Horizon: Compensation and Convictions

Lord McNicol of West Kilbride Excerpts

Wednesday 10th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNicol of West Kilbride (Lab)]

My Lords, in preparing for today, I had a look back over previous Statements, debates and Written and Oral Questions that we have debated in your Lordships’ House. What shocked me the most was just how repetitive it all is: the same interventions, the same problems, the same people and the same lack of solutions. I have raised questions and spoken in debates on this issue many times since 2019, and I am just a newcomer. We have all known about the scandal for years, thanks to some great campaigning by individual sub-postmasters and by parliamentarians across the political divide and across both Houses. They include the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, and Kevan Jones MP in the other place, to name just two.

The scandal is an absolute disgrace on so many levels: financially, judicially and on a human level. Most worryingly, it is a governmental oversight failure as well. We all know the details: thousands of sub-postmasters sacked or prosecuted in the space of 16 years and wrongfully labelled as thieves and fraudsters by the Post Office, Fujitsu and our judicial system. Their lives were made hell, and all because of an IT glitch in the system. What makes this so shameful are the lengths to which Post Office Ltd went to cover it up. The fact that it spent £32 million denying these claims and bullying those wrongfully accused into false guilty pleas is bad enough. But what makes this story even worse is that we got the national moral outrage not when the cases went to the highest court in the land and were won, three years ago, but only when ITV produced a drama on the scandal. As my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti asked earlier, where has the moral outrage of the state been in the last two decades?

Many postmasters and postmistresses have so far received only a fraction of their costs and expenses. Can the Minister guarantee that compensation payments will immediately follow any exonerations under the terms of the scheme as they stand today, and can he indicate any sort of timescale for this? We have waited so long. I know that he, like his predecessors, appreciates that victims cannot continue to wait for years for payments. Sixty sub-postmasters have died since the scandal, four of them taking their own lives. The final compensation is critical, but so too is overturning the convictions. Justice must be served for those workers and their families, which is why Labour has called for all sub-postmasters to be exonerated in full. As my colleague Jonathan Reynolds MP said in the Commons,

“I extend our support for any actions that may be required to overturn these convictions as quickly as possible”.—[Official Report, Commons, 8/1/24; col. 84.]

One of the lessons we have learned—the Minister touched on this—is the trauma and lack of trust that the whole process has caused for the victims. We want to ensure that no victim has to re-enter litigation and relive the traumas that they have experienced. We also welcome the announced review into private prosecutions, because the public want assurances that nothing like this can ever be allowed to happen again. One of the most alarming and shameful aspects of the whole scandal is the failure of our courts and our judicial system. In all the cases of the sub-postmasters being wrongfully found guilty, the courts believed the computer. There were originally 640 legal cases, although I think there are more now. How did that not ring alarm bells at the time? I hope the inquiry will also look into the legal processes that exacerbated the problem.

In conclusion, I will press the Government on a few of the key matters. First, can the Minister confirm the timescale on the overturning of those wrongly convicted so that they can carry on with their lives? Secondly, this is not just a Post Office issue; Fujitsu as the provider has its share of culpability. What plans do the Government have to hold Fujitsu to account for its actions? Thirdly, how much money has the Post Office spent on prosecuting the sub-postmasters and then on defending itself against them over the last 20 years? Fourthly, have the Government made any assessment of the impact of the 2014 law changes on the ability of people wrongly convicted and imprisoned to claim compensation in a scandal? Fifthly, are there any plans to seek redress from the chief executive, the Post Office board and the senior management at the time who oversaw this scandal? Finally, why did it take a TV drama for the Government to act so decisively when parliamentarians in this place and others have been raising this scandal for more than a decade?

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, as we have heard, it has taken a television drama to set light to what has been smouldering for a very long time. I suppose that all those associated with that drama should be congratulated, because they have managed to do what we failed to do: to ignite public indignation to such an extent that the Government had to move. In that respect, they deserve a great deal of congratulations. Of course, the script has been played out here and, thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, at the start, and others, we are very familiar with it.

I have a few questions about where we are now. First, we welcome the news that Scotland Yard is looking into potential offences in relation to the Post Office overall, but can the Minister confirm that this will be able to progress in a speedy way in a twin-track approach alongside the public inquiry? It is very important that both these things can happen as fast as possible. We do not want one to impede the other, so can the Minister assure us that this twin-track approach will be pursued?

Turning to compensation, in the case of individual assessment, can the Minister please enlighten your Lordships’ House on the role of retired judge Gary Hickinbottom’s panel? This was announced only on Monday and, according to the Minister then, this panel is apparently going to assess the pecuniary losses for those with overturned convictions if there is a disagreement. Is this now obsolete, or will it still be operating? If it is still operating, why does it deal with only pecuniary issues when the Secretary of State has on a number of occasions said that this harm goes way beyond simply those? How is this to be incorporated into the two announcements spread over three days?

In the Commons, the Father of the House, Peter Bottomley, said that

“the titanic error was a belief in technology”—[Official Report, Commons, 8/10/24; col 86.].

It was that belief, coupled with zero faith in the decency of the sub-postmasters, that set the problem going. In that, the role of Fujitsu was central, and it is clear that the failure of its technology was at the heart of the issue. It remains to be seen how it perpetuated the myth of its technology, and that is what the public inquiry will address; but however you look at it, it continues to benefit from UK consumers’ and taxpayers’ money. It is still operating Horizon for POL, and benefiting as a result to the tune of tens of millions of pounds annually. That is not all: further government contracts have been issued. Is this right? Is it appropriate that this should continue?

Speaking yesterday, the Work and Pensions Secretary, Mel Stride, is quoted as having stressed that not only the taxpayer will be on the hook for this compensation. The spirit of that was reiterated by the Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Kevin Hollinrake, today. So, does this now signal that the Government are going after Fujitsu for money to support the compensation of these people?

It is a terrible saga, but it has demonstrated characteristics of other sagas we have seen. For example, the process of compensating the victims of the Windrush scandal has been achingly slow. The contaminated blood scandal has dragged on and on. Another terrible example is the way the Hillsborough tragedy victims have been denied justice. There is a pattern of denial, cover-up, and then redress being delivered at a very slow pace. Does the Minister agree that there appear to be institutional problems that we ought to try to address?