Post Office Horizon Inquiry: Volume 1

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 8th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Thomas]

I have absolutely no doubt that we need to see, in full, who was responsible for this disaster and why. Sir Wyn Williams’s work on that is critical. We await his final report, which will look at what happened, why, and who was responsible. That transparency will be hugely important to help the Post Office, and the country as a whole, to learn lessons from this appalling scandal. If we need to introduce measures to ensure that the Post Office is never in such a position again, we will certainly look to bring them forward.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

The Post Office Horizon scandal has often been compared with the contaminated blood disaster. By coincidence, this very afternoon the relevant all-party parliamentary group, led by the hon. Member for Eltham and Chislehurst (Clive Efford), has been having a meeting with the Infected Blood Compensation Authority. Even if the Minister does not go all the way with Sir Wyn Williams’ suggestion that there might be a standing body responsible for delivering compensation, will the Government look at the experience of the compensation body for that scandal rather than allowing separate disasters to be compensated for in separate stovepipe arrangements?

[Gareth Thomas]

To be clear, Sir Wyn Williams’ recommendation of a standing body to deliver compensation is very much to ensure that if there is ever a future disaster on this scale—and we all hope that there is not—the Government are better set up to respond to it. He has not specifically suggested that we transfer into such a body the responsibility for the delivery of compensation schemes at this stage, because doing so would undoubtedly slow down the process. I think that there are parallels with the infected blood inquiry, but there are also differences. We need to learn lessons on the delivery of compensation from the infected blood scandal, the Post Office scandal and other scandals that came before. In that regard, the National Audit Office published important work last summer, which will certainly help to inform our judgment about the case for such a standing body.