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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Your support makes all the difference.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?”
Jailed subpostmaster expresses sympathy for Vennells
Former subpostmaster Janet Skinner – who was sentenced to nine months in prison in 2007 for false accounting – expressed sympathy for Paula Vennells in giving evidence to a room of people with “eyes full of hatred”.
“I’ll be honest I felt quite emotional this morning,” Ms Skinner told the PA news agency. “I actually felt emotional for her because she is up there and she has got all these eyes there that are just full of hatred towards her and that must be such an overwhelming, horrible, intense feeling.”
But she said Ms Vennells “has brought it all on herself” before continuing: “This is her time on that stand to now put her side of the story out there. Everybody has chucked mud at her, it’s time for her to open up and be quite open and honest about who was at the forefront of it all.”
Paula Vennells pressed on vast team investigating subpostmasters
Paula Vennells has been pressed once again by lead counsel Richard Beer KC on how she had not realised the Post Office had a vast team prosecuting subpostmasters when speaking to former head of security John Scott after the Second Sight report.
Mr Beer said: “When you spoke to John Scott about this, did you not say: ‘I’ve been in the organisation five or six years now, I didn’t know you had a team of 100 people that were investigating up and down the country subpostmasters and sending them to prison’.”
He added: “Dozens of prosecutions occurred when you were network director, dozens of prosecutions occurred when you were managing director – collectively hundreds of prosecutions went on, conducted by the Post Office, having been investigated by the Post Office – and you didn’t know about it until 2012.
“So when you spoke to [former head of security] John Scott, did you not say: ‘how’s this all been going on? Who’s been managing you? Why doesn’t the board know about this?’”
Ms Vennells replied that at the time she spoke to Mr Scott “all that had changed” because “we had stopped prosecutions, his team had been substantially reduced in number and we were looking into the complaints made by the subpostmasters”.
Inquiry chair presses Vennells over claims not to realise Post Office prosecuted its own staff
The inquiry’s chair Sir Wyn Williams has stepped in to quiz Paula Vennells over her claims not to have realised the Post Office prosecuted its own staff until 2012 – despite joining the organisation in 2007.
Ms Vennells told the inquiry “it was an accepted reality, it was a status quo that I joined and accepted”, adding: “I shouldn’t have done.”
This prompted Sir Wyn to interject: “Isn’t an accepted reality an acknowledgement of an awareness of the reality? Mr Beer’s pressing you on how it could possibly be that you weren’t aware of the use of a function which was highly unusual for a private company.”
She replied: “I agree, Sir Wyn. The way that Mr Beer describes it is that it was a function that one didn’t hear about. We knew about cases being prosecuted, and I can’t remember – the Post Office board met infrequently – whether there were significant litigation reports that came to the Post Office board before I became chief executive.
“I can’t remember, but I think everybody’s understanding – mine included – was that where prosecutions were conducted, they were conducted by external authorities.”
But Sir Wyn noted: “There was at least one case two years before 2012 – Mrs Misra’s case – which attracted great deal of publicity. It does seem extremely surprising that it didn’t filter through at that point that it was actually the Post Office that was prosecuting, not the CPS.”
Ms Vennells said: “I agree. I haven’t seen anything in the documentation that points to the fact that one would have known that”, prompting Sir Wyn to interject: “I don’t think I need documentation to infer that this might be a point of discussion among senior people.”
Ms Vennells said: “I apologise. My point about documentation was whether there was anything that would have prompted my memory. I have no recollection of being involved in conversations about Mrs Misra’s case ... there were not, as far as I know, discussions about the fact it was Post Office who had investigated and brought the prosecution.”
Paula Vennells says she was ‘surprised’ to learn Post Office prosecuted its own staff
Paula Vennells has insisted she did not know until 2012 that the Post Office conducted its own private criminal investigations.
Asked about notes from a meeting in 2008 which shows trainee investigators and the sums reclaimed from postmasters were discussed, Ms Vennells said it would be a reasonable inference to draw from the document that the Post Office was personally recouping money from its own staff – but insisted she had not taken that from the meeting herself.
She added: “I should have known and I should have asked more questions, and I and others who also didn't know should have dug much more deeply into this.”
Ms Vennells said she was “surprised” to learn in 2012 that the Post Office prosecuted its own staff, and said she recalled no discussion of that in the years she had served on the Post Office’s risk and compliance committee.
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