At the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry, former CEO Paula Vennells denies making a conscious decision to not review past criminal cases and refutes that media coverage influenced the decision to put a time limit on case reviews. She was shown an email from Mark Davies, head of communications at the Post Office, warning that a review of past cases would attract front-page news. Vennells denies taking advice from her media adviser on the extent to which the decision would make headlines, stating that she was not qualified to make decisions on historic cases. The session was uncomfortable for Vennells, with loud groans from the audience at one point, prompting the chair to intervene.
Post Office Horizon IT inquiry: Paula Vennells denies email warning case reviews would be ‘front page news’ was factor in restricting them – live | Post Office Horizon scandal
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.”
Mark Davies’ email Photograph: Post Office Horizon IT inquiry
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.
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Key events
Jason Beer KC is now taking Paula Vennells to when the Second Sight interim report was published on 8 July 2013.
He says in her witness statement there is a discrepancy, where she says she knew of no bugs between 2007 and mid-2012, and then in the next sentence says she did not find out about bugs until 2013, when Second Sight were investigating.
“I suspect this is just a mistake,” she says. Her evidence, she says, is that she did not hear about bugs, errors or defects until 2013, and the first line of the paragraph Beer has highlighted is a mistake.
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Paula Vennells is being asked if there were tensions between her, chair Alice Perkins and general counsel Susan Crichton. “There had been some difficult conversations,” Vennells says, adding that people felt “frustrated” by the Second Sight report. “It was a difficult time,” she says.
Vennells said Perkins “could not understand” why the business had ended up in a position being hammered after the Second Sight interim report was published, which some felt hadn’t taken enough of the Post Office’s position onboard.
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Jason Beer KC asks Paula Vennells whether “the right and honest thing for the Post Office to have done” would have been to let the CCRC know immediately about the doubts over the evidence of Gareth Jenkins.
At the second attempt, after some explanation of other issues, she agrees. He says “That didn’t happen for years and years, did it?”. She says “I understand that to be the case now.”
Prior to that she had said she would have asked Susan Crichton to reply as general counsel, and would not have directed her how to reply or direct her to leave anything out.
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The inquiry has resumed, and has started with Jason Beer KC showing Paula Vennells a letter from July from 2013 from the Criminal Cases Review Commission about past convictions using Horizon data.
“This must have been a very unwelcome development.” he says.
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PA Media have this report on another key exchange from this morning:
Paula Vennells agreed that had the Post Office decided in 2013 to review all prosecutions of false accounting, it “may well have” avoided a “lost decade” until miscarriages of justice involving subpostmasters were discovered.
In an email dated July that year, Vennells asked for thoughts on why all cases of false accounting “eg over the last 5-10 years” would not be reviewed.
Counsel to the Horizon inquiry Jason Beer KC asked: “Do you agree your nascent idea here of a review of all prosecutions of false accounting, if it had been carried into effect, may have avoided a lost decade until miscarriages of justice were discovered?”
Vennells paused for a short moment before responding: “It may well have done. It may well have done.”
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The inquiry is breaking until 12.30.
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Updated at 12.24 BST
Paula Vennells is now being asked what she knew about when the Post Office was advised that Fujitsu’s Gareth Jenkins was considered to be an unreliable witness.
Jason Beer KC asked her “Did you never at any time, connect the long running criticism of Horizon’s integrity that has been forced upon the Post Office by subpostmasters for years and years with being informed that there was a problem with the expert evidence on which the Post Office?”
“I don’t think I made that connection because it was very specific,” she replies.
She said she knew at that point of two bugs in the system, but believed all the subpostmasters affected had been informed, and that “They had been fixed. There is even documentation which refers to them as a red herring.”
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Jason Beer KC is saying to Paula Vennells that her evidence is that she did not see the Simon Clarke legal advice about the safety of past convictions. He then points out she appears to be taking legal advice from the head of IT and the head of PR about whether or not previous cases should be reviewed.
Vennells is mostly reduced to one word answers and confirmations at this point.
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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.”
Mark Davies’ email Photograph: Post Office Horizon IT inquiry
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.
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There is an interesting insight into the mindset at the Post Office here, as Jason Beer KC is exploring Paula Vennells’ approach to cases. She explains what she says she thought at the time:
My naive assumption was that if somebody was false accounting on a regular basis over a long period of time, and accumulated a large amount of false accounting, that might give an indication of something that was perhaps more planned.
Effectively, the larger an error the Horizon system might have thrown up, the more likely, she says, at the time she would think that reinforced an impression of false accounting.
At the time, subpostmasters were rolling over or concealing large debts the system claimed were owed because they couldn’t afford to pay them back and feared prosecution. Vennells said “I realise today, and I regret what I’ve said [in that email], and I understand very much now why subpostmasters were driven to do this.”
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The counsel is trying to establish why the Post Office seemed to be limiting the review of cases to the last 12-18 months.
Paula Vennells says “I’m afraid I can’t remember.”
She has been shown a document where she has asked why they would not review all cases. Jason Beer KC clarifies that she was effectively asking “if we’re doing this properly, and fairly, why wouldn’t we look back on all cases of false accounting.”
Vennells says “Yes”.
Beer asks “Was that done?”
“No,” she says.
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John Hyde, deputy news editor for Law Society Gazette, had this verdict on the session so far:
It’s very clear: Paula Vennells was on top of things enough to justify her massive CEO salary, but not on top of things enough to know anything about the biggest miscarriage of justice in British history.
It’s very clear: Paula Vennells was on top of things enough to justify her massive CEO salary, but not on top of things enough to know anything about the biggest miscarriage of justice in British history. #postofficeinquiry
— John Hyde (@JohnHyde1982) May 23, 2024
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The inquiry has resumed after its first morning break. Jason Beer KC says he will now question Paula Vennells on “some documents that may provide some insight into your approach and decision-making in relation to the Post Office’s decision not to review all past convictions in the light of what was emerging from Second Sight.”
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Vennells denies any attempt to close down investigation into Horizon by Second Sight
Paula Vennells denied any attempt to close down or reduce the scope of Second Sight’s investigation into the Horizon system and cases raised by the JFSA and MPs.
Shown documents that showed Second Sight were being instructed to focus on 2-3 cases in order to answer the question “have systemic defects in the Horizon system resulted in the wrongful conviction or suspension of sub postmasters,” Vennells conceded it was “tricky” to see how examining individual cases could reveal systemic problems.
There was an awkward moment for Vennells with Jason Beer KC after she said she hadn’t been involved in a conversation, and Beer highlighted that the email they were viewing said “Paula wants us to say”. She told the chair of the inquiry, Wyn Williams, that “This email could have been produced one of two ways, multiple ways.”
She also told the inquiry she did not recall any discussion of what “systemic issues” meant.
Giving evidence for a second day, she also denied having seen legal advice from 2012 which had told the Post Office that conducting an investigation of the Horizon IT system was “high risk” as it might open a “floodgate” of compensation claims if it found faults, or be condemned as a “whitewash” if it vindicated the system, which is now known to have had multiple faults.
In May 2013, Vennells told campaigner Alan Bates that “we’re too early in the investigation to suggest that things have been discovered which call into question the integrity of the system or the validity of the prosecutions, and to suggest that at this stage would be wrong.”
At the inquiry Paula Vennells named former general counsel Susan Crichton and former company secretary Alwen Lyons among those who would have been the people she was getting that information from.
Vennells earlier said that with hindsight, the Post Office may have been better served by hiring Deloitte for a proposed forensic audit of the system rather than Second Sight.
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Updated at 11.09 BST
Read the full story on www.theguardian.com
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/live/2024/may/23/paula-vennells-post-office-horizon-it-inquiry-day-2-alan-bates-live-updates