Post Office Appointments: Ministerial Responsibility

Lord Hain Excerpts

Wednesday 7th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords—

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

I am sorry, but the Minister has not answered the question from the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

Order. It is the turn of the Cross Benches.

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

I thank the noble and learned Baroness: this is the whole purpose of the inquiry. I cannot answer the specific questions, not having been there myself. The inquiry will look into this. What is clear is that there has been a failure of governance. On the face of it, Post Office Ltd is set up with the right checks and balances in place. There have been non-executive directors, there is the government representative on the board, there is a chairman: on the face of it, it should be subject to the governance that we see in private companies. For some reason, there has been a lack of inquiry and of challenge and we need to understand why and find out who is accountable for that.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, is this not a systemic failure of the whole state? The answer to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, is that the Permanent Secretary is the accounting officer for the Post Office, and the department puts a director on the board of a public corporation. This is not just about the failings of Post Office managers; it is about the failings of the whole state, which sacrificed pillars of the community to suffer one of the gravest injustices committed in recent times.

[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.