Post Office Appointments: Ministerial Responsibility

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Wednesday 7th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for that: no one can disagree with his sentiments. As I said, the machinery was put in place, but there was a lack of scrutiny, inquiry and challenge from the non-executive directors, from, perhaps, the chair, and from, perhaps, the Ministers. The Permanent Secretary role is a key one because, using the public accounting model, they meet with the DBT on a quarterly basis to have that line of communication as well. There was no shortage of lines of communication here.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend has vast experience in private equity and elsewhere in business. Does he not agree that, faced with this kind of disaster, the first thing any private business would do is clear out the entire board, without necessarily attributing any blame, and put in a new team of people who did not have any baggage in order to sort it out. Why do the Government not get on and do that?

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

Three new non-executive appointments were made in 2023 and there will be a new senior independent director appointed and a new chair. Two postmaster directors have also been appointed to the board. The current chief executive, who came in in 2019 at the point of the judgment, remains in place. We continue to have faith in him to move this thing forward quickly, with the right amount of oversight. We have confidence in the board as it is reconstituted. But, as has been said, the question is: why did the original failure happen? We need to find that out.