Post Office Horizon: Compensation and Legislation

Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom Excerpts

Tuesday 27th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a member of the advisory board, which is now meeting not exactly in continuous session but every few days.

The Post Office itself is under investigation by the police. Is it not quite inappropriate for the Post Office to express any view as to the correctness of overturning convictions and is it not quite wrong, coming back to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Fox, for it to have any position or play any part in the compensation process?

[Lord Johnson of Lainston (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend and pay tribute to his work. The Post Office will not play a role in deciding the correctness of the overturned convictions in the Bill; that will be a matter for the Government. The statement about the Post Office paying compensation is well heard. I am grateful for that and I hope I have made the point that the Government continue to look into it. Having said that, the Post Office has paid a very large quantum of compensation payments—several thousand, I think. It would be extraordinary if the team there were not completely aware of the need to ensure that they get this right, I hope including significant cultural change. There has been a wholesale change of individuals on the board of directors since 2021 and 2022. Currently, the important thing is to get the compensation payments paid and, in parallel, review how the process is working.

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[Lord Johnson of Lainston (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Fox, for those comments. I should say that the Government have full confidence in the CEO and in the board whom we have appointed over the last two to three years. I am told they are extremely grateful for the services of the government representative and the UKGI representative. There are two postmasters, who I think are elected to the board, so it is a diverse board that represents the interests of the Post Office. Its members are not tarnished, as it were, by previous activities, and they have been doing a good job in responding to what can be described only as a crisis.

I echo the noble Lord’s points. The Post Office personnel are the absolute core of the business, of many communities and of this country, and it is agonising to see them put through so much distress. I agree with the comment made, I think by a colleague of mine, that in some respects the sheer greatness of our Post Office staff around the country has been magnified by this event, and I am sure that more of us will use our local services when we get the opportunity. This has also drawn a lot of attention to the needs of the postal service around the country, the conditions that its employees work in and the opportunity to improve them, with more recruitment and more people entering the Post Office service. I totally support the noble Lord’s aim; it is a magnificent organisation in its principal core ambitions of delivering great service to communities. The people who work there should be celebrated, and we certainly do that.

[Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom (Con)]

May I come back on a point that was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Browne, about the declaration that is to be signed by those whose convictions are overturned? I am not sure that I understand this declaration. If you have signed accounts which you know to be wrong and yet you have had your conviction for false accounting overturned by the Court of Appeal on the basis that it is an affront to justice, do you sign something saying you have not committed false accounting when maybe you have? I do not understand this declaration.

[Lord Johnson of Lainston (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for raising that point. The signing of the form saying that you are innocent is not to do with the conviction being quashed but is in order to receive compensation. The Government do not think that it is unreasonable, and I hope noble Lords would not think it is unreasonable, that there is an element of a threshold for people to say that they were not guilty of a crime and that they deserve their compensation. The nature of the application alone should probably cover that. It is a very sensible move to make, and I do not think it distorts the process. However, clearly, these are live conversations and we will have them in more detail.