Post Office Inquiry – live: Paula Vennells booed over calling postmasters ‘inadequate’ in bombshell email
Ms Vennells faces grilling by subpostmasters’ lawyers over her role in scandal which saw hundreds wrongly prosecuted
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Ex-Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells was booed by the public gallery has been accused of talking “absolute rubbish” after she broke down in tears once again at the Horizon inquiry to insist that she loved the company and had “worked to the best of my ability” over the scandal.
Bringing to a close three days of bruising testimony – riddled with long pauses and insistences by Ms Vennells that she could not recall details asked of her – boos rang out in the gallery as the inquiry was shown a 2014 email by Paula Vennells congratulating Post Office comms director for a recent One Show appearance.
In the email, Ms Vennells claimed the segment made subpostmasters appear “inadequate” and said she was “more bored than outraged” hearing their claims of mistreatment and wrongful prosecution. She added that now-acquitted subpostmaster Jo Hamilton “lacked passion and admitted false accounting on TV”.
Insisting to the inquiry that she was “just hugely sorry” over the “terrible” email, she was challenged by barrister Tim Moloney KC: “Is it in fact that they were triumphalist remarks and you regret them now because you’re here?”
Vennells warned of facing ‘adverse media commentary’ over Fujitsu super-user email
Jason Beer KC says the inquiry will break for the evening soon.
He shows Paula an email received from General Counsel Jane MacLeod telling her to be prepared for “adverse comments from the usual commentators”.
She replies: “Thanks Jane This is clear - my inly [sic] query is we FJ [Fujitsu] super-users. What did we say previously?”
Ms MacLeod writes back: “We haven’t preciously addressed super-users and the phrasing of some previous statements as to who can access and edit branch data is quite narrow.”
She adds: “It is clear that this is an area where we could face adverse media commentary.”
Subpostmistress who ‘paid back’ £70,000 to Post Office says they accused her children of stealing
A former subpostmistress has told The Independent the Post Office accused her children of stealing money from the till.
Myra Philip worked at the counter alongside her mother, Mary, who ran a post office in Auchtermuchty, a town in Fife, Scotland.
With her mother, she paid £70,000 back to the Post Office through a combination of loans, savings and borrowing from family members, leaving her feeling ”humiliated, shamed, and frustrated”.
Woman who ‘paid back’ £70,000 to Post Office says her kids were accused of stealing
The Post Office accused a subpostmistress’s teenagers of breaking into to a branch safe
Paula Vennells accused of adopting ‘odd approach'
The inquiry was told of an email Paula Vennells sent before the select committee hearing saying she needed to tell MPs “it is not possible” to access Horizon remotely. Counsel to the inquiry Jason Beer KC asked why she needed to say remote access was not possible.
Ms Vennells responded: “I phrased this point very specifically and I can remember why I did this.
“Alice Perkins, not related to this particularly, but I can remember Alice Perkins saying to me at some stage, ‘Paula if you want to get the truth and a really clear answer from somebody, you should tell them what it is you want to say very clearly and then ask for the information that backs that up’, that was why I phrased this that way.”
Mr Beer said: “That’s an odd way of going about things, isn’t it? ‘I want to know the answer to the question, here’s the answer to the question, tell me I’m wrong’.”
Ms Vennells added: “Well yes, I hoped they would do….I believed this was absolutely the case, I had an obligation going before the select committee to be able to share the information that I knew and be able to answer their questions correctly and this is what I was trying to ask for from the team. I was not in any way, if you’re suggesting this, trying to tell them what the answer should be.”
Vennells: I didn’t understand level of access Fujitsu had to Horizon
Paula Vennells said she “didn’t understand” the level of access Fujistu had to the Horizon IT system.
Ms Vennells was shown details of a statement from 2011 that referenced an audit of the system by accounting company Ernst & Young.
The statement said Ernst & Young had found there were “inappropriate system privileges” assigned at the database level which increased the risk of “erroneous transactions”.
“I don’t believe that I took it…that I understood…that degree of detail”.
Vennells admits she received correspondence about issues facing subpostmasters
Paula Vennells accepted that she routinely received correspondence about issues subpostmasters were facing.
Asked if she saw a pattern in the correspondence, she said: “I saw the theme of Horizon coming up.”
“Was anything done by you to join the dots between them?” counsel to the inquiry Jason Beer KC asked.
Ms Vennells replied: “The dots I believed were being joined through the investigation work in the Complaints Mediation Scheme and in every case I believed we had looked at it in some detail and I regret today that clearly neither of those exposed the issues that we came to find out about through the Horizon issues judgment.”
Vennells: I didn’t believe statements about Horizon were folklore
Paula Vennells said she didn’t believe any of the statements made by lawyers about Horizon were “folklore”.
Jason Beer KC asked her if it said something about the culture of the organisation that false statements about the IT system were allowed to spread.
Taking a long pause before answering, Ms Vennells said she had no reason to believe the statements were false.
‘I do wonder what type of god you worship’
A former subpostmaster who tried to warn the organisation about the Horizon system emailed Paula Vennells in 2016 saying: “I do wonder what kind of god you worship.”
Paula Vennells was questioned on a number of emails she received from Tim McCormack at the Horizon IT Inquiry.
The inquiry heard how the subpostmaster received a standard response to one of his emails, with Post Office lawyer Rodric Williams commenting before the response was sent:
“Generally my view is that this guy is a bluffer, who keeps expecting us to march to his tune. I don’t think we should do, but instead respond with a straight bat.”
Ms Vennells denied thinking that Mr McCormack was a bluffer.
Mr McCormack sent another email to Ms Vennells in July 2016, saying: “A typical head in the sand reply from the team you have placed too much trust in. Once the police investigation is completed it is highly likely, indeed probable, that members of your staff will be sent to prison. Your role in this will not escape attention.”
He added: “I do wonder what kind of god you worship.”
Post Office lawyers responsible for false statements about Horizon - Vennells
The Post Office legal team was responsible for false statements and “folklore” about the IT Horizon accounting system circulating within the organisation, Paula Vennells has suggested.
She was asked why staff had made comments claiming that Horizon had no faults; every time the software had been investigated no errors had been; the Post Office always won in court and that Fujitsu had no remote access to the system.
Ms Vennells said those statements were not false at the time before suggesting the Post Office’s legal team was responsible for them.
“The source of those statements were...the only possible source of this statement would have been through the post office legal team.”
‘I don’t recall'
Ex-Post Office boss Paula Vennells has said she regrets that concerns raised by a former subpostmaster “took too long to address”.
In 2015, Tim McCormack wrote to Ms Vennells warning her that he had “clear and unquestionable evidence of an intermittent bug in Horizon that can and does cause thousands of pounds in losses to subpostmasters”.
Asked what she did after receiving this, Ms Vennells said: “I don’t recall.”
Amid gasps from those in the room, she went on: “Genuinely, I don’t recall.”
She later added: “In hindsight I think he was right and I regret that the matters he was raising took too long to address.”
I regret using the word noise about complaints - Vennells
Paula Vennells said she “regrets” using the word “noise” in association with complaints launched by subpostmasters about the Horizon IT system.
Asked at the inquiry into the scandal if “noise” was what complaints were seen as at the top end of the Post Office, Ms Vennells said: “No, and I’m sorry it is not a good word but you have also seen how I have responded personally to other individual matters.
“It is a word I regret using.”
Asked if it reflected the “workings of the minds” of those at the top of the business, Ms Vennells said: “I think it reflects a wrong understanding yes that people believed that Horizon worked and this is me deploying a word that was unwise.
“I did not in any way mean that I personally did not take seriously issues when they got to me.”
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