Post Office Update

Baroness Laing of Elderslie Excerpts

Wednesday 19th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the Minister for advance sight of his statement. My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) is not able to attend today but, like me, she welcomes today’s statement, including the much belated conversion of the inquiry to a statutory footing and the extension of its scope, although we believe that it does not yet go far enough.

This is indeed the largest legal miscarriage of justice in our history. It is estimated that there have been 900 false prosecutions in total—each one its own story of persecution, of fear, of despair, of families destroyed, of reputations smashed, of lives lost and of innocent people bankrupted and imprisoned. I thank and congratulate everybody who has campaigned over so many years—for more than a decade—to reveal the truth, including the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance and the Communication Workers Union. I also congratulate right hon. and hon. Members across the House who have fought for justice for their constituents; I mention in particular my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), who has worked tirelessly on the issue.

The campaign for justice has been long fought, and there is still a long way to go. The Minister’s announcement is a step in the right direction. The Labour party and the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance have always said that the inquiry must be statutory, but less than a month ago in this Chamber, four days after the Court of Appeal’s decision, the Minister rejected calls for a statutory inquiry on the grounds that it would take

“three, four or five years”—[Official Report, 27 April 2021; Vol. 693, c. 254.]

Can he tell us what has happened to change his mind?

The horrific miscarriage of justice did not happen overnight. For a decade, we have known that there were serious problems with the Horizon system, but the Post Office denied all wrongdoing, pursuing the victims and imposing huge lawyers’ fees on the claimants. Even after the High Court ruling vindicated postmasters in 2019, the Government refused to act. The next step has been delayed and victims’ lives have been disrupted by this Government.

It is important to remember that having a statutory inquiry is not, of itself, justice. There remain a number of urgent questions for the Minister that he did not answer a few weeks ago. The Government are the Post Office’s only shareholder, yet time and again, the Post Office was allowed to abuse its power over postmasters. That was the finding of the Court, and it is a really important point. Will the Minister acknowledge the Government’s failure of oversight and due diligence with regard to public money? Will he apologise to the victims and their families today? The postmasters were criminalised for a culture that assumed technology is infallible and workers dishonest. How will the Minister change that, and what are the implications for the management of human teams relying on AI or computer algorithms?

We welcome any new powers for Sir Wyn and the review. It was reported—and this seemed to be in the statement—that Sir Wyn will have the power to summon witnesses to give testimony under oath and to force the Post Office to hand over documents. Can the Minister confirm that, and will that power apply to any other entity or organisation from which evidence is sought? While the terms of reference have been updated, they do not seem to reflect the issues raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central previously. For example, compensation still appears to be out of scope of the inquiry—why? Who has been consulted on the revised terms of reference?

Fujitsu was the one that provided faulty software. An independent investigator, Second Sight, drew attention to that as far back as 2013, yet the Government do not appear to be doing anything to hold Fujitsu to account. Instead, the Horizon software has been renewed, rewarding Fujitsu with a new £42 million contract. Will ongoing Government contracts with Fujitsu be reviewed? Paula Vennells led the Post Office during this time and was honoured with a CBE, along with a long list of others. Is it right that she and others continue to be honoured?

The Minister has referred to a “full and final settlement” for some postmasters with the Post Office. However, he will know that of the £58 million settlement approved in the High Court case, only £12 million will go to the victims, with the rest taken up in legal fees. Does the Minister agree that they should be considered for appropriate compensation?

The JFSA and Labour want there to be a public consultation to guarantee that the inquiry will deliver for all the victims and provide conclusive answers. The Post Office is a Government-owned company that has been found to be at fault. It is vital that the Government act to improve the corporate structure of the Post Office, to prevent this kind of thing from ever happening again. It should never have been allowed to develop into this scandal, but all we can do now is ensure that we get to the truth, that those wrongly convicted get justice and that lessons are learnt.

Securing this statutory inquiry is a big victory for sub-postmasters, trade unions and justice, but despite the Government’s U-turn, this is only the start. The Government have failed to live up to their responsibility to prevent this scandal from occurring, and they have, until today, stood in the way of justice. I urge the Minister to apologise, to own the Government’s mistakes and to start work to ensure that justice is served and that a scandal of this magnitude can never happen again.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I did not want to interrupt the hon. Lady, but Mr Speaker would be annoyed with me if I did not point out that she has taken a minute longer than she ought to have had, and that is a minute that will not be taken later today by some other Member who wishes to speak.

[Paul Scully]

I send my best wishes to the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah); I understand why she cannot be here. I appreciate the response from the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra), and I will try to answer some of her questions.

The hon. Lady talked about Ministers’ role in this. Clearly, the role of our Department, Government and Ministers will be included in the inquiry. We do want to learn the lessons, and that will be the case, but as we have seen from the judgment, the Post Office consistently maintained that Horizon was robust and was misguided in its approach to the issue, leading to the decision to prosecute these postmasters. We pressed management on issues regarding complaints brought by postmasters about Horizon and received repeated assurances that the system was reliable. As I say, the inquiry will look into that.

In terms of the Government’s response, we clearly recognise the impact that convictions have had on individual postmasters and their families. That is why the Prime Minister and I met with a small group of them last month, to hear directly from them. They had some incredibly tragic and terrible stories, and I can understand why they find it difficult to trust anybody in this regard after many, many years of difficulty and the impossible situation that they and their families have been in.

On Horizon itself, the Post Office is looking into that. It cannot, unfortunately, just switch off a system and change midstream, but clearly it will be looking to work on the successor CRM—customer relationship management —system. Yes, the terms of reference and the statutory footing allow Sir Wyn to compel people to give evidence and documents, and there are sanctions on them if they should fail to do so, under the Inquiries Act 2005. One of the reasons for that, as we move to the second stage and, I hope, engage more sub-postmasters to give their stories, is that we want to give them the confidence that people will be giving their evidence. I must say that, to date still, everybody involved in this whom Sir Wyn has asked to do so has given their full undertaking and worked on it. Nobody has resiled from the inquiry, but it is important that we do this.

On the terms of reference in relation to compensation, an inquiry, whether statutory or not, cannot determine liability in itself—that still has to be done through the courts—but sub-postmasters clearly can raise, and I would fully expect them to raise, the issue of the losses and difficulties as they outline the difficulties they have had. On Fujitsu, as I have said, clearly the Post Office will be looking at what it does in further compensation, and that will include Fujitsu. There are criminal investigations going ahead, so that is outside the scope of the inquiry, but the GLO—group litigation order—settlement was a full and final settlement. The Government did not have a part in the litigation. It is not part of the inquiry itself, but none the less, this is one part—an important part, but one part—of making sure that we get to the bottom of this and get sufficient justice for the postmasters so badly affected.