Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Bill Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateLord Fox
Main Page: Lord Fox (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Fox's debates with the Department for Business and Trade
(3 months ago)
Lords ChamberMy 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.
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.
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.
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.
My Lords, I suggest that consideration on this amendment be adjourned for 10 minutes while we seek clarification.