Opt-out Collective Court Actions and Connected Litigation Funding

Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom Excerpts

Thursday 3rd September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lemos (Lab)]

We are committed to legislating. I hear the noble Lord’s concern about that, but I want to reassure the House that we are committed to legislating when parliamentary time allows. We are working urgently to identify a new legislative vehicle to take this forward. Legislation will clarify that litigation funding agreements are not damages-based agreements, and this will mitigate the effects of the PACCAR judgment.

[Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom (Con)]

Does the Minister accept that without litigation funding, Alan Bates would never have been able to bring his fantastic legal action against the Post Office, and does he recognise that this is an urgent matter?

[Lord Lemos (Lab)]

I do recognise that, and I know the history of Sir Alan Bates’ involvement in this. Sir Alan Bates has spoken openly about how, without a litigation funding agreement, he and the sub-postmasters would not have had their day in court. We agree with Sir Alan that third-party funding is crucial for enabling ordinary people to access justice. The access to justice point is the centre of why we think this is important, and I know that is what noble Lords feel too. With group and consumer claims, third-party funding under a litigation funding agreement is often the only option people have to bring a claim. I note the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, about access to legal aid as well. I want to reassure the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, that we understand the importance of it in relation to the sub-postmasters and to Sir Alan Bates.

Public Office (Accountability) Bill

Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 1st September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure and an honour, although rather difficult, to follow the noble Lord, who spoke movingly and from the heart about things he knows a great deal about. I thank him for what he has said. I apologise for having been less in the Chamber than I would have liked because of another Bill in Committee upstairs.

I look at this Bill from the point of view of the sub-postmasters, and I declare an interest as a member of the Horizon Compensation Advisory Board. It was good to hear the remarks of my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Beamish, who also sits on that board.

I have an initial question to the Minister from which everything else I say follows: does the Bill cover the Post Office, a so-called arm’s-length organisation? I believe that, because of the definition contained in paragraph 4 of Schedule 2 to the Bill, the Post Office is covered, but I should be grateful for the Minister’s explicit confirmation of that.

An important aspect of the Post Office scandal is that it began as a computer problem, both hardware and software, but rapidly turned into a human behaviour problem, as managers denied the existence of the computer problem. Perhaps they denied it first to themselves, but later, they certainly denied it to everyone else. Managers believed—or pretended to believe—what they were paid to believe, and therefore what they wanted to believe. We all tend to believe what we want to believe. But how does a duty of candour in practice apply in such circumstances?

It is human nature to defend oneself and the organisations of which we are a part and which pay our salaries, and only the most self-confident freely admit to their own faults. So, in one sense, the Bill tries to counteract human nature. It will work only if it sets up institutions and cultures which reward honesty and openness.

I am not convinced the Bill does reward openness. It attempts to punish deceitfulness, but that is a different thing. How do we reward the whistleblower? That is different from protecting the whistleblower. How does the Bill ensure that these problems are nipped in the bud before they ever get to the stage of public inquiries? Okay, it provides for internal policies and for discouraging retaliation against whistleblowers, and that is good. But if you have lived through the Post Office scandal, as the noble Lord, Lord Beamish, and I have, you know how insidious the accusation of disloyalty is. You know how a hint here or there—that you are being too loyal to your professional ethics and not loyal enough to your business—can influence behaviour. You know that career pathways depend on being seen as part of a team.

The Bill could do more, perhaps through the institution of an office for whistleblowers; perhaps through adopting some of the ideas, as the noble Lord, Lord Beamish, referred to, that Professor Hodges is putting forward about non-blame cultures; perhaps through the Independent Public Advocate. But it could do more to encourage good behaviour from the start.

How will the Bill actually work in practice? There are those directly employed by the Post Office. How will it extend to them? Paula Vennells told me that it was impossible for the Post Office or Fujitsu to access the sub-postmasters’ accounts remotely. We know now that that was wrong. But was it an intentional lie? We may never know, but personally, I believe that at the time she said it to me, she probably believed it. But later, she must have come to recognise that it was untrue. Would the Bill mean that she would be required to come back and put something right that she had realised was wrong? And since I was not myself an inquiry—I was an MP working for my constituent—would the Bill cover her talking to me?

We know that Susan Crichton, the Post Office’s general counsel, asked Fujitsu to “work their magic”—which meant remotely access the sub-postmasters’ accounts—but does her knowledge become imputed to the chief executive of the organisation of which she was a part? How does this Bill deal with wilful blindness in the face of the evidence?

How does the Bill cover the work of the investigators? They told each of the sub-postmasters that they were the only ones with the problem. They knew that this was a lie. It had the result that sub-postmasters, at their lowest ebb and facing false accusations that would lead some of them to take their own lives, were isolated from each other and deprived of the support that collectives like trade unions provide. It was one of the most shocking aspects of the scandal, among many, many shocking aspects. Would that be a breach of the Bill?

How, precisely, would the Bill extend to Fujitsu, that glorious company which has paid not a penny of compensation and which remains on the Government’s list of companies to do business with? How does it apply to the lawyers, upon whose advice we are told the Post Office CEO depended? How does it apply to the principal accounting officer, who delegated his responsibility to others?

I welcome the Bill, but I worry that it concentrates most on public inquiries and investigations—the period after something has gone so seriously wrong that the Government are dragged, kicking and screaming, to having a public inquiry. I believe that it needs to stop the bad behaviour before there is a need to punish it.

Victims and Courts Bill

Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 10th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab)]

My Lords, I can be short on this important group, because of the detailed scrutiny and cross-party support that I enjoyed in Committee, because of my eminent co-signatories and because Report stage discipline is a courtesy to all noble Lords hoping to do their voting duty and get home at a reasonable time.

This group concerns two dangerous evidential practices that have already led to significant miscarriages of justice. Amendment 21 addresses computer evidence too easily presumed reliable without appropriate testing or proof—I give you the Horizon scandal and the postmasters. Amendment 22 addresses the pernicious and discriminatory police and prosecution practice of admitting evidence of people’s musical tastes. Young black men’s liking for rap and drill music, in particular, are somehow probative of criminal proclivity and intent, especially in joint enterprise cases—I give you Ademola Adadeji, the young, promising law scholar sent to prison in a case of total mistaken identity, a conviction overturned only after he served three years of his young life. My noble friend Lady Lawrence of Clarendon explained that case in Committee. This practice is exacerbated by police officers holding themselves out as expert witnesses in rap and drill music. I shall say no more.

I am so grateful to my noble friend the Minister for her repeated and expert engagement with these concerns. I look forward hopefully to her response and I beg to move.

[Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom (Con)]

My Lords, on Amendment 21, which is about the reliability of computer evidence, I am grateful to Sam Stein KC for his advice on this difficult issue. I am also extremely grateful to the Minister for meeting me and other signatories to this group, which is quite remarkable given her workload. Earlier today, we were discussing modern slavery: I think that she has fallen foul of it. She understood the urgency of dealing with the issue of the reliability of computer evidence and I came away from that meeting with the impression that she is determined to address it through the Criminal Procedure Rules rather than through the legislative process that we propose today. Maybe that is right, but I have three questions for her.

First, will she agree to further meetings, perhaps involving Sam Stein KC, so that we can do our best to get these rules right, dealing not just with the issue of hearsay evidence but also with the issue of the admissibility of computer evidence?

Secondly, in the meeting that she and I had, we discussed an issue that was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, in Committee—namely, international comparisons. The Minister kindly sent me a letter today setting out some of those international comparisons, in which she said that it was clear that, in France, digital evidence must be shown to be reliable and unaltered; in Germany, systems must meet formal test protocols before their output can be relied on; in India, it is required that evidence must be authenticated through a strict statutory process; and so it goes on. In other words, they are much more restrictive on computer evidence than we are and their criminal processes have not ground to a halt.

Victims and Courts Bill

Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 11th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak on Amendment 61. I did not speak at Second Reading, for which I apologise to your Lordships’ House. I lacked the ingenuity of the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, in moving an amendment to the Bill. I pay tribute to her for doing so. Everything she said about Amendment 61 was right. I also pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, for pursuing this issue with her usual persistence and eloquence. I am grateful to her for having involved me in some of the meetings that she organised.

My first point is that evidence derived from a computer is hearsay. There are very good reasons why we treat hearsay evidence with caution. To admit hearsay evidence is a step in itself, but to presume that it is reliable is a giant stride beyond that.

Secondly, we are all aware of how frequently we have to redo the programming on our Apple iPhones or whatever, partly because of bugs in the programming of the computer technology on which we rely so much. Bugs are inevitable in computer programmes. That was why Fujitsu—I hope the Minister will answer the point about whether Fujitsu has paid, or might pay, any money to the taxpayer or to the sub-postmasters— had an office dedicated not just to altering the sub- postmasters’ balances, shocking as that was, but to altering and amending a programme that was never going to be perfect, because no computer programme is. If computer programmes are inherently unreliable, to have a presumption in law that they are reliable is unsustainable.

Thirdly, the consequences of the repeal of Section 69 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984—which, I remind your Lordships, happened partly because the Post Office asked for it to happen to make its prosecutions easier for it—were that Seema Misra was sent to prison when she was eight weeks pregnant and on her son’s 10th birthday. She collapsed when she was sentenced. This is an urgent matter. If we leave it in place, further injustices may happen as soon as tomorrow.

That is the first point about why it is urgent. The second point about why it is urgent is that any defence lawyer, in any event, will point to the Horizon case and say that it is perfectly obvious that this presumption is wrong. It is perfectly obvious. We cannot, in all good conscience, permit to continue in law a presumption which we know to be incorrect, and I hope that the Minister will at least set out a path to changing it.

[Lord Beamish (Lab)]

My Lords, I too support Amendment 61 in the name of my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti.

When I left my home in Durham on Monday morning, I had a phone call. It was from an individual I had met five years earlier. He was the husband of a postmistress in Northumberland who had been prosecuted by the Post Office. She was prosecuted in 1998. He was ringing me to tell me that on the Saturday morning, she had received the letter overturning her conviction under the Horizon Post Office scandal.

I met the couple five years ago. They had a thriving business and were well respected in the community—a small village in Northumberland. They now live in a small council house in the same village. As they explained to me when I sat in their living room, everyone still thinks, “That is the woman who stole the money from the Post Office”.

That woman was traumatised. That is the only word I can use. She had blanks in her mind. It was very difficult for me to get the information from her, so traumatised she was. That woman has suffered for nearly 30 years. She has now got that letter saying that she did nothing wrong and can now hold her head up high in her community. As I said to her husband, that must be an unbelievable feeling.

That couple are going to get compensation—quite rightly—but, as the husband said, that is not important. The important thing was that woman’s and their family’s good name. That was ruined, because computer evidence, as the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, just said, was used to persecute a decent, hard-working woman.

Over the last 15 or 16 years that the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, and I have been campaigning on this, I have met many victims of this scandal. They are decent, ordinary people whom you pass in the street. If you were their friend, you would consider it a privilege. Their lives have been completely ruined. That is because the presumption was that the computer had to be right. It was classed as a mechanical machine and that this could not be infallible.

The judiciary needs to take some blame in the Post Office scandal, because I have read many court transcripts of the cases. I think of one. There was a postmistress from County Durham called June Tooby, who was not involved in the Horizon case but the pre-Horizon scheme—Capture. She was an absolutely marvellous woman and she defended herself in court. She said to the judge that her argument was that the computer was wrong and gave the reasons why. He dismissed her completely out of hand and would not listen to her that somehow this was a possibility.

That is not the only case that I have seen where judges have taken the approach of completely dismissing that. I am not one for attacking our judiciary, but I get annoyed when judges get on their high horse and say that somehow they cannot be criticised. The judiciary played a part in this scandal and must take responsibility for that.

The noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, said that this is urgent. It is urgent. My noble friend Lady Chakrabarti said that the consultation started on 21 January 2025. Sarah Sackman, the then Minister, said at the opening of that consultation:

“We must learn the lessons of the Post Office scandal … Ensuring people are protected from miscarriages of justice is … one part of the government’s Plan for Change”.


That was over a year ago. I know that things move very slowly in this Government and that things sometimes have gestation periods longer than that of an African elephant, but this cannot wait. I urge the Minister. We do not want any more reviews or need any more consultations. That seems to be the in word these days—if you do not want to make a decision, have a consultation or say, “We are considering it”. This is now urgent.

I congratulate my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti on tabling this amendment. It must be done in this Bill. It cannot wait. Speaking for myself—and, I think, on behalf of my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot —we will not let this rest. This is the opportunity for the Government to put this right. I would love to know what the Ministry of Justice has been doing for the last year because it is a very simple thing; nor is it controversial. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, has just said, people will still be found guilty. There will be more victims if we do not change this. This would also send a clear signal to those victims of the Post Office Horizon scandal that this Government are taking this seriously.

I say, very gently, to the Minister, not to come back with, “We’re going to review it” or that there is some next stage to go through. Frankly, I am getting sick of this. My heart drops when I hear of another review or consultation. It seems to be a great “Yes Minister” way of kicking things into the long grass. This cannot be kicked into the long grass. I am determined that it will not be.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom (Con)]

Before the Minister moves on to Amendment 62, would she please comment on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Russell, about the Law Society’s contribution to the consultation about a system of assurances? That may be a way forward that might allow her to bring forward her own amendment on Report.

[Baroness Levitt (Lab)]

That is exactly what the Government are evaluating. I cannot go any further than that today, but those are all the things that are being considered. I cannot go any further than to say that I am listening.

I turn to Amendment 62, in the names of my noble friends Lady Chakrabarti and Lady Lawrence. I am very aware of these issues, particularly in relation to rap and drill. I knew about this amendment, but in the course of my practice and when I was a judge I have been to a number of lectures on the subject and read a number of articles, including some by Keir Monteith, King’s Counsel, who I see is sitting below the Bar today.

The question here, on the use of this material, is one of relevance. Like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, I do not want to go into a boring exegesis of when evidence is admissible and when it is not. The real concern here is to make sure that if—and it is a big if—this evidence is to be used then it has proper probative value, on the basis that it goes further than either that this defendant is a bad person because they like rap and drill music or, even worse, some spurious and crude racial stereotypes. Judges have a duty to ensure that only evidence meeting these standards is adduced and they should exclude any evidence that does not meet the required threshold—that is not a matter of discretion. However, I understand the concerns about the fact that that has not happened in all cases.

It is axiomatic to say that creative and artistic expression is of itself not a crime, and it is rare that it would feature in the evidence of a prosecution unless it inherently involved criminal activity, such as damaging another person’s property with graffiti or drawing sexual images of children. As for musical expression, the Crown Prosecution Service is clear that creating or listening to music is not a crime, but it says that, on occasion, it has encountered cases where, upon investigation into a violent offence, it became clear that drill and rap music had been used in the build-up to encourage or incite violence or to reveal information about a crime that only the attackers would know. These instances are rare and, importantly, are already subject to rigorous scrutiny under existing evidential rules. However, I am aware of the disquiet, and we understand the community concerns.

I take the point made by my noble friend Lady Lawrence. I am a lover of crime fiction but I do not think anyone is ever going to use that in a prosecution against me—well, I hope they do not. She makes a valid point.

The Crown Prosecution Service is actively consulting on this matter through a public consultation, seeking views on whether formal prosecution guidance should be issued regarding the use of musical expression evidence. We want to ensure that any future approach is clear and informed by a wide range of perspectives.

It is the Government’s view that, as currently drafted, the amendment would be unduly restrictive and would, in effect, frustrate the ability of the Crown to adduce relevant and probative evidence before the court, with the potential consequences of frustrating justice for victims in some serious cases. The Government intend to await the outcome of the CPS consultation and announce next steps in due course. I invite all noble Lords not to press their amendments.