Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 7:32 pm on 19 September 2023.
Before the Minister answers that, it is important to bring home and build on the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner. A strategy to communicate with certain communities is different from a strategy to communicate with the mainstream community. It involves community leaders, different media and different things. Do the Government have a proper media communication strategy of the sort that was just mentioned that involves using community leaders as intermediaries for those people to give them the confidence to step forward?
I talked about the Post Office being obfuscatory. Among the things it was obfuscatory about were appalling racial slurs that were used to characterise those people. At the heart of this is a racial element, and we should not forget that. Many of the people who were punished may well have been singled out because of their classification within that process. I think the Government owe it to them to double down on this communication.