Part of the debate – in the House of Lords am 3:53 pm ar 10 Medi 2024.
My Lords, I echo the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Johnson, about the Government’s Statement being very welcome and the attempt to try to unscramble some of the complexities of the scheme, but from these Benches too we are concerned about the low level of conclusion of cases, despite the process. I echo his questions about how this is being managed. Mindful that there are other inquiry redress processes that have hit problems and have had to repeatedly be redesigned, my first question to the Minister is to ask whether she is absolutely convinced that she has addressed all of them. I shall come on to a couple of specific points.
Chris Head, a former sub-postmaster who lost everything when he was wrongly accused of theft, has spoken up since the publication of the statements with some concerns, saying:
“The remit of the appeal process cannot be restricted to only those that produce new evidence. Many people have been materially disadvantaged by not having access to legal advice and interim payments that were only introduced in November 2022. This appeals mechanism must be available to everyone that has settled claims since the scheme launched in 2020 to ensure they are properly compensated back to a position they would have been in had the scandal not happened”.
Members of your Lordships’ House, including the Minister, I think, have repeatedly raised concerns about the difference between these various schemes for different sub-postmasters and staff. While it is good that the Government want to have an independent appeals process for the HSS, I remind her that the complex redress schemes arising out of other tragic scandals have had to be adapted. It took the work done on the Victims and Prisoners Act to create the infected blood compensation scheme earlier this year—with an enormous amount of energy—to untangle all the different parts of that redress scheme. Does the Minister recognise that Mr Head and others have valid concerns about inconsistencies between the schemes, and that trying to sort all this out now, at pace, as was done with the infected blood scheme, must be a priority?
I want to raise two other issues briefly. First, on the predecessor package to Horizon, known as Capture, I raised the issue of the postmasters and staff who lost their jobs because of Capture, some of whom were also prosecuted but many of whom were sacked. The Independent newspaper and ITN have given voice to these victims. When will the Government’s own investigation into Capture be published and when will they update your Lordships’ House on its findings? Should redress be due, will it be incorporated into the existing postmasters’ scheme, or will there have to be a brand-new one?
Finally, in July, my noble friend Lord Fox raised again the issue of those not included in the overturning of convictions because they had appealed their cases and lost in the Appeal Court. Both he and I had helpful discussions with the previous Minister. The concern was expressed that the judiciary, in particular, had felt it was wrong for this group of victims to have their cases overturned under the legislation in the summer, because there was some merit to other parts of the cases brought against them. Yet, that question was not asked of any other case whatever, only those that went to appeal. Are the Government prepared to reconsider that? What now exists in the redress scheme is a small group of people who have to have an exceptionally high bar of going to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, hoping that it will refer their cases back to the Court of Appeal. This seems unfair and particularly long term, which means these victims will not get resolution for a long time to come.