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eaPost Office Compensation Programme Board Minutes
Chair: Carl Creswell
08 June 2023 - 13:00-14:00
Programme Board Members:
Carl Creswell (CC) - Chair - Director, Business Resilience, DBT
Rob Brightwell (RB) - Deputy Director, DBT Post Office Policy
Beth White (BW) - Deputy Director, DBT Post Office Policy
Eleri Wones (EWo) - DBT Legal (deputising for Patrick Kilgarriff)
Kirsty Wedderspoon (KW) - Deputy Director, DBT Finance
Matt Barnes (MB) - Head of Business & Trade Spending and Strategy, HMT (deputising for Joshua
Fleming)
Ellen Wasden (EWa) - Senior Economist, DBT (deputising for Monique Ebell)
Other Attendees:
Joshua Scott (JS) - Head of GLO Compensation, DBT
Ciara Lawrence (CL) - Senior Policy Advisor - Post Office Compensation, DBT
Milo Kershaw (MK) - Policy Advisor, Business and Trade Spending, HMT
Simon Recaldin (SR) - Historical Matters Director, POL (Observer)
Lorna Gratton (LG) - Director, UKGI (Observer)
Rob Mackie (RM) - Executive Director, UKGI (Observer)
James Gourlay (JG) - Assistant Director, UKGI (Observer)
Apologi
Patrick Kilgarriff (PK) - Director, DBT Legal
Monique Ebell (ME) - Deputy Director, Business Resilience and Industry Sectors Analysis, DBT
Joshua Fleming (JF) - Deputy Director, HMT
Note:
Agenda Item Discussion, Actions and Decisions
1. Introduction I CC opened the meeting and informed the group that Caroline Lawless of the
Home Office’s Windrush Policy team would be joining the board as a “NED”,
starting from the next meeting.
2. Scheme Data I RB invited the group to note the data and format for publication and offer
any comments.
CC noted the importance of using integrated statistics for proactive comms
and the need for consistency across schemes and POL/DBT data. EWa
explained this data would likely be released as MI (rather than official
statistics) and would need clear commentary explaining how the figures have
been derived.
Board members felt the statistics around overturned convictions were
somewhat unclear. The approach to recording the treatment of public
interest cases needed to be thought through carefully. Action: DBT leads to
revise OC data to make public interest cases and full and final settlements
clearer, add narrative to further explain data and clear through Dan
McMillan in POL for consistency with POL data.
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3.
Review of
media
coverage
The Board felt a forward-look of upcoming issues to get ahead of media
coverage would be necessary, including on areas where we had a less positive
story. This would involve both understanding weaknesses to anticipate of
negative coverage and be on the front foot with good news stories e.g.,
tweets about the benefits disregard.
BW suggested a full comms strategy should be undertaken by DBT, informed
by POL’s strategy, to fill the current gap. This should start from the overall
objectives of the programme and an assessment of the areas of greatest
criticism. A meeting to discuss this work was due to take place on 09 June.
Action: DBT Policy to work with the Strategic Comms team to bring strategic
comms update on this work to next Board meeting.
Attendees suggested there could be more positive publicity to come around
the HSS Panel presenting to the Advisory Board. SR confirmed he had signed
off a letter to the Times rebutting Dan Neidle’s recent article. He explained
POL had published an FAQ responding to his specific points on their website
and had included this in Select Committee briefing for Nick Read.
4.
Upcoming
events
RB suggested it may be beneficial to plan to secure engagement with key
stakeholders such as claimant representatives and journalists.
CC said the key events to consider would be any progress report published by
Sir Wyn Williams in the Horizon Inquiry, the upcoming HSS tax
announcement, claimant representatives’ feedback on OC principles and GLO
disclosure, which he said was a difficult issue. Other suggestions included
Advisory Board meetings and the regular letter to the Select Committee and
their forthcoming hearing.
RM asked to see a GLO workplan, including both key milestones and smaller
operational/policy decision points, to understand the read across to other
schemes and mitigate risk of inconsistency.
CC suggested creating a visual forward look to capture all upcoming events.
Action: DBT Policy to bring visual forward look to the next Programme
Board. Respective compensation leads to population forward look plan.
5.
Cross-cutting
issues
RB assured the Board that since the last meeting, an internal group had been
set up in DBT to develop actions and defensive lines for cross-cutting issues.
EWa suggested a deep dive into evaluation of any/all schemes l.e., assessing
what was set out in business cases. Action: Analysts to return to Board with
this issue once plans have been drawn up.
LG asked which principles are guiding evaluation of cross-cutting issues on a
macro level. RB confirmed that similar claims receiving similar outcomes is a
key principle. Action: RB to check this is captured in the Board’s ToR. [Post-
meeting note: the TOR begin: “The Board will aim to assure appropriate
consistency between compensation arrangements relating to the Post Office
Horizon scandal...”]
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MB raised the issue of consistency across application processes with differing
levels of support at the beginning creating a challenge to ensuring fair
treatment across the schemes. The Board agreed that some policy decisions
would have been made differently with the benefit of hindsight, but that
colleagues should learn lessons from past actions and always strive for
fairness as a guiding principle, but acknowledged consistency is not always
possible as the cohorts (and individual claims) are so different and bespoke
fixes will be needed to reflect these differences and constraints schemes
must operate within. However, the Board agreed decisions should consider
Ministerial objectives and risk appetite.
SR asked that the HSS assurance review and the closure of the HSS should be
added to the cross-cutting issues list. Action: JS.
CC said the Programme Board made a start in responding to HMT’s request
for a framework to Ministers for HSS tax, but that more top-down work
would need to be done.
6. Assurance of I RB informed the Board that procurement for a GLO assurance provider,
consistency covering consistency between schemes, would go to early market
across engagement next week and that he would share a draft spec when it had
schemes been prepared. MK said this would need to cover the same points as PMD
assurance l.e., end-to-end assurance and application of principles and the
consistency issue.
Action: SR agreed to share contact details of colleagues who carried out
PMD assurance with RB offline.
7. Advisory RB asked the Board to consider how best to use the Advisory Board (AB),
Board which he said had been very useful so far, given their limited capacity.
EWo suggested asking them to reflect on the claimant representatives’ speed
of engagement. RB said the AB has requested an update on overturned
convictions, and having claimant representatives and POL in the room could
create a different dynamic. CC said this should be explored, but not forced.
RB suggested the AB feels far more buy-in when consulted early. CC said the
AB should be asked to consider policy issues and process challenges e.g.
issues HMG is having with Freeths, to emphasise that issues with delivery are
not always due to HMG actions. MK said the AB could also consider policy
issues in relation to the cross-cutting framework that DBT are devising.
8. AOB CC summarised the key points of the meeting:
¢ DBT will work with POL to respond to the useful feedback on data.
e Further work will be taken forward on strategic comms and
milestones.
There was a good debate on cross-cutting issues, how to engage with
Ministers, assurance and ideas to bring to the AB.
RB confirmed that at the next meeting, which is due to take place on 03 July,
in addition to standing items the Board would discuss strategic comms and
family members compensation.