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Witness Name: Carl Creswell
Statement No.: WITN11730300
Dated: 12 November 2024
POST OFFICE HORIZON IT INQUIRY
THIRD WITNESS STATEMENT OF CARL CRESWELL
I, Carl Creswell, will say as follows.
FULL, FAIR AND PROMPT REDRESS
1. I am Director, Post Office Policy and Business Engagement, in the Department
for Business and Trade. I have prepared this third statement following my oral
evidence at the Horizon Inquiry on 6 November, in order to assist the Inquiry
in relation to the Department's role in providing redress for those affected by
the Horizon scandal.
2. Having listened to subsequent oral evidence sessions at the Inquiry, I wanted
to write to ensure there is clarity in relation to the answers that I gave on one
point in my evidence: i.e. the emphasis given to promptness in our approach
to redress payments to victims of the Horizon scandal.
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On Friday 8 November, Mr Stevens put the following question to my Minister,
Gareth Thomas MP: ‘The Inquiry has been told previously that the
Government's policy is to provide full, fair and prompt compensation. Do you
agree, as suggested in Carl Creswell's evidence to this Inquiry this week, that
Government policy now elevates promptness of compensation over fullness
and fairness?’
This question has made me concerned that Counsel to the Inquiry has
interpreted my words as saying that — following Ministerial steers - my team
and I have moved to a position where fullness and fairness of redress are no
longer as important as before.
I would like to make it clear that, when I talked about increasing the focus on
‘promptness’ of redress, I was not saying that I thought the Department had
taken steps to ‘under-deliver’ on fairness or fullness of redress. My point, as
I said during the session, was that ‘the political desire was actually to try to
target more full and final settlements because that was bringing closure to
those individuals and giving more demonstrable progress’ [emphasis added].
There was more emphasis on prompt redress, but not at the expense of the
emphasis on full and fair compensation.
When Sir Wyn Williams asked me whether I was saying that I was being asked
to put an ‘emphasis on “prompt”, I interpreted that as being one of relative
priority compared to the previous approach (i.e. we were being told to give it
greater emphasis, during the autumn of 2023, than we were giving it prior to
that point). As current and former Ministers have made clear in their evidence
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to the Inquiry, it continued and continues to be important that we enable victims
to have access to full and fair redress.
7. In summary, my understanding is that it has always been Government
Ministers’ objectives to ensure fair, full and prompt redress across the
schemes. Where it has become apparent that one of those objectives is not
being met, the Department has sought to address it (e.g. when it became clear
that the tax treatment of settlements on the Horizon Shortfall Scheme was not
delivering fair outcomes). We similarly worked with the Advisory Board to
ensure that fairness was highlighted more firmly in the GLO scheme guidance
and principles. Likewise, at the point when Ministers asked officials to pursue
the fixed sum intervention, our understanding was that the ask was for full and
fair redress to be achieved more quickly, not only for the Department to
prioritise ‘quick’ redress. I therefore do not believe that we were being asked
to raise an individual objective above and to the detriment of the others.
8. I would be happy to provide any further evidence on this point if the Inquiry
would find this useful.
Statement of Truth
I believe the content of this statement to be true.
Dated: 12 November 2024
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