Disgraced former Post Office boss Paula Vennells yesterday admitted she had ‘no one to blame’ but herself, as former sub-postmaster and campaigner Alan Bates dismissed her tears at the inquiry and likened her to ‘Cruella de Vil trying to play Mary Poppins’.
Former chief executive Vennells faced a barrage of criticism from lawyers for sub-postmasters at the public inquiry.
They accused her of being ‘craven and self-serving’, in a ‘cloud of denial’, and being ‘in la-la land’ after she said she did not know the full extent of the scandal at the time she was in charge.
Ms Vennells – who forfeited her CBE earlier this year after public backlash over her role in the scandal – wept for the second day this week as she described having ‘loved’ the Post Office.
But her claims were dismissed as ‘humbug’ by Edward Henry KC, representing some of the victims of the false accounting scandal at the inquiry in central London.
Disgraced former Post Office boss Paula Vennells yesterday admitted she had ‘no one to blame’ but herself, as lawyers for sub-postmasters at the Horizon inquiry accused her of being ‘craven and self-serving’, in a ‘cloud of denial’, and being ‘in la-la land’
Campaigner Alan Bates dismissed Vennells’ tears and likened here to ‘a Cruella de Vil trying to play Mary Poppins’
Campaigner Alan Bates, whose fight for justice inspired ITV‘s hit drama Alan Bates v The Post Office, was also not convinced by Vennells.
Speaking to The Telegraph he said: ‘It felt like a Cruella de Vil trying to play Mary Poppins.
‘She probably loved the money, loved the bonuses and loved not having to know anything.
‘It was her job to say she loved the Post Office and probably in her job description.’
At the inquiry, Vennells found herself booed by sections of the 100-strong audience after it emerged she had made disparaging remarks about Post Office victim Jo Hamilton.
It came after Tim Moloney KC, representing another section of victims, pointed to an email Ms Vennells sent to senior colleagues in 2014 about a BBC One Show documentary on the Horizon software at the heart of the affair.
In it, she wrote she was ‘more bored than outraged’ at the programme, and said that Ms Hamilton – later played by Monica Dolan in ITV series Mr Bates vs The Post Office – ‘lacked passion and admitted false accounting on TV’.
Turning to face Ms Hamilton, who sat a short distance away, she said: ‘I regret everything I said. I regret everything I wrote.’
More than 700 Post Office operators were prosecuted for theft, fraud and false accounting between 1999 and 2015 after its Horizon software wrongly made it look as though money was missing from their branches.
Ms Vennells was subjected to an extraordinary grilling by lawyers, which at times reduced the former executive to tears
The former Post Office boss admitted at the inquiry that ‘the Post Office and I didn’t always take the right path’
In Ms Vennells’ third and final day of evidence before the inquiry, lawyers representing victims were granted an hour each to challenge her.
What ensued was an extraordinary grilling, which at times reduced the former executive to tears.
Mr Henry asked the 65-year-old: ‘There were so many forks in the road, but you always took the wrong path, didn’t you?’
Ms Vennells said she had tried to contribute to the inquiry ‘to the very best of my ability’ after Mr Henry dismissed her witness statement as ‘a craven and self-serving account’
Members of the Justice for Subpostmaster Alliance protest outside the Horizon inquiry
Ms Vennells replied: ‘It was an extraordinarily complex undertaking and the Post Office and I didn’t always take the right path.’
In an apparent reference to her position as an ordained Anglican priest, Mr Henry told her: ‘You preach compassion but you don’t practice it.’
After he suggested that she had ‘no-one to blame but yourself’, Ms Vennells replied: ‘Where I made mistakes and where I made the wrong calls… where I had information and I made the wrong calls, yes, of course.’
She said she had tried to contribute to the inquiry ‘to the very best of my ability’ after Mr Henry dismissed her witness statement as ‘a craven and self-serving account’.
She maintained she did not fully understand the legal and technological sides of the business, and became aware of bugs in the IT system only in 2013 – years after the Post Office began taking sub-postmasters to court.
Ms Vennells also claimed she did not know the Horizon software could be accessed remotely by other parties.
Mr Henry replied: ‘It is extraordinary, isn’t it, because Cartwright King, your external lawyers, know all about it, and yet you’re saying that you didn’t, the board didn’t – I mean, this is la-la land, isn’t it?’
Sam Stein KC, representing another tranche of victims, accused Ms Vennells of having ‘covered up the faults in the Horizon scandal’.
She said: ‘There are no words that can express the regret that I feel.’