Post Office: Horizon Compensation Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateLord Laming
Main Page: Lord Laming (Crossbench - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Laming's debates with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
(2 years, 7 months ago)
Lords ChamberBoth noble Lords who have raised this matter make an important point. I very much hope that those who were judged responsible will be held accountable, but it is important to wait for the outcome of the independent public inquiry that has been launched and is proceeding before we apportion blame.
My Lords, I want to follow up on those two questions. Is it not extraordinary that years have passed since this came to light, that people’s lives were completely ruined by what happened and that the Government are now having to put forward this huge sum of money, yet nobody from the Post Office has been held accountable for what happened?
It is beyond extraordinary, if I can disagree slightly with the noble Lord. The whole situation is tragic, appalling—there are numerous words we could use to describe the depth of the suffering of so many people. Financial compensation will never put right what went wrong. Again, we all think we know who was responsible and where the blame lies. The public inquiry has been established and is proceeding so that we can get a full account; we already have partial accounts through the various High Court cases that have proceeded. The importance of the inquiry is so that we can get a full account of exactly what happened over many years, through different regimes of government and people in leadership roles at the Post Office, and blame can be apportioned in the right way.