UK government officials expressed serious doubts about Paula Vennells’ suitability as the chief executive of the Post Office and considered sacking her in 2014, five years before she resigned, the inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal has heard.
According to internal government documents shown at the inquiry on Thursday, officials and other Post Office board members had concerns about Vennells’ leadership a decade ago.
“Advice from the recent annual review suggested that the POL [Post Office Ltd] team give careful consideration to the continued suitability of Paula Vennells as CEO,” read one document, dated February 2014.
It appeared to be from the Post Office’s risk and assurance committee, with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the sole shareholder in the state-owned company, and the Shareholder Executive, which managed the government’s relationship with the Post Office and was made up of senior industry people, appearing at the top of the page.
“There is a general consensus that Paula is no longer the right person to lead POL but justification is anecdotal.”
In a section entitled “Why is Paula’s position under review?”, one of the reasons given was that “she has been unable to work with personalities that provide robust challenge to her”.
The inquiry is examining how the state-owned company prosecuted hundreds of post office operators, who were wrongly accused of stealing money from the branches they ran due to problems with the Horizon computer system that led to what has been described as Britain’s largest miscarriage of justice.
It took years for the Post Office to admit that faults with Horizon, developed by Japan’s Fujitsu, were behind many of the shortfalls.
Among the options considered by government officials was “retain and review” – giving Vennells “time to deliver her plans, and government time to prepare for her replacement should she fail to deliver on the plan”, the document said. This related to the Post Office’s 2010 plan which “failed to deliver the expected revenue growth”, according to the 2014 document.
The document also said it would be “more difficult” to remove Vennells due to the impending general election, which took place in 2015. “Ministers would be conscious of the political implications,” it said.
The paper considered several internal candidates and highlighted the then-commercial chief, Martin George, and the then-strategy director, Sue Barton, as potential successors to Vennells.
The lead counsel for the inquiry, Jason Beer KC, asked Alice Perkins, who chaired the Post Office at the time, if Vennells preferred having “yes-men and yes-women” around her. Perkins denied this, but acknowledged that she began to have reservations about Vennells’ leadership in 2014 that were shared by other board members.
Perkins said the documents were “complete news” to her and she was not aware of the discussions within government at the time.
Vennells continued to run the Post Office until 2019, and was subsequently awarded a CBE “for services to the Post Office and to charity”. She handed the CBE back earlier this year before being formally stripped of it.
Last month, Vennells told the inquiry that she was “too trusting” of subordinates and was advised to deny Fujitsu had remote access to terminals. At one point, she broke down in tears and said “I worked as hard as I possibly could to deliver the best Post Office for the UK.”
During Thursday’s hearing, Perkins was shown an email that Vennells sent her twice in 2014 in which the then-chief executive said she was “more bored than outraged” about an item on the BBC One Show programme on the Post Office scandal. Perkins said she could not recall her reaction at the time but added: “Looking at this now, obviously it looks absolutely dreadful.”
Upon repeated questioning, Perkins insisted: “The board was not bored of this issue and I have said on a number of occasions over the last two days that I think there were instances where the board should have acted differently.”
