournment debate in the Commons? What happened to the later independent report by Second Sight, which was due to be published in March 2015? Horizon was already in trouble with developments at ICL, and was nearly scrapped in the mid-1990s on the merger with Fujitsu. Perhaps it is a pity that it was not.
Lord Callanan
Of course, the Horizon court case occupied a lot of time and effort in both government and the Post Office, and it provided an extensive and, indeed, damning indictment of what went on at the time. However, we think that there is more to be done and that an independent review is the best way of proceeding with that.