Post Office Governance and Horizon Compensation Schemes

Lord Sikka Excerpts

Wednesday 21st February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

I thank my noble friend Lord Arbuthnot. I will take the second one first: there are live conversations going on right now, at great speed, to finalise the legal process with the Ministry of Justice, which will result in the overturning of all the convictions in England and Wales by an Act of Parliament, excepting that there may be some small number of people who, in fact, have had legal or safe convictions, but they will be overturned—as we discussed before—because the greater good is to wipe the slate clean as quickly as possible. That will be coming to this House in short order, and I imagine there will be unanimous support for that.

As for the timing and the finance, the finance for this will come ultimately from the Treasury. The Treasury has been funding DBT, in order for it to fund the Post Office, and, in the course of last year, under the chairmanship of Henry Staunton, £253 million was paid by the Treasury, via DBT, to Post Office Ltd, of which £150 million was for the compensation schemes—and £160 million has now been paid—and the £103 million was for the replacement of the Horizon system. There are regular funding lines going to the Post Office via DBT.

This money has been ring-fenced and identified by the Government—it sits within the Treasury—but we have also had conversations in this House about the fact that there may be some other sources of compensation to be had from other places, and why it should not necessarily be just the taxpayer who picks up the bill for this when there are perhaps other stakeholders involved in this sorry saga who should pay their part. It may well be that that the taxpayer can be relieved of some of the £1 billion ring-fencing because it may be that we can get other sources, not least Fujitsu, to pay for that.

The commitment given by my department—we are working flat out on this—is to get 90% of the claims processed and settled within 40 working days. There is no going back from that; as we have said before, 78% of postmasters and postmistresses—a figure of 2,270—have been fully paid and settled. We are now at the sharp end of this process for those who were treated the most egregiously. Therefore, those cases are more complex, and perhaps need more time—not demanded by the Government—for the process of how they put their claim together. We have a situation where it is openly known that Mr Bates has submitted his claim and is not happy with the response: that is part of the process that we are in, and it will go on. We will move as quickly as we can to make sure that everyone is restored to the position that they should be in.

[Lord Sikka (Lab)]

My Lords, I have a question about the undated letter from Sarah Munby to Mr Staunton that has been released. It asks him to focus on

“effective management of legal costs”.

Can the Minister explain what those legal costs are? What does that mean? Such a letter could not have been written without consultation with lots of colleagues as to what kind of terminology to use. Will the Minister ensure that all the back-up notes to this letter are put in the public domain?

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

This is very straight- forward. If I am appointed as the new chairman of a company in this situation and, of my three priorities, the No. 1 is to manage a legal process to get compensation quickly to postmasters, I would expect to be told that formally by the Permanent Secretary and to be held accountable to manage those costs effectively. That does not mean to minimise or delay; it means to manage the process effectively to get compensation to the postmasters. What has been put into the public domain makes it very clear that there has been no dragging of feet and no instruction to the contrary on this matter.

As we have discussed many times in this Chamber, we now have a full statutory inquiry. The judge, Wyn Williams, will pick through this in fine detail. We are all very impatient and frustrated because we want the answer now, but we got into this mess because we jumped the gun before, and we are not going to do so again.