Vennells denies an email warning Horizon case reviews would be ‘front page news’ shows that was a factor in restricting them
At the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry former CEO Paula Vennells says she doesn’t recall “making any conscious decision not to go back and put in place a review of all past criminal cases” and has denied that media coverage was a factor in deciding to put a time limit on the review of cases.
She has been shown a document by Mark Davies, head of communications at the Post Office, in which he advised her that announcing a review of all past cases would “open this up very significantly into front page news”.
Beer then got her to reveal that even after she left the Post Office she has stayed in touch with Davies and he had been giving her personal PR advice about this inquiry. She says she stayed in touch with him “for reasons that were very personal to him.”
Counsel asks her:
Do you accept that this exchange of emails shows that in making decisions as to the substance as to what the Post Office should do to review whether there have been past miscarriages of justice, you took into account the views of your media adviser as to the extent to which your decision would meet with front page news.
Paula Vennells denies this. She says:
There were other conversations going on at the same time. The highlighted paragraph isn’t as clear as what you’re saying. I do not think and I would not have taken personally any decision on the review of historic cases. That was not to my role. I wasn’t qualified or competent to do that.
Paula Vennells was CEO of the Post Office from 2012 to 2019.
This has been a profoundly uncomfortable section for Vennells. At one point there were loud groans of dismay at one of her answers and chair Wyn Williams for the first time during her appearances had to intervene to silence the audience in the room.
Key events
Post Office Horizon IT inquiry concludes for the day
The inquiry has included for the day. Wyn Williams, the chair, has said he will participate remotely tomorrow but expects continued good behaviour from the audience. He had to intervene at one point today when there were loud groans of disapproval at one of the non-answers given by Paula Vennells.
The chair confirms that Jane MacLeod, who was general counsel at the Post Office from 2015 to 2019 will not participate in the inquiry. He tells the attending lawyers that he will notify them in writing why before tomorrow.
He also announces that the inquiry will continue sitting, despite the calling of a General Election with two changes – he says it will not sit on the day of the election or on Friday 5 July after the election. Otherwise, he says, he proposes to continue as if it is not happening. Liberal Democrat leader and former minister Ed Davey repsonsible for the Post Office and Royal Mail is currently scheduled to appear on 18 July.
Jason Beer KC informs Vennells that his questions are over. Tomorrow she will be questioned by core participants, that is lawyers and barristers representing various interested parties, including victims of the scandal and other key figures. A timetable was not set at this point. This will most likely be much more aggressive questioning than we have seen for the last two days with Beer.
The inquiry resumes at 9.45am, and we will be live blogging it again. Thank you for reading. Dan Boffey’s report of the day is here:
Jason Beer KC is now asking about the Post Office’s attempt to apply for the recusal of Mr Justice Fraser during group litigation.
Paula Vennells has become quite emotional and says “on that last point, if I may, because of a family situation, I had to step back from my role as chief executive, sort of from January 2019 onwards. I was involved, sort of in-and-out of the business, as we were going through hospital visits, and then step back much more from March.”
The inquiry is now being shown the National Federation of SubPostmasters (NFSP) forwarding to senior leaders an email from Alan Bates informing them about the news there was to be an investigation into the Horizon IT system, and maybe they would like to run something about it in the subpostmaster magazine.
“I just received this rubbish from JSA. Obviously I’ll tell him Horizon is secure and robust and to go away. Just keeping Post Office in the loop,” was the accompanying message about Bates’ email from George Thompson.
“The NFSP weren’t supposed to be the cheerleaders for Horizon, were they?”, Beer asks.
Bates said in his oral evidence that while they were meant to be “the union” for subpostmasters, they acted like just another branch of the Post Office.
Vennells said “I didn’t use Horizon every day. [George Thompson’s] wife did in their Post Office and his colleagues were also running post offices. So for me, I don’t agree with George’s style … George was quite independent of mind.”
Vennells says she is unclear on the funding arrangements of the NFSP at this point, although adds that the Post Office certainly made a contribution and they eventually “lost their status as a union”.
The final topic for the day, probably, given the time, is an email seen several times by the inquiry, in which Paula Vennells is seen to be looking for a “non-emotive” word for bugs, and forwards on some advice after asking her husband, who suggests they could be referred to as “Exception or anomaly” or “Conditional exception/anomaly which only manifests itself unforseen circumstances”.
She is asked why she is trying to find a “non-emotive” word if, as she has said, she believed there were no systemic problems, bugs had been fixed, and were in some ways, and Jason Beer KC quotes, “a red herring.”
“We were seeking to use language that I thought described better the situation and avoided confusion,” she says.
This is about as adversarial as Jason Beer KC has been over the last few weeks of the inquiry now. His approach is most often to try to coax information out of a witness, rather than contradict or criticise them directly.
He just asked Paula Vennells why she had given an instruction that local press should be “scoured” for negative press coverage.
She said she was “simply stating an ambition” for the Post Office to set out a positive view of itself, especially as it was trying to establish itself as a separate entity from Royal Mail after the business was separated.
“It’s a hypothetical statement I’m making, to try and illustrate how important it was that the Post Office was portrayed in the way it is a brand that people love and trust”
“Was …” he interrupts.
Jason Beer KC puts it to Paula Vennells that “You and the chairman were annoyed that Susan Crichton, who had led on this project, had not influenced or massaged the key stakeholders, in a way that was favourable to the Post Office.”
The chair Alice Perkins had made a point in a note that in the civil service someone would have “marked” the key stakeholders to influence them. Vennells says this isnt the case.
Beer seem somewhat exasperated now at the repeated discrepancies between what Vennells wrote at the time, and what she is telling the inquiry these things meant now. At one point he picks up on her repeating the word “mark” that Perkins had used, after Vennells has just told the inquiry “that was not my view.”
“This was, in effect, a missunderstanding between you and the keyboard?” he asks her.
“Between me and the what?”, she replies.
“[A misunderstanding] between you and the keyboard you were typing on” he informs her.
Paula Vennells says she has badly worded criticism of Susan Crichton in these documents, with attention drawn by the inquiry to her phrase “Susan was possibly more loyal to her professional conduct requirements and put her integrity as a lawyer above the interests of the business.”
Vennells says:
I wrote this completely wrong. What I was trying to say, if I may, is that, as I said earlier, Susan had two responsibilities. She had, she absolutely, and I respected it, 100% had the professional conduct requirements of a lawyer, a general counsel, that was her role as the lawyer for the organisation.
She also had, in parallel, a major project that she was leading and had accountability for delivering for the business, which was this independent review led by Second Sight. And the latter had bumped into all of the issues and problems that we’ve covered today. And what I was trying to say here very badly is that she had not managed to combine those two responsibilities.
Jason Beer KC seems unimpressed with this take. “Why did you type something that didn’t express what you believe?” he asks. “It’s clumsy, Mr Beer,” she says.
He pursues it: “Did you think there was a choice to be made between, on the one hand, the lawyer’s professional obligations and their integrity, and on the other, the needs of the business, and Susan Crichton made the wrong choice?”
“No, I didn’t,” Vennells replies.
Paula Vennells is now being asked about a meeting she had with Susan Crichton in a Costa in September 2013. Crichton’s oral testimony somewhat contradicted Vennells’ written account of the event. Vennells says Crichton was angry and “yelled at me”, and shouted she was looking for other jobs. In her evidence on 23 April this year, Crichton claimed not to remember the meeting, but said such behaviour was out of character for her.
There seemed to be some laughter in the room as Jason Beer KC read out a passage where Vennells is concerned, among other things, that Crichton “seems to be making lawyers’ notes about everything” and as an aside adds “As are you I think” clearly referring to this highly detailed contemporary post-meeting minute made by Vennells.
Paula Vennells says “I did not want to set expectations that the Post Office couldn’t meet.”
Jason Beer KC is saying the people seeking compensation had bene forced to make good money to the Post Office. “Some of them have been pursued through the courts,” he said.
“With hindsight, this is completely wrong,” says Paula Vennells.
“No. At the time you knew these facts,” he reminds her quite sharply. He points out some subpostmasters had their salaries docked over debts.
“They had agreed to money being paid back on a monthly basis,” she says.
“Agreed?” says Beer, seemingly surprised at the use of the word. “They were obliged. You never intended to pay out any substantial figures in compensation for those issues at all, did you?” he asks.
“No, that’s not right.”
“You wanted to give them a modest sum and an apology, without really understanding or investigating what the cause of their problems was, didn’t you?”
“This isn’t the case at all,” Vennells replies.
Paula Vennells is being asked if her purpose with the mediation scheme was to minimise the amount of compensation that would be paid to subpostmasters.
She said “We must at this stage have had concerns about potentially paying out major compensation if it wasn’t due.”
Vennells says she thought the scheme would be a mediated conversation between the parties.
Jason Beer KC puts it to her that in the email by her shown to the inquiry she is saying essentially that the Post Office had a hope of paying out minimal compensation, but that the mediation process as set out and about to be shared with subpostmasters appears to offer a level of compensation as the only outcome of a case. Where you, he asks, always intending the scheme to only pay out “token” amounts.
“It wasn’t meant in the negative sense,” she says.
He is drilling down on the use of the word “hope” about compensation levels being minimal.
The inquiry resumes and Jason Beer KC says we will now look at August 2013.