Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Bill

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 23rd May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNicol of West Kilbride (Lab)]

My Lords, I am obviously dealing with this in wash-up. The priority is to ensure that we get this Bill through. The arguments have been very well rehearsed across your Lordships’ House and in the other place about Horizon, the Post Office, Fujitsu and the outcomes of that. At Second Reading, I was struck by the contributions from all sides of your Lordships’ House and the language that was used about making sure that we do, and are seen to do, the right thing. The Labour Front Bench has submitted no amendments at this stage for that simple reason. We looked at purpose, but we think the issues around the Bill are clear enough that it deals just with this set of circumstances, which is obviously one of the big issues from across the judiciary.

On the relationship with the Government and the department on the Bill, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Offord, and the team for those discussions. If we can get to a situation, following the Minister’s response and conversations with the Minister down the other end, where these amendments go through and are accepted by the Government, the Bill will be in a better place and all of us will have played our part in delivering that. We support where we are at just now. We intend this to go through, to be dealt with in the other place tomorrow and then to be legislated for. I look forward to the Minister’s response so that we get the warm words and assurances that the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, has worked so hard to achieve.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, I briefly intervene to thank the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, who has done really sterling work on this, together with my noble friend. I very much agree with his optimism that this matter can be adjusted. I think all of us realise that 13 is an unlucky number and 13 people were going to suffer a degree of injustice. This is an important matter. It is a very good example of what we were talking about earlier: how this House can work consensually to deliver the right result. I look forward to what my noble friend the Minister has to say.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, I will follow on and, I hope, echo that spirit of consensus. One of the spin-offs from the decision to call the election is, of course, that this Bill will make the statute book quicker than it would have in the event that it had gone through a normal process. This is a good thing. However, it will have lost some of that scrutiny. The amendments set out some of the abiding issues that I hope the Minister will address from the Dispatch Box, bearing in mind that we will not have the legislative routes to do that.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, raised the DWP in his Amendment 1, which may or may not be an issue, but the core issue that he, along with the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, raised is the 13 appellants. If the Government stay firm in not accepting Amendments 2, 4 and 6, we really have to hear from the Minister at the Dispatch Box what they are going to do instead.

When my noble friend Lady Brinton and I met the Minister and his team—I thank them for that—it was clear to me that the Minister understands the injustice that is built into this. I understand that there is a wrestling about how much judges are offended in this, but the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, made it clear that the point has been made already in the substance of the Bill. The 13 are merely an extension of the same issue and have to be included in the same way, because they were the people who had the best case to defend and bravely went to law to do it, and now they are in danger of being hung out to dry. I know that is not what the Minister wants and I believe that a way must be found.

My noble friend Lady Brinton made the point that it is not for this Bill to legislate on this. However, it is for the Minister to say that, in the event that Capture proves also to have lured people into situations where they have been unjustly prosecuted, the Government of the day will act promptly and properly to make sure that they are not dragged through the same mess as those trapped by Horizon.

The noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, raised three issues in his amendments; unfortunately, he is not here to speak to them. They are all important issues for the future. I suggest that they are not substantive to this Bill, but they are issues that I hope, whichever party is in government, will be looked at going forward. The inviolability of computer evidence has clearly been compromised. The ability of organisations to make their own prosecutions has raised concern and a thorough review is needed. There is also the role of corporate governance within the Post Office to be considered. I know the noble Lord has also made comments on this on a number of occasions. Clearly, there is something wrong. Whoever is running the Government needs to understand that Post Office governance has been broken.

I would just like to say a word to the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Offord. He came to this relatively late and picked up the issues very quickly. He has humanely and swiftly dealt with them, and he should be praised, along with the Bill team and all of those working on it. With the inclusion of the 13, I hope we can put this thing to bed.

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[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

I thank my noble friend. We have been clear in our discussions with him that there are two sides to this argument and great sympathy is expressed for the group in the Court of Appeal cases. At this stage in proceedings, however, the Government are retaining the position as outlined from the Dispatch Box.

Amendment 13, in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, would require the appropriate authority to notify bodies other than the convicting court that a conviction has been quashed. The effect of this amendment would be potentially onerous. It is not clear what would constitute an appropriate body or how the appropriate authority would decide which bodies ought to be notified. The reason the Bill currently requires that the convicting court be notified is to reflect what would happen when the Court of Appeal quashes a conviction. This amendment would create a difference between the two processes and it is unclear what purpose it would achieve. Therefore, I hope the noble and learned Lord will be happy not to move this amendment.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

I may have misunderstood but, when I spoke earlier, I understood that there had been agreement between the various parties, as my noble friend Lord Arbuthnot indicated. My noble friend said that there are “two sides to this”, but I understood that that was part of the agreement and the understanding. This is very important for 13 people.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

May I suggest that we have a 10-minute break to discuss this, please?

Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

3rd reading
Tuesday 26th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, we are at Third Reading and this is not a time for long speeches, but I want to congratulate my noble friend and his colleagues on having listened to what was said. He remarked that I had gone from moving a regret amendment to signing an amendment. I gently point out that it is not me who has moved position.

I am struck by how the attempts to get this dealt with under both the Media Bill and this Bill came across the problems of the Long Title of the Bill and getting it in order. Going from an amendment that was 16 lines long to one that is 16 pages long tells us how much hard work has gone into this with the civil servants in both departments that are affected. It is fashionable to be rude about this place and the work it does, which I believe is outstanding, but it is even more fashionable these days, even among some Ministers, to criticise the Civil Service. To turn this around in this period, and to do it with such diligence and careful consideration, is a great tribute to the officials in those departments. It just goes to show that, contrary to what is believed, if Ministers give a clear view of what needs to be done, the Civil Service is more than capable of delivering that.

The noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, has done a fantastic job on this. I agree with everything that she said, and I see no need to repeat it. My understanding—I am very conscious of Pepper v Hart here—is that what the Minister has said from the Dispatch Box is absolutely clear. I have to say that, when I read the amendment, I thought, “Is this secondary legislation a Maginot line that will enable a future Government to get around the clear principle that no foreign Government should be able to own or influence in any way a newspaper or a news magazine?” The words that have been stated from the Dispatch Box make me confident that that is not the position. That has to be right. After yesterday’s events, it is inconceivable that the Chinese Government could own 1% or even one share of a British newspaper.

The carve-out is sensible, if sensibly applied, and there will be an opportunity for this House and the other place to consider it. I very much look forward to this legislation receiving Royal Assent, which will mean that there is a complete ban on any foreign Government having either ownership or influence over our press. That must be right in a free and democratic society.

[Lord Faulks (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I also pay tribute to the Government, Ministers, officials and lawyers for their speedy response to the amendment put down on Report by the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, and others. I declare an interest as the chair of the Independent Press Standards Organisation, which regulates 95% of the printed press and its online manifestations.

I shared with many other noble Lords concern about the prospective acquisition of the Daily Telegraph and the Spectator by the United Arab Emirates—or at least the acquisition of a substantial part of those important titles. It seems to me that this amendment will make this sort of acquisition much more difficult, if not impossible, as soon as the Bill becomes law.

I agree with other noble Lords that it is most important in framing the necessary secondary legislation that the driving principle behind the amendment, which is to prevent foreign state ownership of newspapers, is reflected appropriately. There is a risk that too tightly drawn definitions might catch wholly benign investors who might have a very modest and non-active interest in newspaper organisations. Sovereign wealth funds have already been mentioned, and the noble Lord has given assurances in this area. I do not entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, in his citation of Pepper v Hart and its importance, but none the less we will be much reassured by anything the Minister might say. I also ask him to consider the position of banks which may provide a newspaper organisation’s finance. Banks are often part of a consortium, and one part of a consortium may well be a bank with a connection to a foreign state. It is important that that is not captured.

There has been a deliberate choice by those drafting these amendments to change the language of the Enterprise Act 2002, which speaks of “material influence” to provide in the amendment that a relevant merger situation arises where one party acquires “influence” over another. That is plainly a much lower bar. I imagine that the change is designed to protect against somewhat unconvincing assertions by prospective acquirers of an interest in newspapers that editorial independence is protected by some form of editorial board or other Chinese wall. I welcome the Minister’s clarification on this.

The definition of a newspaper in the amendment is,

“a news publication circulating wholly or mainly in the United Kingdom or in a part of the United Kingdom on any periodic basis”.

That seems to exclude news websites or broadcasters. News websites are increasingly a source of news for consumers, many whom have deserted conventional newspaper models. It may be that more power and influence can in fact be obtained there than in the traditional format. I hope that the Minister can continue to reassure the House that these websites are in the Government’s sights, simply on the basis of consistency. I venture to suggest that the Media Bill might provide an appropriate parent for relevant provisions to bring websites into the same category as newspapers. I welcome clarification on that.

The provisions make it clear that the Secretary of State must—I emphasise the word “must”—

“make an order … reversing or preventing … the foreign state newspaper merger situation”.

There is no discretion here. That makes it all the more important that any exemptions should provide that remote or benign interest in newspapers by various emanations of foreign states will not necessarily fall foul of these provisions.

I would like to make it clear that I am entirely in favour of the thinking which animates this amendment, but it is inevitable that when an amendment is drafted, at considerable pace, at a late stage in the progress of a Bill, there may be gaps or ambiguities. Freedom from state interference is of fundamental importance. Our newspaper industry is not in anything like the healthy state it once was, and its vulnerability is what makes newspapers potentially prey to outside investment from foreign states which seek influence. However, important though it is to keep our newspapers free of such influence, we want them to survive and, indeed, to prosper. I hope that the amendment entirely comprehends that aim.

Finally, I simply ask for clarity—the drafting is impressive, but sometimes the meaning is a little hard to tease out—on how the Minister envisages parliamentary involvement in the case of a contentious merger situation.

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[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords for their support for these amendments and the work undertaken. I thank my noble friend Lady Stowell for commending the work of Julia Lopez, the media Minister, and indeed the department and the officials more broadly. My noble friend also acknowledged the specific quasi-judicial role of the Secretary of State in her ongoing determination of the case before her, but acknowledged that she obviously has a role in all this. On the broader question of media mergers, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State of course remains very much involved as well, but I thank my noble friend for her appreciation for both. I agree with my noble friend Lord Forsyth in his praise for the civil servants who worked thoroughly and quickly on this matter, including over Mother’s Day weekend. I am grateful for that recognition.

My noble friend Lord Forsyth rightly pointed out that he has not moved since tabling his regret amendment to the Media Bill. The Government have made explicit and put beyond doubt what was implicit and possible in the existing regime, as I set out on Report. We are very happy to take the opportunity to do that clearly, in the way that we do through these amendments, and, indeed, to set out now the new lower threshold. My noble friend Lady Stowell is right: we will set it at 5%, which is considerably lower than the existing threshold. I am glad that my noble friend welcomes that. She is right in the characterisation of what I said: anyone blocked at what she calls stage 1—the new automatic block on foreign state investment—will not be able to be exempted at what she calls stage 2. She is right, as well, to make the distinction between foreign investment and foreign state investment, and to make it clear, as I was very happy to, that the UK remains open for business. This is a discrete area and an important one in our national life, which is why we are acting in the way we have.

My noble friend Lord Faulks and the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, asked about the role of banks. We do not think that, in the ordinary course of events, debt and debt refinancing from foreign banks which have a state interest should be captured, unless the structure of the transaction gives rise to concerns about influence. We are considering precisely how debt and debt refinancing should be treated in cases where the structure of debt may give rise to concerns about foreign state investment organisations. But as I say, as we bring these provisions forward in secondary legislation, I am very happy to continue conversations with noble Lords and, indeed, to have conversations with those who will be directly affected.

My noble friend Lord Faulks invited me to set out what we are doing in consulting shortly on expanding the existing media mergers regime and the foreign state ownership provisions, to include online news websites. That will enable us to make changes that ensure that online news, whether from an established newspaper group or an online publisher, is covered by the media regime and the new measures we are introducing for foreign state media ownership.

The Secretary of State will maintain a quasi-judicial role in media mergers. The public interest regime will remain as it is, but we are adding a new parallel foreign state intervention regime. The Secretary of State will not have discretion under that; she will have to follow the report of the Competition and Markets Authority, both on whether there is a foreign state merger and an exemption. She would need to lay an order before Parliament to block a transaction, which would be under the negative procedure. We will debate what I have announced in the provisions that we will bring forward after Royal Assent, setting out an exemption for investments where the stake is below 5%, and noble Lords will have the opportunity to scrutinise that under the affirmative procedure.

I am grateful to noble Lords who have engaged with us and our officials in recent days as we work on these amendments. I am glad that they have your Lordships’ support. I beg to move.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

Before my noble friend sits down, when can we expect the secondary legislation to appear?

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

Can I ask a question as well, to save the Minister from getting up several times? I do not think that he said anything about broadcasting. Where is the department on reviewing policy in that area?

Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 13th March 2024 Lords Chamber

This is not simply about the Daily Telegraph or the Spectator magazine, but what that case has done is illustrate the vulnerability that we have, in this modern world, to the way in which foreign Governments might seek to impose their views and attitudes on the British public. I do not intend, given that Sky News has already told me that the Government are giving in, to make a huge issue of this here. As the noble Baroness said, I will listen with great interest to what the Minister says and what the department has told Sky News in advance; if that is right, we will all be satisfied, and the United Kingdom will be a safer place as a consequence.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on her skill and thank the splendid, clever people in our Public Bill Office who enabled her to find a way through this legislation to have an amendment that is in scope—because, for a very long time, we thought that would not be possible. I tried with the Media Bill, and the best I could come up with was a regret Motion on the Second Reading that showed there was widespread support. The noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, deserves considerable credit for making that navigation and getting us to the point where, in her courteous way—she is much more diplomatic than me—she gives the Government an opportunity to do the right thing and support an amendment to this Bill to protect the freedom of the press in our country and, with that, the very foundations of our democracy.

I will say something about the Telegraph bid made by this curious organisation called RedBird IMI—it is a very odd bird indeed. We are told that Sheikh Mansour, the vice-president and Deputy Prime Minister of the UAE, is acting in a purely private capacity by those who wish to advance this so-called investment. Now I am a banker, but I do not really understand how you can have an investment strategy that involves paying multiples of the value of the asset and, in carrying out the bid, briefing the press to the effect that you would be prepared to have a minority interest and, presumably, not have a vote—that strikes me as an odd investment strategy indeed.

What it is, is what it is: an influence strategy. The payment of a rich price is about getting influence through the medium of the Telegraph and the Spectator magazine—it is not a commercial issue. Money talks, of course, and ownership matters. One of the very few things that I disagreed with Mrs Thatcher on was that she tended to the view that ownership did not matter. Ownership does matter, and the freedom of our press should never be up for sale.

I said in an earlier debate that he who pays the piper calls the tune—but this is not a melody. The very idea of an autocratic state with a poor record on human rights owning or holding any influence in a major British daily newspaper is utterly surreal: a country that hosts Putin, greets him as dear friend and purchases oil as he circumvents sanctions and conducts his blood-soaked regime and brutal, illegal war in Ukraine; a country whose laws ban any direct criticism of their rulers through the Government’s national media council, where citizen journalists and bloggers are targeted for criticising the regime and accused of defamation, insulting the state and posting false information with the aim of damaging the country’s reputation; a country that puts journalists in jail, deports critics and closes down any criticism; a country that is bottom of the class in international freedom tables; a country where, according to Amnesty International, at least 26 Emirati prisoners remain behind bars because of their peaceful political criticism.

The bidders at IMI promise editorial independence, just as they did in the case of CNN Business Arabic. According to the Times report of 12 January, Sultan Al Jaber, chairman of IMI, put pressure on CNN Business Arabic to avoid negative news about the UAE, despite promises to preserve journalists’ editorial independence. The Times reported that the editor-in-chief was forced out within months of his appointment for refusing to submit to requests from Al Jaber for positive coverage. Al Jaber was previously head of the UAE’s censorship agency, so had much experience in this area.

I hope I have convinced the House—I do not think I need to try very hard—that this bird cannot fly, but it is not just about this particular bird, as the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, said. No insult was intended earlier—I was just pulling his leg. There is a principle here. Foreign Governments should be nowhere near the ownership of newspapers and magazines. In fairness to the Government, no one could have predicted how this utterly bizarre bid would come to pass. I know of no democratic country that would allow a foreign state to take ownership of key national newspapers. I now regret my regret amendment. Perhaps it was a little unfair to criticise the Government for not including measures in the Media Bill and drawing the Long Title so tightly that it was impossible to amend the Bill in that respect. The debates in this House showed universal opposition. The poll by Lord Ashcroft, which has been mentioned, reflects that in the country.

This amendment may not be perfect. It is an old trick of Sir Humphrey to say, “Well, I accept the amendment in principle but unfortunately the drafting is not quite right”. From my experience of talking to Minister Lopez and from the work done by my noble friend Lady Stowell, I believe the Government are working sincerely to try to find a way of having an amendment that will produce what I believe everyone in the House would like to see. They should continue to work with my noble friend and the other sponsors to ensure that the Bill leaves this House amended. Nothing less than a complete ban on foreign Governments having any role in the governance, ownership or financing of our media is acceptable. It is, as I have said before, a no-brainer.

[Lord Moore of Etchingham (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I refer your Lordships to my entry in the register. I have been on the staff of the Telegraph Media Group since 1979, so this interest bulks large in my mind; I had to confess it at once. I am very grateful for everything that has been said and to the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, for moving this amendment. I am also very pleased that this has been a cross-party affair coming from all sides of the House.

My only regret so far is that the Government were inclined to regard this as a technical matter that had to be looked at in terms of rules. It is important to look at the rules, which DCMS is doing, but it is not really about that. As has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, and all other speakers, this is a very important matter of principle. The delay involved has been very difficult for newspapers in general, and particularly for my own and for the Spectator, because while you do not know what will happen you cannot really get on with doing your journalism. That tends to erode things if you are not careful, so it is very important that we have got to the heart of it.

I endorse absolutely everything that the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said about the Abu Dhabi bid, but I am quite glad that I do not have to say it myself, because if we had had such a rule and such clarity from the start, people would not have had to get into this issue of saying rather difficult truths about many regimes across the world. We would simply have been able to say, “No, sorry, the rule is the rule, and that’s that”. I hope we can learn something from all that.

I have seen the leak, if that is the right word, so I have a rough idea about what we might hear later. I want to make two important points. One is that I hope the Spectator, and magazines like it, will be properly included in any decisions, because, as I understand the rules at present, they refer to national newspapers and not automatically to national news magazines, and I think precisely the same point should apply.

There is room for possible problems about minority ownership. It is possible, in the way that ownership works in companies, that an ownership of less than 50% can amount to a controlling interest; that can be done in a covert way or sometimes in an open way. If it were the case that, for example, RedBird IMI took a minority stake, that would be better than a majority stake but would not automatically solve the problem. I hope the Government will address that.

At the Daily Telegraph we have always been proud advocates and practitioners of a free press, but we have not particularly enjoyed having to advocate it quite so hard and so repeatedly to get the message across. I am glad to sense that the message has got across, and I am grateful to noble Lords on all sides of the House. I hope we can now move forward with due expedition.

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I should note that the Government remain committed to encouraging and supporting investment into the United Kingdom and recognise that investors deploying capital into this country rely on the predictability and consistency of our regulatory regime. The UK remains one of the most open economies in the world, which is key for the prosperity and future growth of our nation. Our focus here is not on foreign investment in the UK media sector in general; this new regime is targeted and will apply only to foreign states, foreign state bodies and connected individuals, and only to newspapers and news magazines.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

I am very grateful for what my noble friend has said. Could he clarify the position on minority stakeholders? He used the word influence. Would that mean having a small number of shares?

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

My Lords, in order to help, can we be absolutely clear that this covers minority ownership and control? We need clarity on that. The noble Lord, Lord Moore, made that point. It would help the House for the avoidance of doubt.

Post Office: Executive Remuneration

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Tuesday 27th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Johnson of Lainston (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for submitting his claim for attendance at public inquiries. He is absolutely right. I have to be careful with my language for many good reasons, but the idea that we should reward staff for attending an inquiry of such seriousness did seem clearly out of kilter with how the governance should have functioned at the time. Two reports have been written, the Burton report and the Simmons & Simmons report, both of which are very clear on the governance of paying Post Office staff; that the remuneration committee should have clearer direction and more resourcing; and on how the department’s policy team should interact with the Post Office. The fact that there were not necessarily enough personnel in the department overseeing some of these arrangements is now going to be reviewed very clearly.

When the Horizon inquiry moved on to a statutory footing, the idea that you should reward people for attending what was effectively a quasi-judicial environment was of course a bit bizarre. It certainly would not happen in any other environment going forward. There are huge lessons to be learned, not just for one party or one Government but for the body politic and the institution of our bureaucracy, so that we do not have bureaucratic indifference. Ministers have the opportunity to take responsibility for doing the right things and to take an active part in organisations that perhaps we felt should be completely ring-fenced and separate. I do not believe that that is the right thing to do.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, I should declare an interest as chairman of a public company. The Government and the regulators insist that public companies have proper arrangements for malus and clawback, so that bonuses which have been paid to people who did not deserve them can be clawed back. Does the Post Office have such a system in place? If not, why not, because the Government insist that everybody else should have outside the public sector?

[Lord Johnson of Lainston (Con)]

My noble friend raises a very good point. I am aware of people’s frustration over the longevity of the processes, but Sir Wyn Williams’s review will be extremely important in informing us about what has happened. I agree with my noble friend’s point: long-term incentive plans should be as common in public sector bodies as they are in the private sector. I encourage that when looking at how we review governance in these sorts of organisations.

Post Office Horizon Scandal: Racism

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Monday 19th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord. He is referring to the historical document that was released under the Freedom of Information Act in 2023. It has clearly been identified to have offensive language in it, which had not been updated since the 1980s. There is an ongoing inquiry into this. We all want to know the answer. The reason we got into this position in the first place is that people were deemed guilty rather than innocent without due process. Let us not do the same thing again.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, is it not obvious, as the noble Lord, Lord Fox, said, that there has been a complete failure of corporate governance here, and the only way to deal with that in the real world is to clear out the people responsible and put in some people who are capable of bringing order and good management to the Post Office?

Post Office Horizon Scandal: Compensation Payments

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Monday 19th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

Once again, we are in a situation where we are dealing with private individuals and HR. We should not be doing that in this Chamber, or indeed in television studios; individuals’ livelihoods are at stake here. We did not want to be in this position, but we have to refute the allegations made against us. A judgment will be made by the Secretary of State as to all supporting documentation, and read-outs of minutes will be put in the House of Commons Library. At the end of the day, it comes back to the fact that we need a full inquiry to find out what has actually happened here.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, I have seen reports that there are still problems with the Horizon system and that some postmasters are still experiencing the problem of underpayments that created this disastrous position. My question is about ensuring that compensation goes to people as quickly as possible. Can my noble friend assure me that that will be the case and that we will look into the suggestion that this is still an ongoing problem, and, if so, ensure that remedial action is taken?

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

The response from management on this—and this has now been audited—is that issues with the software system are minimal, and £150 million of government money has now gone in to completely replace the system. A lot of investment is going in to ensure that this does not happen again. On compensation for victims, of the 2,700 claims in the HSS, 2,400 have already had their payments cleared—that is 85% of that category. The more sluggish category is the GLO, because those people have more complicated claims. As I said before, we have received only 58 claims from that cohort. As soon as we get them, we will process them.

Post Office Appointments: Ministerial Responsibility

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Wednesday 7th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for that: no one can disagree with his sentiments. As I said, the machinery was put in place, but there was a lack of scrutiny, inquiry and challenge from the non-executive directors, from, perhaps, the chair, and from, perhaps, the Ministers. The Permanent Secretary role is a key one because, using the public accounting model, they meet with the DBT on a quarterly basis to have that line of communication as well. There was no shortage of lines of communication here.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend has vast experience in private equity and elsewhere in business. Does he not agree that, faced with this kind of disaster, the first thing any private business would do is clear out the entire board, without necessarily attributing any blame, and put in a new team of people who did not have any baggage in order to sort it out. Why do the Government not get on and do that?

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

Three new non-executive appointments were made in 2023 and there will be a new senior independent director appointed and a new chair. Two postmaster directors have also been appointed to the board. The current chief executive, who came in in 2019 at the point of the judgment, remains in place. We continue to have faith in him to move this thing forward quickly, with the right amount of oversight. We have confidence in the board as it is reconstituted. But, as has been said, the question is: why did the original failure happen? We need to find that out.

Alan Bates and Others v Post Office Limited

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Wednesday 24th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for that. I know that there is a lot of frustration in this House and the other place on the timelines. This has been going on for a very long time—almost one generation. However, we have been very clear that we have to separate the two elements of this sad story. The immediate action we are taking is to overturn convictions and give compensation. We then come to accountability. A statutory inquiry is in place, and it will look at all the facts of the matter. At that point, a cascade of actions will be taken by the various bodies concerned. We need to understand the role of directors, the ministerial oversight and the role of Fujitsu and the auditor, EY. All that will be done once the facts are established and the Williams commission has reported.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, that is all very well and good, but is it not obvious that there was a catastrophic failure of governance on the part of the Post Office? This is a government-owned business. It is inconceivable that the board did not read the newspapers and was not aware of this. The Post Office is still operating. Should there not at least be a review of the standards of governance on that board?

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

The Post Office is publicly owned and set up as a limited company with a sole shareholder, which is the Government. Its governance is as an arm’s-length body with its own board, where the Government have a shareholder representative. It is clear that, over the years, not enough inquiry was made—particularly by non-executive directors—about what was going on. Why was it not asked why, pre-Horizon, prosecutions were between five and 10 per annum and then moved to between 80 and 100 per annum? The question is obvious: what happened here? As a High Court judge said at the 2019 appeal, the faith in the Horizon system was the modern-day

“equivalent of maintaining that the earth is flat”.

There has been a massive failure of corporate governance. Once we have the outcome of the inquiry, steps will be taken to make improvements to ensure this will not happen again.

Post Office (Horizon System) Compensation Bill

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

2nd reading & Committee negatived & 3rd reading
Tuesday 16th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, I thought for a dreadful moment that I was going to say, “I agree with everything the noble Baroness said”, but she spoiled it with her party-political points at the end. She will forgive me if I do not pick up on them, but what she had to say about what has happened is something all of us feel very deeply.

I have been around Parliament for close on 40 years, and I do not think I have ever felt so ashamed of so many things that have gone wrong, with devastating consequences. The Bill is about compensation. I do not know how you compensate people for losing some of the best years of their lives. I do not know how you compensate people for the horror that they have faced of having to live from hand to mouth. All I know is that something has gone dreadfully wrong with our system when it took my noble friend, who is a hero although he denies it, and Kevan Jones in the other place for the Labour Party, more than 20 years. This has gone on for more than 20 years, and even now we have a Bill to extend the time still further. I am not against the Bill. I can see that in practical terms it is necessary, and I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for saying that the Government are not going to take their foot off the gas. I have to say that the foot has not really been on the gas for quite some time.

My noble friend the Minister said that this is a small Bill; I think we are going to have a very big bill at the end of this process—I am referring not to legislation here, but to cash. I was delighted to see Fujitsu today, speaking from Davos—the irony—admitting moral responsibility. There is a legal responsibility as well.

I want to say a few things to my noble friend about some of the reasons that I say that this is much wider. What was the board of the Post Office doing? Did nobody on the board of the Post Office think, “Isn’t it a bit odd that we are suddenly getting all these cases?” Where were they? What has the department done to hold the board to account? Are there malice and clawback provisions—which are common throughout business nowadays—that apply to the Post Office? Are they being applied? I am sorry, but it is not good enough for Ministers to say, “We are waiting on the results of the public inquiry”. It is not the public inquiry’s responsibility to hold the members of the board of the Post Office responsible for discharging their fiduciary duties. That is for Ministers to do. I am at a loss to understand this. Look at what has happened to some of the people on the board of the Post Office: one of them is now a Permanent Secretary in a government department. I am not saying that she did anything wrong, but I just find it completely remarkable, so can my noble friend tell me what action has been taken by Ministers to look at the conduct of the members of the board? Did they not read the newspapers? Did no one think, “Isn’t it odd that we’re having all these sudden cases of alleged fraud and dishonesty coming from nowhere?”

Then we have Fujitsu. I read in the newspapers—to follow the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones —that when Ministers wanted to take action to stop Fujitsu getting contracts, they were told that poor performance in respect of one contract did not enable you to not have some of the others. What is this world that operates in Whitehall? Every household in the country, if it gets a duff builder, does not feel that it has to give that builder another opportunity, so there is something desperately wrong with the procurement process and the way in which Ministers are advised.

Now I would like to say something at risk to myself: I would like to criticise the Lobby correspondents in this place. My noble friend has raised this on numerous occasions, and we have all tried to support him in one way or another. It gets nowhere. It does not get reported. Then we have a television programme and now my noble friend is full-time doing interviews and explaining what has happened, but for years and years it was not of interest, like so many reports produced by Select Committees of this House which warn—I will not go through the whole litany of them—and they do not get picked up because the Lobby correspondents are too busy as a pack operating on how many bottles of champagne have been sold in the House of Lords, for example, which hit the headlines the other day, completely wrongly attributing it to Members and not to people who come here.

I am not a lawyer, but I always understood that lawyers had a duty to the courts and to ensure that information was disclosed, whether in court cases or tribunal cases. So what was going on with the lawyers? What was happening there? Is the regulatory body waiting for the inquiry as well? The inquiry will report and then there will be another couple of years—by which time we will all be dead—before we know what actually happened. Why are the regulatory bodies not doing this?

On the subject of the Lobby, why is it that Computer Weekly has been the hero here? Our paths crossed, my noble friend and I, after Liam Fox, when he was Secretary of State for Defence, set up an inquiry to look into the Chinook helicopter crash on the Mull of Kintyre. I did this with a judge, and with the noble Baroness, Lady Liddell. We exonerated the pilots. Quite frankly, when we looked at the evidence, there was a whole load of information that had not been made available to Ministers. I see a pattern.

I concluded that a whole bunch of important people concerned with security in Northern Ireland had all gone on one helicopter, which they should not have done. The helicopter had not been approved to fly safely; indeed, there was evidence that it had been thought that it would be positively dangerous. The easy thing to do was just to blame the pilots. The case took 11 years. My noble friend, again, was one of the heroes pursuing that issue. While the families battled to get clarity, some of them died, as has happened with the postmasters. There is something fundamentally wrong with the way we operate when these scandals occur.

I congratulate my noble friend on his persistence. In the film, someone says, “I never thought a Tory MP could be so nice”, or something to that effect. Just for the record, whether they are Tory or Labour MPs, or even Liberals, or Liberal Democrats—are there any Green MPs?—whatever they are, the vast majority of Members of Parliament, in my experience, do their duty by their constituents and work very hard; there are some bad apples, of course. But if we get answers from Ministers that do not answer questions, if Parliament is not able to do its job because the Executive has become overmighty and too powerful, they cannot deliver. The result, of course, is a scandal of this type.

Having got that off my chest, I want to ask my noble friend the Minister one question. This concerns one individual, Lee Castleton; I know about this only because of the media coverage. We know, because the Post Office has admitted it, that Lee Castleton was used “pour encourager les autres”. He defended himself in court, he got a bill for over £300,000 and he was bankrupted. Will those legal costs be remitted to him? Will he be compensated for all the legal costs?

When, greatly to their credit, the Prime Minister and other Ministers say that people will be restored to the position they would have been in had this not happened—wow—what does that mean, and who will decide that? It does not mean just compensation in terms of some approved scale or whatever. What about what happened to their homes and house prices and everything else? When we talk about compensation, what are we actually saying here? How will this be delivered, and in a realistic timescale? We are all getting older, and they have had to wait far too long.

Finally, I want to ask my noble friend, although I know that he does not have responsibility for it, what is going on in Scotland in this respect? I read in the newspapers that, in Scotland, they are talking about providing a pardon. I am sorry but, if I am a postmaster who has been falsely accused, I do not want a pardon. I want absolutely it on the record that I have been exonerated. A pardon is not enough. I appreciate the legal difficulties but it is not enough, and you cannot have a different system north and south of the border when you are talking about restoring people’s integrity and reputation.

I apologise to the House for going on for so long at this hour. I had hoped to do it on Thursday when we talked about accountability, but we were given three minutes, and now I can talk for as long as I like. But I might lose the House if I did so.

There are some serious issues here about accountability and about the relationship between the Executive and Parliament. This needs to change. There is going to be a general election. It will be interesting to see what the parties say in their manifestos about dealing with this. We all know on all sides of this House that Parliament is broken and not working properly. We know that because we get all the legislation that comes here from the other place that is not being properly discussed. We know that because we get Answers from Ministers to Written Questions and Oral Questions which have been written by civil servants who do not show sufficient respect to Parliament, and Ministers—perhaps some—who do not respect Parliament to the degree they should. When that happens, it means that people have to battle for 20 years. I pay tribute to my noble friend, who—he really needs to shed his modesty—is a symbol of what is good about this place. This whole episode has revealed a very rotten undercurrent, which needs to be addressed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

I know my noble friend the Minister does not want to comment on the particular case of Lee Castleton, but the point I was making about him was there were £325,000 of court costs. First, normally when you win you do not pay costs. The effect of saying that he is not guilty surely means that those costs should be returned. That has nothing to do with the compensation that is paid to him. So will costs be remitted? That is the key point. Secondly, in respect of that case, what do the Government mean when they say that things should be restored to where they would have been had this not happened? What does that mean because £600,000 is an arbitrary number? Some people lost their business, their house and their position. How will that principle, which I think is greatly to the Government’s credit, be delivered?

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

I commend my colleague the Postal Minister Mr Hollinrake for pushing through hard on the £600,000 because it is not for us to judge what any individual has lost; it is up to that individual claimant to make the decision about whether they want to go through the due legal process. The word “compensation” has perhaps been misapplied here. What we are actually talking about is a monetary sum to be given back which gives redress to individuals. In any particular case—for example, the case of Lee Castleton—it may well be that one can actually identify separate buckets, one of which might in fact be court costs be repaid, but within the overall settlement there will be an amount which should take account of all losses. If you have paid for someone else’s legal fees, that is a loss which needs to be repaid, so this will be tied up within each individual claim, the point being that if you do not as a postmaster want to go through the heartache and process of doing that, there is a route for you to receive a substantial sum and you can close the matter and get on with the rest of your life.

Horizon: Compensation and Convictions

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Wednesday 10th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for that point, which is well made. We have to work with the situation we find ourselves in, and this has to be moved along at great speed. I am happy to write, as I do not know the exact answer to that question in detail, but I do know that conversations and dialogue happen between the MoJ and those in both Scotland and Northern Ireland. I am happy to find out more about the precise mechanics of that.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, further to the question which was asked earlier this afternoon by a right reverend Prelate, the BBC is reporting that Paula Vennells was shortlisted to be the Bishop of London. The media are very much focused on her, but there was a board and there were successive chief executives, all of which seems to be being ignored. It is really important that accountability is clear. We cannot wait for the inquiry. Does my noble friend not think that something is desperately wrong with our procedures, and with the judicial system, when it takes 20 years for this to be established, and where the net beneficiaries have been the lawyers? They have earned millions and millions of pounds, while ordinary people have been bankrupted and unable to defend themselves. Does he accept that this requires, as has been pointed out, a root-and-branch assessment of how these systems operate and the arrangements with agencies, where Ministers—far be it for me to defend the leader of the Liberal Party —are held to account for bodies with which there are arm’s-length relationships and where they are unable to execute responsibility, although they are held accountable for it?

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for that contribution. On the lawyers, that is certainly a point well made—it is quite extraordinary how much has been made out of this so far by the lawyers. That is why my colleague, Minister Hollinrake, has been so assiduous in coming up with a plan which allows for compensation to be paid immediately—whether that is the £75,000 minimum to the GLO group or the £600,000 for those who are having their convictions overturned—without the need to have any more legal input. That is a very important part of the process. If any claimant feels that they want to make a bigger claim than that, they will need to interact with lawyers again to do so; again, we have given a tariff and a certain cap, which will at least minimise that. On the wider point from my noble friend Lord Forsyth, I completely agree that this highlights serious flaws in the corporate governance of the Post Office, and in the role of the board and its interaction with government officials of whichever colour and creed. We need to have a serious look at this. Once we have gone through the Williams inquiry, I believe that this will be worthy of much further consideration in this House.