Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Bill

Lord Fox Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 23rd May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, I briefly intervene to thank the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, who has done really sterling work on this, together with my noble friend. I very much agree with his optimism that this matter can be adjusted. I think all of us realise that 13 is an unlucky number and 13 people were going to suffer a degree of injustice. This is an important matter. It is a very good example of what we were talking about earlier: how this House can work consensually to deliver the right result. I look forward to what my noble friend the Minister has to say.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, I will follow on and, I hope, echo that spirit of consensus. One of the spin-offs from the decision to call the election is, of course, that this Bill will make the statute book quicker than it would have in the event that it had gone through a normal process. This is a good thing. However, it will have lost some of that scrutiny. The amendments set out some of the abiding issues that I hope the Minister will address from the Dispatch Box, bearing in mind that we will not have the legislative routes to do that.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, raised the DWP in his Amendment 1, which may or may not be an issue, but the core issue that he, along with the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, raised is the 13 appellants. If the Government stay firm in not accepting Amendments 2, 4 and 6, we really have to hear from the Minister at the Dispatch Box what they are going to do instead.

When my noble friend Lady Brinton and I met the Minister and his team—I thank them for that—it was clear to me that the Minister understands the injustice that is built into this. I understand that there is a wrestling about how much judges are offended in this, but the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, made it clear that the point has been made already in the substance of the Bill. The 13 are merely an extension of the same issue and have to be included in the same way, because they were the people who had the best case to defend and bravely went to law to do it, and now they are in danger of being hung out to dry. I know that is not what the Minister wants and I believe that a way must be found.

My noble friend Lady Brinton made the point that it is not for this Bill to legislate on this. However, it is for the Minister to say that, in the event that Capture proves also to have lured people into situations where they have been unjustly prosecuted, the Government of the day will act promptly and properly to make sure that they are not dragged through the same mess as those trapped by Horizon.

The noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, raised three issues in his amendments; unfortunately, he is not here to speak to them. They are all important issues for the future. I suggest that they are not substantive to this Bill, but they are issues that I hope, whichever party is in government, will be looked at going forward. The inviolability of computer evidence has clearly been compromised. The ability of organisations to make their own prosecutions has raised concern and a thorough review is needed. There is also the role of corporate governance within the Post Office to be considered. I know the noble Lord has also made comments on this on a number of occasions. Clearly, there is something wrong. Whoever is running the Government needs to understand that Post Office governance has been broken.

I would just like to say a word to the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Offord. He came to this relatively late and picked up the issues very quickly. He has humanely and swiftly dealt with them, and he should be praised, along with the Bill team and all of those working on it. With the inclusion of the 13, I hope we can put this thing to bed.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business and Trade (Lord Offord of Garvel) (Con)]

My Lords, I will be moving the amendments tabled in my name. I will also discuss the other amendments tabled ahead of Committee.

Amendments 7 and 8 in my name are about condition E. They are technical amendments concerning condition E in Clause 2(6) to ensure that it is clear how the condition should operate. Condition E requires that, to be in scope of the Bill, at the time of the alleged offence, a relevant version of the Horizon software was being used in the branch where the individual was carrying out Post Office business. Currently, this condition does not have the same provision for overlapping dates, which we have in condition A relating to the offences falling within the Horizon period.

The provision in condition A ensures that convictions meet the condition if the date of an offence overlaps with the specified dates, even if it does not fall entirely within it. The absence of an overlapping dates provision for condition E means that it could be possible for a Horizon case conviction to meet condition A but not condition E, even though both are intended to relate to a relationship between the use of Horizon and the date of offending in the same way. This makes condition A less effective so, to remove this inconsistency of approach and ensure that the criteria are clear and operate as intended, we seek to amend condition E to include an overlapping date provision similar to the one included in condition A.

This approach allows us to include within the quashing the possible circumstance where, following the installation of Horizon, an alleged shortfall was identified and the Pose Office concluded that this shortfall must be as a result of theft or some other offending over a period leading up to this installation, leading to a charge offence date overlapping with the period of installation.

Turning to DWP cases, I will now address Amendment 1 in the names of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, and the noble Lord, Lord Sikka. I thank them for their careful consideration of this issue. It is the Government’s view, however, that the cases the DWP prosecuted are of a very different character from the cases in the scope of this Bill. Therefore, the Government’s position on this matter is unchanged. These cases were investigated and prosecuted between 2001 and 2006 by DWP investigators using different processes from those used by the Post Office. They are of a fundamentally different character.

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[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

I may have misunderstood but, when I spoke earlier, I understood that there had been agreement between the various parties, as my noble friend Lord Arbuthnot indicated. My noble friend said that there are “two sides to this”, but I understood that that was part of the agreement and the understanding. This is very important for 13 people.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

May I suggest that we have a 10-minute break to discuss this, please?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, I suggest that consideration on this amendment be adjourned for 10 minutes while we seek clarification.

Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Bill

Lord Fox Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Thursday 23rd May 2024 Lords Chamber

On the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, there is a concern around the DWP’s understanding of, and how much information it has on, those individual cases, as they are not part of this legislation. Looking at what happened in those cases will be very important.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, first, I apologise for arriving slightly late; I beg the leave of the House to speak.

It is an honour to follow the noble Lord, who has been very much engaged in this issue for so long, as have other noble Lords here. I echo the point about the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot—it is a shame that he is not here.

To address the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, I think I heard the Minister say in Committee that, in the event that such cases did start to involve the Horizon issue, these issues would be reviewed and brought to your Lordships’ House. I hope that my understanding is correct. There is a deeper issue around finding the people who have been affected by this, because there are quite a number who are essentially missing.

That brings me to a wider point: how this Bill, when it becomes an Act, will be administered by the department. The efficient, humane and understanding administration of the Act will be central to the feeling people have of finally getting justice. I am sure that the intentions will be good, but speed is really important. Although process is important, that process needs to be expedited in order to make sure that those people find some peace at last.

I want to pick up the point we discussed in Committee, about which the Minister and others had conversations afterwards, on the subject of the 13 cases. As was touched on by the noble Lord, these people have been burned by the legal system not once but twice. To persuade them to once again put their hand in the fire may be difficult. If the only way they can get justice is to go back one more time through the legal system, it is vital that all friction is removed from it by the department and the legal system—a representative of which I am pleased to see here. If we cannot use the Act to finally exonerate these 13 then we have to rely on a humane, rapid and frictionless legal system. Anything that the Minister can say about how that can be done would be the start of being reassuring. These people will have to have a metaphorical arm put over their shoulder to persuade them once more to enter the legal fray. It is important that they get that and as much help as possible.

In closing, I echo the point that this is a really important Bill. It has taken a very long time to get to where we are. The Ministers, His Majesty’s Opposition and, I hope, these Benches have done our best to make sure that it moves as fast as possible. Once it becomes an Act, I hope very quickly, the ball passes to the administration of it. Let us get that done as quickly as we have been able to get this Bill.

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[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

My Lords, I will make a statement on the legislative consent process in relation to this Bill. In the other place, the Government tabled amendments to bring Northern Ireland within the scope of the Bill and sought legislative consent from the Northern Ireland Executive to do so. Unfortunately, due to the existing expedited timescales, we have not yet been able to secure a legislative consent Motion from the Northern Ireland Assembly for this piece of legislation.

However, my department has received a letter today from the Northern Ireland Justice Minister confirming the Executive’s support for the Bill as it relates to Northern Ireland. The Justice Minister wrote: “In the absence of the Assembly’s legislative consent, it is important to note that on 9 May 2024 the Executive Committee agreed an extension of the provisions of the Bill to Northern Ireland. The Justice Committee has also considered this matter at two meetings and has informally indicated its support for Northern Ireland’s inclusion on both occasions. Finally, as noted in previous correspondence, to date there has been unequivocal support for Northern Ireland’s inclusion within the Bill from all executive parties”. I am grateful for the work of counterparts in the Northern Ireland Executive and their officials for their constructive engagement on this Bill.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, I have some brief thank yous. I will not delay your Lordships long. I thank the Front Bench of His Majesty’s Opposition for working collaboratively, the Minister, the Whips and, in particular, the Bill team, who have had to scramble on this. The noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, needs a special mention in all this. I thank my noble friend Lady Brinton for her work on this issue and Sarah Pughe in our Whips’ office, who has been behind much of our work. We have worked well on this Bill together. Let us now pass it.