Paula Vennells is facing a barrage of questioning from lawyers representing sub-postmasters on the third day of her evidence at the Post Office inquiry.
Postmasters have railed against some of the explanations that have been given by the former chief executive, meaning the hearing is expected to see some testy exchanges with their legal representatives.
Pressure has been put on Paula Vennells to explain why she did not do more to disclose how “unsafe” evidence was being used to convict sub-postmasters.
Ed Henry KC suggested that Vennells had manipulated a situation whereby the concerns about Gareth Jenkins were kept from the Post Office board.
“This is how you led Ms Vennells: you led through deception, manipulation and word-weaving the reality you wanted in place,” he said. Vennells denied this.
Henry pointed to a legal briefing seen by Vennells telling her “that it would blow open duties of active disclosure for criminal appeals”. However, a proposed Post Office “lessons learnt” review was then limited, so these issues were not extensively investigated.
Post Office chief knew about ‘unsafe witness’
Paula Vennells has acknowledged that she knew in 2013 about the use of an “unsafe witness” in Post Office Horizon prosecutions but denied a cover-up.
The inquiry was shown a briefing note presented to her in July 2013 that pointed to the trial of Seema Misra, who was sentenced to 15 months in prison in 2010 while pregnant.
The document referred to how Gareth Jenkins, a senior engineer at Fujitsu, had given expert evidence. Jenkins, who is under investigation for perjury, had been withdrawn as a witness at the time.
Ed Henry KC said that Jenkins “fatally undermined” cases and “put the Post Office in breach of its duties as a prosecutor”.
Pressed on whether she knew at the time that Jenkins was the expert witness in Misra’s trial, Vennells said: “Yes, of course.”
Vennells told MPs in 2015 that she had seen no evidence of miscarriages of justice.
‘Politically adept’ Vennells hid Horizon issues, says lawyer
Paula Vennells was accused of “keeping the lid” on the Horizon scandal to please the Post Office’s Whitehall overseers.
Ed Henry KC accused her of being “politically adept”, highlighting the Cabinet Office role she got when she left the Post Office, and “earning her keep” by minimising compensation costs to wronged postmasters.
“You really had earned your keep on that one? You kept the lid on it?” he said. She replied: “That was not at all what I was doing. I had no reflection in relation to that whatsoever.”
Henry said: “Contain negative press, protect the business, hide Horizon issues. That’s the truth, isn’t it?”
Vennells replied: “No, Mr Henry, that isn’t the truth. As I said earlier, if there were difficult issues that needed to be addressed that was what I tried to do.”
Vennells ‘in la la land’ with denials
Paula Vennells has been accused of living in “la la land” by denying that she and the board knew about “unauthorised tampering” with postmasters’ accounts through remote access.
Ed Henry KC accused the board of a “mutual congratulatory fest” when the Post Office’s external lawyer knew there was a back door to Horizon, which the company denied until 2018.
“I’m sure there was a mutual congratulatory fest, but the fact is that remote access was never unauthorised tampering, was never resolved through the entire time of your tenure as managing director and chief executive,” he said.
“It is extraordinary though, isn’t it, that your external lawyers, Cartwright King, knew all about it, and yet you’re saying the board didn’t, you didn’t — I mean this is la la land isn’t it?”
She said in response: “I had no idea Cartright King knew that while I was chief executive.”
Written evidence ‘was self-serving craven account’
Paula Vennells has been told “you are responsible for your own downfall” by a lawyer representing victims of the Horizon scandal.
When posed this by Ed Henry KC, Vennells pointed to the impact the scandal has had on her career. She said that since the Court of Appeal passed a key judgment quashing convictions in 2020, she has lost all employment that she then had: “Since that time I have only worked on this inquiry.”
Vennells said that she had worked on preparation for the inquiry for the past three years, saying that for the past 12 months it had been her full-time job. She said that she had avoided talking to the press “perhaps to my own detriment”.
Henry suggested that Vennells was still living in a “cloud of denial and it persists even to today” adding that her written evidence was a “self-serving craven account”.
‘You should have been horrified, but you did nothing’
“You ignored or dismissed the potent jeopardy … isn’t that shocking?” Ed Henry KC asks Vennells
Paula Vennells has been told that she did nothing when the obvious issues riddling the Horizon IT system and ruining sub-postmasters’ lives were staring her in the face.
The inquiry was pointed towards an email that the executive sent to colleagues about how she had asked her husband to find a “non-emotive” word to describe the bugs and glitches.
Ed Henry KC said it was not wrong that she spoke to her husband, but he questioned her approach to the problems before her.
“It was staring you in the face, but you took from your husband’s text and email that which suited you,” he said. “[You] ignored or dismissed the potent jeopardy that these bugs could arise under unforeseen circumstances. Isn’t that shocking?”
Vennells replied: “I should have said bugs.”
Henry said that Vennells should have been “horrified”, but instead, “you did nothing”. Vennells claimed that at the time she had knowledge of only two bugs.
‘I didn’t work alone’: Vennells points the blame
It’s familiar terrain for Vennells, whose evidence once again reverts to her stating a lack of expertise in the legal and IT fields.
Pressed about her accountability and how she set the culture and tone within the Post Office, Vennells pointed the blame, saying: “I did not work alone on this.”
Ed Henry KC said: “Whatever you did was deliberate, considered and calculated. No one deceived you, no one misled you, you set the agenda and the tone for the business.”
Vennells replied: “I did not set the agenda of the work of the scheme and the way the legal and IT parts of it work.
“I was surrounded by a board, the group executive committee. I cannot think that any of the major decisions I took by myself in isolation of anybody.”
‘Power with no thought of the consequences’
“There were so many forks in the road but you always took the wrong path, didn’t you?” asks Ed Henry KC
Paula Vennells’s attempts at contrition have been written off as “humbug” by a senior lawyer representing victims of the Horizon scandal.
Opening today’s hearing, Ed Henry KC said: “There were so many forks in the road but you always took the wrong path, didn’t you?”
The former Post Office chief executive replied: “It was an extraordinarily complex undertaking and the Post Office and I didn’t always take the right path, I’m very clear about that.”
Henry accused Vennells of exercising “power with no thought of the consequences”, despite the “consequences staring you in the face”.
She pointed to the mediation scheme created on her watch, saying that she believed the business was “doing the right things”, and that she had flagged certain cases as “an act of compassion”.
Henry said: “Ms Vennells that’s humbug — you preach compassion but don’t practice it.”
Watch: moment Vennells was caught out by her own email
During Thursday’s evidence session, Vennells denied basing a decision on the advice of her chief spin doctor. But in an email shown to the inquiry, she tells him: “I will take your steer”
Expect cutting questions on postmasters’ behalf
Campaigners have braved the rain outside the inquiry this week. Today, some of their questions will be put to Paula Vennells by their lawyers
HOLLIE ADAMS/REUTERS
Two barristers representing postmasters, Ed Henry KC and Sam Stein KC, will question Vennells today. They have not minced their words in their questioning of previous witnesses.
Stein told the former managing director David Miller: “You are either lying through your teeth or you’re a complete incompetent — which?”
Henry, in written submissions for the previous phase of the inquiry, wrote: “The evidence has begun to reveal a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, which emerged between 2006 … and continued for many years … The Post Office had a ‘toxic corporate culture of secrecy and misinformation’.”
Expect the inquiry version of fireworks when the hearing kicks off at 9.45am. It is believed the lawyers each have an hour to question Vennells.
‘These people just don’t care’
Postmasters have given Paula Vennells’s testimony short shrift, calling it “unbelievable” and a “cover-up”.
The former chief executive has denied there was a conspiracy to hide problems with Horizon and Post Office prosecutions, and said she was misled by senior colleagues.
Noel Thomas, 77, a postmaster from north Wales, who was jailed over Horizon shortfalls in 2006, was featured in the ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office.
Alan Bates has led the campaign for justice for postmasters
VUK VALCIC/ALAMY
“It’s unbelievable isn’t it,” Thomas said. “They’ve had opportunities and opportunities to clear people’s names, but it’s taken so much money, taxpayers’ money. These people just don’t care, they’ve just covered it up.”
Horizon convictions review dropped to ‘manage media’
On Thursday Jason Beer KC, the counsel to the inquiry, drilled down into how Vennells managed her senior team and responded to advice.
In one case, she and the Post Office did not opt for a major review of past prosecutions to avoid “front-page news”.
The former chief executive asked senior colleagues why independent investigators were not reviewing “all cases of false accounting … over the last five to ten years”, in July 2013.
Mark Davies, communications director at the time, replied to her to say he believed a review would have a “ballistic impact”. He wrote: “We will open this up very significantly, into front page news. In media terms it becomes mainstream, very high profile.”
Read the full story of the evidence from day two
Hundreds of postmasters to be cleared under new law
Campaigners outside the inquiry on Friday
MAJA SMIEJKOWSKA/REUTERS
Hundreds of postmasters are expected to be cleared of convictions for false accounting, fraud and theft when a new law passes parliament on Friday.
The act will be signed into law as part of the “wash up” of legislation passed before parliament dissolves for the general election.
Lee Williamson, a former sub-postmaster in Northern Ireland who was wrongly convicted in 2014 and received a suspended jail term, is one of those who will be cleared.
“It’s a burst of conflicting emotions,” he told Today on BBC Radio 4. “Overjoyed and pleased this day has actually arrived and we’re going to have our convictions overturned, but also the anger bubbles away that this has actually taken away 12 years of your life.”
He added: “The speed that this has all progressed has been really surreal … Having our names cleared is the equivalent to having £1 million compensation.”
He has not received a penny of compensation, but will now be eligible for a minimum payout of £600,000.