Horizon: Compensation and Convictions

Lord Browne of Ladyton Excerpts

Wednesday 10th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for that question. We must recognise the common interest of people impacted by the Horizon scandal and those affected by, for example, the infected blood scandal and Hillsborough and other tragedies. It is important to recognise that each of those circumstances was different and unique and unprecedented; each case is a personal tragedy.

In the infected blood case, the Government have already made interim support payments of £100,000 to individuals and bereaved partners, and the cost of that will be £400 million in terms of interim compensation. That compares with a likely figure of £1 billion for the Horizon postal scandal. I cannot speak with any great authority on the wider picture, but it must surely be the case that, as the Government look at this case, there will need to be a wider conversation and look at the broader picture on all these issues.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, I accept that with this particular scandal the priorities should be the exoneration and compensation of those who have been so badly damaged by it, the exposure of the reality of the corruption that led to the scandal in the first place and accountability for those who have been acting so corruptly. However, at the heart of this, the biggest miscarriage of justice in terms of scale that this country has ever seen, there is another issue that needs immediate attention: a faulty legal presumption that requires immediate re-evaluation. In England and Wales, there is, as a matter of law, a presumption that computers are working properly, unless there is evidence to the contrary, and therefore that what they produce is reliable. If it were not for the group litigation, the fundamental unreliability of the software in the POL Horizon system would never have been revealed. That is because challenging that computers are not working properly is far outwith the resources of most people in this country and, unless they work together in this way, they have no chance of doing this in our courts. It is time now to re-evaluate this and replace this presumption with a requirement that those who rely on computer evidence should justify to the court that it is reliable and not the other way around. We could do that relatively quickly and easily, and the onus would then lie on the people who are relying on that evidence to show that it is reliable and that the computer is working properly. In the Horizon case, without perjury, nobody would have been able to do that.

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

The noble Lord highlights perhaps one of the most cynical aspects of this terrible case: each of the sub-postmasters was told that they were alone and that this was happening only to them. We have all seen the programme and we all know the people in our communities who do these vital jobs. They work alone in small shops in small towns and villages and do not necessarily have the support that they need. That was perhaps one of the most invidious parts of the drama series and, at the end of the day, perhaps the help given by one or two constituency MPs was to believe these folks and get them together, which resulted in the group of 555 coming together. It is very relevant to say, “Why does the little guy have to keep convincing the big guy? What is going on?” Again, I know that the Lord Chancellor and the Ministry of Justice are now very focused on this issue and that they will come out of this with some serious questions that need to be answered. That will be part of the follow-up to the Williams inquiry. Let us find out exactly what happened. Out of this, I think that some serious questions will be asked about future processes and that this House will come back to this issue more in the coming years.