Post Office: Horizon Accounting System

Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom Excerpts

Tuesday 25th February 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom (Con)]

I am grateful to noble Lords for allowing me to speak in the gap. I am particularly grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for initiating this debate and for his speech, which was a masterpiece of understatement.

The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, rightly thanked Nick Wallis and Private Eye. I add to those thanked Computer Weekly, which has been campaigning on this issue for years. I warn the Committee, too, that I have a Question on this topic on Thursday next week. It would be very good if I could persuade noble Lords who have spoken to speak on that, because they will have been able to consider my noble friend’s reply this afternoon.

The Post Office inflicted losses on the sub-postmasters through its defective accounting system. It then blamed the sub-postmasters for those losses and often told them that they were the only ones suffering those problems. It then made them repay money it had already taken from them. Finally, it dragged those poor people through the humiliation of court hearings, criminal convictions, bankruptcies and worse. At my request it set up a mediation scheme, which it then sabotaged. It forced the sub-postmasters to incur an awful risk and the costs of litigation—litigation that the Post Office lost comprehensively, paying the sub-postmasters a derisory proportion of what they had lost.

It is hard to find words strong enough to condemn the people in charge of this catastrophic fiasco. What have the people in charge suffered as a result? One of them, Paula Vennells, has been given a CBE and now sits on government-sponsored boards. None of the rest, as far as I can see, have suffered at all. However, it is not their suffering that we want, but justice and proper compensation for those who have been dragged through this. The litigation settlement simply does not cut it.

In the common issues trial, the court found that sub-postmasters should be compensated for the loss of their office, which was not covered by the settlement agreement. How will the Government facilitate that? The court held that the National Federation of SubPostmasters was not an organisation independent of the Post Office and that its very existence depended on it not giving the Post Office grounds to challenge its activities. Evidence was also put before the court that the NFSP has, in the past, put its own interests and the funding of its future above the interests of its members. Why are the Government continuing to talk to the NFSP as though it were representative of the sub-postmasters when the judge has found that it is not?

As the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, said, it is clear from the judgments that Fujitsu altered the accounts of the sub-postmasters while telling people that it could not and while knowing that the sub-postmasters were being dragged through the courts, prison and bankruptcy, as we have heard. Some of the witnesses from Fujitsu have been referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions, but what more is being done to bring Fujitsu to account?

Finally, the accounting officer for the Post Office is the Permanent Secretary of the BEIS department. My noble friend the Minister is answerable for that Permanent Secretary. What responsibility do the Government take for this dreadful story?