Post Office Inquiry – latest: Paula Vennells to give evidence over Horizon IT scandal

Paula Vennells has arrived at Aldwych House to give evidence at the Post Office inquiry.

Police officers had previously asked media to ensure there was a clear path for Paula Vennells to enter the building.

But she was surrounded by press as she exited a car a short way from the venue and was eventually escorted by police.

The former Post Office boss is “heading into a corner where there is no way out” as she is set to give evidence at the Horizon IT inquiry, a fomer subpostmistress said.

Jo Hamilton, who was prosecuted after being falsely accused of stealing £36,000 from the company, said former Post Office chief exectuive Paula Vennells should apologise and come clean about the scandal.

Ms Vennells is set to give evidence to the probe on Wednesday but was said to believe there had been no miscarriages of justice – of which more than 700 people were affected by when handed criminal convictions between 1999 and 2015.

“You can fight all you like, the documents are there – but eventually she’s heading into the corner where there’s no way out,” Ms Hamilton said.

My colleague Alexander Butler has more in this report:

In case you missed it on Sunday, new polling suggests that the Post Office has plummeted from its position as Britain’s sixth-most-trusted financial, banking and insurance brand to 135th in the space of just 12 months amid public outcry over the Horizon IT scandal.

The company is now at risk of losing a third of its “heartland” older customer base, the study found, with the number of over-50s considering using Post Office services falling from 60 to 40 per cent in less than a year.

Trust in the Post Office as a whole fell to 69 per cent in April, down from 83 per cent the previous year, according to polling by Savanta seen exclusively by The Independent.

Paula Vennells faced heavy criticism over her handling of the Horizon affair, finally stepping down from her role as Post Office chief executive in February 2019.

Questions have been raised over the timing of her departure – with legal cases brought by subpostmasters such as lead campaigner Alan Bates being tried around the same time.

In the face of mounting pressure over the Horizon scandal, and a petition which attracted more than 1.2 million signatures, Ms Vennells handed back her CBE earlier this year.

She has since also quit boardroom roles at retailers Morrisons and Dunelm as subpostmasters began having their convictions overturned. She also stepped back from her regular church duties.

Ms Vennells, likewise, stepped down from her role as chairwoman of the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust in 2021, having taking on the job in April 2019 soon after leaving the Post Office.

Paula Vennells led the Post Office for nearly seven years, taking the helm in 2012 – the same year it split from Royal Mail as part of the latter’s privatisation.

She faced challenges even in the early days of her tenure, coming into the role as the Post Office suffered financial woes which led to sweeping cost-cutting measures resulting in the closure of thousands of branches across the UK.

Her promotion also came as the company began to investigate allegations made by a number of subpostmasters about the Horizon system.

And there was further controversy with expert witnesses allegedly giving false evidence during prosecutions of subpostmasters, and victims of the scandal being told they were the “only one” experiencing problems.

Paula Vennells had a long-standing career at the Post Office, having started as group network director in 2007, then becoming managing director in 2010, before being promoted to the top job five years later.

She joined the Post Office after holding a number of management positions at L’Oreal, Whitbread, Dixons and Argos, having started her career as a graduate trainee at consumer goods giant Unilever in 1981.

Ms Vennells studied Russian, French and economics at the University of Bradford and has a diploma in theology from Oxford University.

Alongside her corporate career, she was also ordained as an Anglican priest in 2006 and served at three churches in Bedfordshire.

It emerged in the inquiry last week that the Post Office’s chief financial officer had prepared a document for current chief executive Nick Read – in which he claimed that Paula Vennells did not believe there had been miscarriages of justice and “could not have got there emotionally”.

Alisdair Cameron told the probe that she had been “clear in her conviction from the day I joined that nothing had gone wrong”.

Asked if Ms Vennells had been “unwavering in her conviction that there had been no miscarriages of justice”, Mr Cameron said: “As far as I was concerned, yes.”

Paula Vennells reportedly refused to give up a job as chair of an NHS trust after news of the Post Office scandal broke, my colleague Maryam Zakir-Hussain reports.

The former chief executive of the Post Office allegedly rejected private requests from directors at Imperial Hospitals Healthcare NHS Trust for her to step back.

The trigger was only pulled when one director threatened to resign if Ms Vennells did not go, according to The Times, which reported that Ms Vennells gave assurances about her conduct to remain in her post as chair at Imperial Hospitals Healthcare NHS Trust, which it said paid £50,000 a year.

Her refusal to leave meant she was in the post for a further 16 months after a judge ruled that the Horizon system was to blame for the scandal in December 2019.

Paula Vennells described potential wrongful convictions of subpostmasters as “very disturbing” more than a year before the company halted prosecutions – in an email which surfaced the day before her evidence to the Horizon IT inquiry.

ITV News reported that the October 2013 email, as well as a recording of a phone conversation involving Ms Vennells, confirmed she was sent case files of eight subpostmasters.

In her exchange with Ron Warmington, a forensic accountant with firm Second Sight who were drafted in to review independently the Horizon system, Ms Vennells said: “I have just read through the attachments. Apart from finding them very disturbing (I defy anyone not to), I am now even better informed.

“The form you have devised is very helpful as it removes some of the emotion and highlights very clearly areas we need to address as well as investigate for the mediation process, which I hope will bring closure for some of these people. As I said … I take this very seriously…”

Ms Vennells, who was chief executive between 2012 and 2019, told MPs in February 2015, just over a year after sending the email, that there was nothing wrong with the Horizon system and that she had seen no evidence of miscarriages of justice.

Josh Payne has more in this report: