Post Office Horizon: Redress

Lord Johnson of Lainston Excerpts

Tuesday 10th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Johnson of Lainston (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Secretary of State for yesterday’s Statement. It does not need to be repeated today but our team appreciated seeing a copy of it in advance. We share the view of this whole House that compensation must be delivered promptly and with minimum friction. We all, I think, welcome the new appeals process for those who have historically settled their claim under the Horizon short- fall scheme set out in this Statement. Clearly, we also welcome the implementation of the Horizon Compensation Advisory Board’s work. However, we have a few questions coming from this Statement; I am sure that some have them have been covered in the intervening period but I would be grateful if the Minister could enlighten the House.

The new appeals process will, as we understand it, be open to claimants who have settled their claims but who have new information to present. However, all of us in this House know that these processes are cumbersome and complex. The question is whether the process can be open to all claimants and not just those with so-called new information—and of course the categorisation of new information is in itself complex. To clarify, if people choose the £75,000 top-up, can they still appeal? When will the appeals process be up and running, and can the Minister confirm that those individuals will be entitled to legal representation and general support? I appreciate that we may need to be written to in response to some of those questions.

On compensation payments, can the Minister comment on the fact that, as I understand it, only six claims have been offered through the Horizon convictions redress scheme? As I understand it, no full and final settlements have been reached, which is a bit extraordinary, and we should look very closely at this. I hope that the Minister does not mind the pressure that this House will bring to bear on her to answer that question.

I also understand that only 130 letters of around 700 quashing convictions have been sent. Can the Minister comment on this? Again, that seems an extremely low number, given that we were debating this issue three months ago and the Government then were very committed to sending the letters out as quickly as possible. I am sure that we fully understand that there are some people who may be hard to contact, or there may be specific issues around communication, but this is really the wrong way around. The last Government were working with Sir Gary Hickinbottom to be appointed across all schemes to expedite claims. I am not sure whether that has been confirmed; it may have been, but if the Minister could confirm that, it would be extremely helpful.

Finally, I am afraid that it is understood via my colleagues, and the extraordinarily strong work previously done by Kevin Hollinrake in the other place in communication with the victims of this situation, that the process is being slowed—as has historically been the case but really should not be the case now—by lawyers arguing with lawyers. Are we really moving fast enough, and do we have a proper culture among the public servants of the department, and in the Post Office and the various different organisations helping to expedite this process, to ensure that we are doing the right thing as rapidly as possible?

For all Members of this House, how we deal as a nation with this disgraceful scandal will be the mark to which we will be judged. No one party, Minister or official can carry the specific blame; it really was an entire system at fault—a statist culture of bureaucratic indifference of the worst sort. I hope that the Government will continue to look into the culture that allowed these sorts of situations to arise, and particularly into the role of various government departments, civil servants and the public prosecutor’s office. Who at the top of the tree should bear responsibility for these actions, and what are we going to do, very importantly, to change the culture and the lines of the reporting?

I very much commit this side of the House—the Opposition—to work closely with the Government to make sure that we are as supportive and collaborative as possible, supporting the Minister in making sure that we get redress for the victims of this terrible tragedy.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, I echo the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Johnson, about the Government’s Statement being very welcome and the attempt to try to unscramble some of the complexities of the scheme, but from these Benches too we are concerned about the low level of conclusion of cases, despite the process. I echo his questions about how this is being managed. Mindful that there are other inquiry redress processes that have hit problems and have had to repeatedly be redesigned, my first question to the Minister is to ask whether she is absolutely convinced that she has addressed all of them. I shall come on to a couple of specific points.

Chris Head, a former sub-postmaster who lost everything when he was wrongly accused of theft, has spoken up since the publication of the statements with some concerns, saying:

“The remit of the appeal process cannot be restricted to only those that produce new evidence. Many people have been materially disadvantaged by not having access to legal advice and interim payments that were only introduced in November 2022. This appeals mechanism must be available to everyone that has settled claims since the scheme launched in 2020 to ensure they are properly compensated back to a position they would have been in had the scandal not happened”.


Members of your Lordships’ House, including the Minister, I think, have repeatedly raised concerns about the difference between these various schemes for different sub-postmasters and staff. While it is good that the Government want to have an independent appeals process for the HSS, I remind her that the complex redress schemes arising out of other tragic scandals have had to be adapted. It took the work done on the Victims and Prisoners Act to create the infected blood compensation scheme earlier this year—with an enormous amount of energy—to untangle all the different parts of that redress scheme. Does the Minister recognise that Mr Head and others have valid concerns about inconsistencies between the schemes, and that trying to sort all this out now, at pace, as was done with the infected blood scheme, must be a priority?

I want to raise two other issues briefly. First, on the predecessor package to Horizon, known as Capture, I raised the issue of the postmasters and staff who lost their jobs because of Capture, some of whom were also prosecuted but many of whom were sacked. The Independent newspaper and ITN have given voice to these victims. When will the Government’s own investigation into Capture be published and when will they update your Lordships’ House on its findings? Should redress be due, will it be incorporated into the existing postmasters’ scheme, or will there have to be a brand-new one?

Finally, in July, my noble friend Lord Fox raised again the issue of those not included in the overturning of convictions because they had appealed their cases and lost in the Appeal Court. Both he and I had helpful discussions with the previous Minister. The concern was expressed that the judiciary, in particular, had felt it was wrong for this group of victims to have their cases overturned under the legislation in the summer, because there was some merit to other parts of the cases brought against them. Yet, that question was not asked of any other case whatever, only those that went to appeal. Are the Government prepared to reconsider that? What now exists in the redress scheme is a small group of people who have to have an exceptionally high bar of going to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, hoping that it will refer their cases back to the Court of Appeal. This seems unfair and particularly long term, which means these victims will not get resolution for a long time to come.