Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)

I thank the noble Lord for that. The proposal for the Horizon cases from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Burnett, related to the Lord Chancellor taking a power to refer cases to the Court of Appeal, and putting in place a statutory presumption that any convictions are unsafe unless there is evidence to the contrary. As noble Lords will know, this would represent a significant departure from existing appeals processes, and any further exploration of such an approach would need careful consideration, not just for this case but potentially for others. That is not to say we are dismissing it; it would be under review. I emphasise that, unlike Horizon, we do not yet have evidence that the flaws in the Capture system resulted in wrongful convictions. In fact, the Kroll report is clear on this point, stating: “Kroll does not provide comment on whether any convictions arising from sub-postmasters using Capture could be considered unsafe”. Part of the problem with the Kroll report is that because it related to the 1990s it had some difficulty in getting the documentation to assess whether that was the case.