Post Office: Compensation for Horizon Scandal

Robert Buckland Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments. I ask him please to pass my condolences to the family of the postmaster to whom I know he is referring, and to others with whom he has been in contact who have a family member who has taken their life as a result of this. The compensation schemes all include the estates of the postmasters who have died, whether they died of natural causes or unfortunately took their own lives.

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

I want to add my tribute to my hon. Friend, who is working tenaciously on behalf of—as he has just said—not just the living, but those who have sadly died. I think he will agree that we can have the fullest confidence in the experience of the High Court judge Sir Wyn Williams and his independent statutory inquiry, but does he agree that the inquiry should examine in particular the way in which, before evidence that is the product of information technology—which is only going to grow as a phenomenon in the years ahead—is presented to any court, it is the subject of its own verification? That seems to me to be at the heart of the problem that was the root of what has been, in terms of its scale, the greatest miscarriage of justice in our English and Welsh legal history.

[Paul Scully]

I thank my right hon. and learned Friend for what he has said and for the experience that he brings to the House. Sir Wyn Williams has had to learn very quickly and import considerable resources because of the technology that has been involved. It is easy to baffle people with high tech, and to say that there is nothing to see here and absolutely nothing is wrong. It is extremely complex, and I hope that Sir Wyn does get to the bottom of exactly the issue that my right hon. and learned Friend has raised.