Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Bill

Robert Buckland Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 20th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kemi Badenoch]

I am very happy to consider a sunset clause. My hon. and learned Friend makes a very good point, and I really appreciate the fact that he can see the tightrope that we are walking: getting justice for postmasters while not interfering with judicial independence.

[Sir Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

I think it is important that we emphasise the wholly exceptional nature of this legislation, but we are dealing with wholly exceptional circumstances—we hope. The point about disclosure is one that I cannot make strongly enough, and we have to look again at our presumptions about machines and what they produce when it comes to criminal litigation.

Can I press my right hon. Friend to reiterate the wholly exceptional nature of this legislation? I think we need to be careful when it comes to a sunset clause, because we do not want to end up frustrating the purpose of the Bill, which is to deal with the hundreds of people who have lost faith in the system and might be difficult to track down and identify. I am not particularly in favour of a sunset clause, but we do need to emphasise the exceptional nature of this legislation.

[Kemi Badenoch]

I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend for his intervention. I am very happy to emphasise that, and will do so again later in my speech. I do enjoy it when we have two lawyers who disagree on a particular point; I will be taking this as their application to join the Bill Committee.

The Bill includes a duty on the Government to take all reasonable steps to identify convictions that have been quashed. It also creates a duty to notify the original convicting court, so that records can be updated and people’s good names can be restored. Other records, such as police records, will be amended in response. The Bill makes provision for records of cautions for relevant offences relating to this scandal to be deleted. While the financial redress scheme will be open to applicants throughout the UK, the Bill’s measures to overturn convictions will apply to England and Wales only.