"My Lords, the situation outlined by my good friend, the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, is right. Fujitsu provided the equipment for the Post Office and knew what was wrong with it, and, even worse, it had a contract to provide information in court to prosecute individual postmasters. Fujitsu was at …..." Lord Beamish - View Speech
"My Lords, I support my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti’s amendment. We discussed this in Committee. My involvement, like that of the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, is through the experience of the Post Office Horizon scandal. In those cases, we saw computer evidence put before the court with the presumption that …..." Lord Beamish - View Speech
"My Lords, I thank my noble friend for repeating the Statement. I also thank her, and through her the Government, for the intelligence brief I had this afternoon on the current situation. Clearly, President Trump and now His Majesty’s Opposition seem to have forgotten Secretary of State Colin Powell’s rule …..." Lord Beamish - View Speech
"My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, raised ISC staff. Their job, and that of the committee, was made incredibly difficult by the previous Conservative Government cutting the budget and interfering with the appointments to the committee. The committee met the Prime Minister last year. This was the first time …..." Lord Beamish - View Speech
"My Lords, as the person who first exposed the Capture system, I welcome the fact that victims are now being paid. That was in spite, for example, of the Post Office, which, with all the publicity around Horizon, never publicly pointed out that the Capture system existed. There are 29 …..." Lord Beamish - View Speech
"I have been talking rubbish for many years; more accurately, I have been talking about waste crime and disposal for many years. I first got interested when I was the chair of public health in Newcastle in the 1990s. As the Member of Parliament for North Durham, I took a …..." Lord Beamish - View Speech
"I am not opposed to consultation, but, I am sorry, this Government are hiding behind consultation. Once the consultation is finished, we then need action, but that is not happening, not just in this area but in a whole host of other areas...." Lord Beamish - View Speech
"Having been a Minister myself, I know that the Minister can do that tonight. She knows what will happen if she does not bring it forward: an amendment will be tabled, and it will get passed...." Lord Beamish - View Speech
"My Lords, I too support Amendment 61 in the name of my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti.
When I left my home in Durham on Monday morning, I had a phone call. It was from an individual I had met five years earlier. He was the husband of a postmistress in …..." Lord Beamish - View Speech
"My Lords, my noble friend, in her answer, referred to the ISC. The ISC has looked at this very closely. We were given access to all the confidential and sensitive documentation, and we took evidence from our security services and Ministers; I thank them for that. We came to the …..." Lord Beamish - View Speech