Post Office Horizon IT inquiry concludes for the day
The inquiry has concluded 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:
Updated
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.
The inquiry breaks until 3.20pm. The next session will be the final session of the day.
John Hyde, deputy news editor for Law Society Gazette, makes the point that nobody on the board ever seems to question the high number of prosecutions being carried out. He posted to social media:
Still completely baffling why noone ever mentioned that 550 prosecutions in 10 years was rather high. Nor raised any alarm that as many as 27 might be miscarriages of justice. The actual number was of course much higher.
A paper to the Post Office board in July 2013. Still completely baffling why no-one ever mentioned that 550 prosecutions in 10 years was rather high.
— John Hyde (@JohnHyde1982) May 23, 2024
Nor raised any alarm that as many as 27* might be miscarriages of justice. #postofficeinquiry pic.twitter.com/kjXL6Y3LFJ
The inquiry is now hearing abut the Post Office mulling the idea of a “mediation” scheme. Paula Vennells’ recollection of the emails and conversations about it is sparse. She says she didn’t recall an email that is shown, which she replied to at the time, until it was disclosed to her for the inquiry.
“So this is a series of unfortunate events?” Jason Beer KC asks Paula Vennells.
“What would you say to the suggestion that this is the executive team shielding the board from the executive team’s dirty laundry. That we can manage the problem away. If the board know they will ask the proper questions, they may ensure that we disclose all of this stuff to subpostmasters, to the CCRC, to the public, and to Parliament?” he asks.
She says “I’d say it was completely not that. I feel very strongly about that. Because one of the elements that was so important to me was to have the board challenge, because I was very aware that I was not a legal expert or an IT expert.”
The minutes of this board meeting include Paula Vennells saying there was a suggestion the CPS might take over prosecutions. The board response is to be very unhappy about the management of the Second Sight report and calls into question the competence of general counsel Susan Crichton, who was at this point sitting outside not having been called in to deliver the paper Vennells was delivering in her place. The board asked if Vennells had considered removing Crichton.
JB did the board ask if you had considered sacking SC? pic.twitter.com/76K4sZnxe6
— Nick Wallis (@nickwallis) May 23, 2024
Vennells suggests that the board members didn’t appreciate the complexities Crichton faced in managing Second Sight alongside the demands of MPs and keeping the JFSA campaigners happy.
Vennells voice cracks slightly when she says that Crichton, left sitting outside, “must have felt terrible”. Within a couple of months Crichton will have left the Post Office.
A question from Jason Beer KC:
Susan Crichton has told us in the inquiry that she spoke to you before the meeting, to say that in her view there would be many successful claims against the Post Office arising from past wrongful prosecutions. Did she tell you that?
“I have no recollection of that whatsoever,” Vennells tells him.
Vennells asks Beer why she would have said that to her, when her paper only seems to indicate maybe 5% of cases might be unsafe.
Beer asks her directly: “Did you take over her paper, and present it on Horizon issues in order to prevent the board from hearing her opinion?”
She denies this, and says she would never have withheld information from the board.
Paula Vennells tells the inquiry she thought it was unfair that Susan Crichton was stood down from presenting this paper. “I felt uncomfortable about it,” she says.
“Presumably,” Jason Beer KC rather drily asks, you said “I can’t possibly table that paper” because you are not a legal expert, as you have repeatedly told the inquiry.
He then shows the minutes of the meeting where Vennells had said to the board the Second Sight report had been “challenging” but had “highlighted some positive things as well as improvement opportunities.”
She denies she was putting spin on it.
The minutes go on to say the report found “no systemic issues” but “cultural issues”. The board’s response is a concern that the review had “opened the business up to claims for wrongful prosecution.”
Vennells says she does not recall the conversation at the board.
The inquiry is now looking at the 12 July 2013 broad report prepared by general counsel at the Post Office Susan Crichton. It says in it the Post Office has immediately begun a review of “criminal cases conducted since separation on 1 April 2012”. In fact, Jason Beer KC, says, they went back to January 2010.
The briefing continues that the Post Office will work with the JFSA and “it is clear Second Sight will have to continue to be involved in this matter.”
Beer refers back to an email looked at earlier, by Paula Vennells, which had appeared to specify no forward role for Second Sight at this point. She said it had become clear Second Sight had the ear of MPs.
Vennells presented this paper, written by Crichton, at the often-mentioned board meeting where Crichton was left sitting outside and not called in to present her own paper. “We’ll get to that in a moment,” Beer tells Vennells.
Beer is asking Vennells why the Post Office seems to be “taking a proactive approach” to managing relations with subpostmasters, but a reactive approach to miscarriages of justice.
She says “it was not a deliberate strategy.”
The inquiry is shown a transcript of a conversation between Lesley Sewell, head of IT, and Second Sight. Second Sight are explaining that as far as MP James Arbuthnot was concerned, the Horizon system had a broader definition that encompassed the entire “user experience” including hardware, training, documentation and so forth. Sewell seems to be trying to narrow Horizon down to purely software and code.
Jason Beer KC is now asking Paula Vennells what she understood about this. She is saying something like a scratchcard issue, which affected 700,000 transactions, that was “systemic” because it could affect numerous branches. The Post Office wanted processes and training kept separate.
Beer is asking if systemic meant to the Post Office a technology failure that affected “the whole estate”.
She agrees, and then says “or a scale of branches”.
Beer is trying to pin her down on what “scale of branches” would meet the definition of “systemic”.
Paula Vennells again refers back to someone else’s evidence from a previous session in the inquiry, suggesting she or her legal team have been following the inquiry quite closely. Some witnesses have given the impression they have barely read the evidence documents sent to them in advance that they are due to be asked about. She clearly does not fall into that category.
Counsel is driving at the fact here that Paula Vennells appears to have been telling Second Sight (via others) that it was not their job to investigate miscarriages of justice, because it was the Post Office job to do that. And then the Post Office choose itself not to review cases or provide legal disclosure to previously convicted subpostmasters.
She argues that they set up the mediation scheme to deal with non-criminal cases, but had no power themselves to take up case appeals outside the court.
The inquiry has heard Jason Beer KC read the transcript of a covertly recorded meeting in which appears that Second Sight are being told that Paula Vennells was not interested in them discovering miscarriages of justice, but they should be looking for “systemic issues” with Horizon, not the implications that might follow from that.
The inquiry has resumed. Jason Beer KC says he wants to start but asking Paula Vennells what the Post Office understood or meant by the phrase “systemic issues” with regard to the Horizon IT system.
Summary of the day so far …
Former Post Office CEO Paula Vennells has been giving a second day of evidence to the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry in London. She said 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 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. She also agreed that the Post Office should have disclosed to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) there was a problem with evidence provided by Fujitsu Gareth Jenkins, but claimed she had no part in the decision not to do so
Jason Beer KC questioned her about the appointment of Second Sight to provide an independent audit of the Horizon IT system. Vennells said in retrospect hiring Deloitte for a forensic examination of the system may have been the better option in 2012, but said she had been concerned that would appear “corporate” and she wanted an organisation that could work with subpostmasters and understood small retail businesses
Vennells denied ever being informed of legal advice that said ordering a review of Horizon was a “high risk” approach, and the low risk approach was to review only cases that MPs were involved with
She said “there had been difficult conversations” at the time Second Sight’s interim report was published between her, the chair of the Post Office Alice Perkins and the general counsel Susan Crichton
It emerged that head of comms at the time she was at the Post Office had continued to informally advise her about PR to do with the inquiry after both had left the Post Office
Chair Wyn Williams intervened at one point to warn attendees after there were loud groans of disbelief at one of Vennells’ answers
The inquiry and this live blog resume at 1.50pm
Paula Vennells is being pressed on why her quotes and the press release that accompanied the Second Sight interim report publication did not mention that the Post Office had been aware of bugs in Horizon some time before the report was published.
The inquiry is now breaking for lunch and will resume at 1.50pm.
Paula Vennells concedes that at this time she should have asked Fujitsu for greater assurances that it was bug-free. “I’m not a technical expert,” she says – a refrain from a lot of senior leaders at this inquiry who were running a business that crucially was entirely dependent on that technology.
Jason Beer KC is saying to Paula Vennells that when she found out there were bugs in Horizon, this was “world changing” information.
He says to her “you tell us time and time again in your witness statement, that up until May 2013, you had been told time and time again that there were no bugs in Horizon.”
He asks her “did you explore why you had been given false information?”
She says she always knew there were “glitches” in the system, whether that was “the egg-timer issue, or the blue screens, or network failures or whatever.
He goes back again to her witness statement saying she had been assured there were no bugs to again ask, wasn’t the revelation of the existence of bugs “world changing”?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sorry, I earlier lost an hour and said the inquiry would resume at 11.30 when it was already 12.21. My apologies.
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.”
The inquiry is breaking until 12.30.
Updated
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.”
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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
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.”
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.
Updated
Jason Beer KC asks Paula Vennells “How could an individual case indicate systemic problems?”
“I don’t know that I can answer that,” she replies.
“It’s tricky,” he says. “Yes,” she agrees.
Paula Vennells tells the inquiry that she does not believe the Post Office was driving Second Sight to a specific conclusion, but tells Jason Beer KC that the objective had been “the Post Office most certainly wanted the reassurance that the Horizon system could be relied upon. That has been the objective all the way through this.”
Wyn Williams intervenes to try and clarify whether Vennells evidence is that this email to Second Sight represents Simon Baker conveying her views, which he says it appears to read as.
The crucial text is:
Just to ensure we are on the same page, Paula would like to say we have agreed the following with Second Sight, can you confirm you agree:
1. The investigation reports on 2-3 MPs cases by Summer Recess (or more)
2. By using the 2-3 cases you will answer the question: have systemic defects in the Horizon system resulted in the wrongful conviction or suspension of sub postmasters.
3. In addition to answering this question you will also identify areas of improvement.
4. From the investigation work done to date, if question 2 was posed to you today, you would answer “no”
Vennells says “it sounds as though at some stage a conversation was had”, but says she rarely spoke to Simon Baker, and seldom alone. “This email could have been produced one of two ways, multiple ways. I could have said, this is what I want. Or he could have said to me, this is where we’re at.”
The chair says “Alright” at the end of her response, sounding entirely unconvinced.
“I didn’t have regular conversations with Second Sight. I was running the organisation. I wasn’t closely involved in the details of this work,” Paula Vennells says.
She is being asked at a view that appears to have emerged that the Post Office team were frustrated with Second Sight, and felt they were overlooking information provided by the business, in favour of trying to keep subpostmaster “happy” at the behest of then MP, now Lord, James Arbuthnot.
She is shown an email from May 2013 in which Second Sight are asked directly to look at 2-3 cases and answer the question “have systemic defects in the horizon system resulted in the wrongful conviction or suspension of subpostmasters.”
Vennells is asked has the proposal to “to examine a representative sample of cases” been abandoned by this stage. She says no.
She is asked “how did it come about that in late May the Post Office was proposing that by looking at two to three cases Seconds Sight could answer the very big question ‘have systemic defects in the Horizon system resulted in the wrongful conviction or suspension of subpostmasters?’”
Her reply is that Second Sight had already done ten months’ work and they weren’t being asked to do it on the basis of just 2-3 cases, which, she conceded, “You couldn’t reach that conclusion on two to three cases.”
“They couldn’t. They could not possibly do that. And I wasn’t involved in this conversation. But by this stage, there was an urgency to have a report produced that showed that some work was at least in progress.”
Jason Beer KC pulls her up sharply. “You said you weren’t involved in this conversation. This email says you want to say this … ‘Paula would like to say the following’”
There is a long pause.
Paula Vennells is shown an earlier legal advice where lawyers advised the Post Office “the proposal to instruct an independent expert to prepare a report on the system is the highest risk response to the issue.”
Vennells says she was not shown this advice, which is from June 2012.
Jason Beer KC is asking questions to try to tease out whether Vennells believed that a decision had been made not to commission an independent report into the Horizon IT system because “an independent report because it might find out things that entitle people to question their convictions, or bring damages claims against us.”
He directly asks her whether this was a factor in choosing not to choose Deloitte. She says no.
The legal advice warns of “floodgates” opening if any faults are found in Horizon, and any report that found no problems being damned as a “whitewash”.
The legal advice says the “less risky approach is to agree to take the relevant MPs privately through particular cases in which they are interested”, which is, in effect, what happened. Vennells repeats that she was unaware of this legal advice.
Vennells: limiting cases looked at by Second Sight was attempt to get report ready faster for MPs
Paula Vennells is shown a letter sent to her by Alan Bates in which he proposed meeting with her, accompanied by a forensic auditor, and told Vennells that what he had seen so far of the Second Sight work showed to him
This is in May 2013, and Bates told her “Whilst I appreciate the majority of the issues began on the previous regimes, and you’ve expressed a genuine willingness to address the concerns that JFSA has been raising. These issues are still continuing. It is now feasible to show the many of the prosecutions that the Post Office pressed should never have taken place.”
She said she was “surprised about some of the conclusions” by Bates because the Second Sight work was ongoing, and that the point the JFSA was making here was one it had been already making for several years.
She offered to meet but told him in her reply “My understanding is 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 names Susan Crichton and Alwen Lyons among those who would have been the people she was getting that information from.
Jason Beer KC asks her how if the original documentation about the Second Sight work was about reviewing all cases brought forward by MPs and including testing of the Horizon IT system ended up with a focus on just three cases.
Vennells tells him:
My recollection is … what I can recall is frustration from the team that the work Second Sight was doing had moved away from focusing on individual cases to the development of “themes”. And what they were trying to do at this stage, and Second Sight as well, to be fair, was to try and corral this back into the piece of work which could have a report which could be fed back to the MPs before we got to recess.
Paula Vennells says the topic of cost and time overruns and Second Sight not reviewing cases fast enough for the Post Office was “a fairly frequent topic of conversation.”
Paula Vennells is being asked about the process by which cases were selected for review. There was some debate in the Post Office about whether to include ones that had led to criminal prosecution, and specifically that of Seema Misra, who gave birth in prison after being convicted. The Post Office general counsel at the time, Susan Crichton, is shown saying in an email from Alwen Lyons that she felt even contacting Misra to say there would be a review would be “a red rag to a bull”. Vennells says she did not share that sentiment.
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Jason Beer KC has shown Paula Vennells a document in which Second Sight proposed that their report should cover a selection of cases that had led to criminal actions, and should include testing of the Horizon IT system. He says neither of those things were what happened.
In June 2012 Second Sight were proposing a review of past cases, and Deloitte were proposing what Paula Vennells has just called “a detailed investigation of the Horizon system.”
She says “my priority at the time was to choose an organisation whom I felt would relate best with subpostmasters who had been raising their claims.”
The inquiry has heard in other evidence that Susan Crichton – general counsel at the Post Office from 2010 to 2013 – had previously worked with Ron Warmington of Second Sight. It has been implied this might have been a factor in them being selected over Deloitte, although Vennells adds today:
I felt very strongly that we needed an organisation to be able to work well with subpostmasters. I was concerned that any one of the big four [auditors/consultant companies] – Deloitte being one of them – may have come across as corporate and wouldn’t necessarily have had the understanding of running a post office or small retail businesses.
Vennells says that looking at the documents now, of the Deloitte proposal, “actually that would have been a very good piece of work to have done, because it may have brought more data to the fore than we knew.”
Jason Beer KC says he will start by looking at the circumstances around the Second Sight forensic audit into cases and the mediation scheme with subpostmasters.
Paula Vennells begins giving second day of evidence to Post Office Horizon IT inquiry
Paula Vennells has begun giving her second day of testimony at the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry in London. She will be questioned again by lead counsel to the inquiry Jason Beer KC. The inquiry is presided over by chair Wyn Williams.
You can watch the inquiry on this live blog. The video feed produced by the inquiry has a three minute delay on it. Nearly 800 pages of Vennells’ written witness statement have also been published. Her two statements can be found here and here.
Yesterday the former Post Office chief executive repeatedly broke down in tears as told the inquiry she had been misled by her staff about the safety of the prosecutions of branch operators. Text messages were also shared with the inquiry revealing that the former Royal Mail boss Moya Greene messaged Vennells, 65, in January this year accusing her of being part of a cover-up of wrongful prosecutions.
In her evidence, during which she broke down on four occasions, Vennells claimed the Post Office’s structure and the decisions of some employees not to pass on information, including legal advice and damning independent reports, meant she was unaware that people were being wrongly prosecuted or chased for missing funds. Vennells repeatedly insisted during her tenure that the Horizon system was unimpeachable despite mounting evidence to the contrary
Between 1999 and 2015, hundreds of post office operators were prosecuted on the basis of faulty accounting software, and thousands more were bankrupted or forced to pay back cash.
The inquiry will be starting for the day shortly. Here is Tim Adams’ profile of Paula Vennells from the Observer at the weekend.
Ella Baron’s cartoon for us today tackles the apology that Paula Vennells gave to the inquiry.
Here is the scene when Paula Vennells arrived in Aldwych earlier.
At one point yesterday Jason Beer KC put it to Paula Vennells that given the amount of information and documents she claimed were withheld from her by colleagues, she might be “the unluckiest CEO in UK”. Then Rishi Sunak announced a snap general election, and wiped coverage of Vennells’ testimony from most newspaper front pages. She might reflect, given it was the first time she has spoken about the scandal in public for years, that was actually rather lucky for her.
Metro and the Daily Star kept Vennells on their front pages, with the latter calling her “Little Miss Twaddle” and the former saying the nation’s sympathy for her tears was “in the post”.
Daily Star: Little Miss Twaddle #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/z3P2yuLZJy
— George Mann (@sgfmann) May 22, 2024
Metro: So sorry, Paula... nation's sympathy is in the post #TomorrowsPapersToday #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/hYLFlQ6Snf
— George Mann (@sgfmann) May 22, 2024
An honourable mention also goes to the Perth and Perthshire Courier, which leads on victim reactions to what its headline described as Vennells’ “crocodile tears”.
#TomorrowsPapersToday #ThePerthshireCourier #Horizongate #CrocodileTears #Vennells pic.twitter.com/Y3K6IlfjY9
— Tim Hopkirk (@HopkirkTim41290) May 23, 2024
Rather lengthier than anybody’s sketches or key takeaway pieces, the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry yesterday published the written witness statements of former Post Office CEO Paula Vennells. The first statement is 775 pages long and can be found here. A second additional statement of 23 pages is here.
Vennells was criticised by lead counsel Jason Beer KC about the witness statements. In it she said “there are many things I and the Post Office should have done differently. I am now reflecting with care on these matters.”
Beer asked her “given you provided a 775 page witness statement that took seven months to write, could you not have reflected on what you could and should have done fully and differently within the witness statement?”
Marina Hyde was also watching yesterday’s hearing, and produced her own sketch of the day …
Nick Wallis is a freelance journalist who has been reporting on the scandal for sometime, and who was live tweeting yesterday’s hearing. He has produced his own five things we learned article on his Post Office Scandal blog. You can find that here, and it is definitely worth a few moments of your time to read.
Our chief reporter Daniel Boffey pulled out these four key disclosures from yesterday’s hearing:
Vennells said she did not know of IT faults and was ‘too trusting’ of subordinates
Vennells claimed that she was not made aware by her staff of problems with the Horizon IT system. She claimed this was a consequence of the structure of the organisation. She further claimed to have been misled by the Post Office’s legal team. “I have been disappointed, particularly more recently, listening to evidence of the inquiry, where I think I have learned that people knew more than perhaps either they remembered at the time or I knew at the time,” she said. Vennells told the inquiry: “I was too trusting”.
A former CEO of the Royal Mail texted Vennells this year to accuse her of a cover up
Dame Moya Greene, chief executive of Royal Mail between 2010 and 2018, texted Vennells in January this year to express her dismay as further revelations were coming out about the Post Office scandal. She told Vennells “I can’t support you now after what I have learnt.”
Vennells was told in 2011 that Fujitsu had remote access to the Horizon system
An audit by Ernst and Young in 2011 included the identification of a risk posed by Fujitsu’s ability to remotely access the Horizon IT system. The Post Office went on to deny that such access was possible for many years, including in the high court. The inquiry also saw a briefing document given to Vennells before a select committee hearing in 2015. She was advised by her press office to deny that there was remote access unless she was “pushed”.
Vennels claimed that she did not know the Post Office was prosecuting staff until 2012
Despite evidence that Vennells had been in a meeting in 2008 when the subject of training Post Office investigators was raised, she claimed that it was not until 2012 that she understood that the organisation was investigating and prosecuting its own employees. The lead counsel of the inquiry, Jason Beer, wondered what Vennells believed was the purpose of a department called the Post Office Investigation Division.
Welcome and open summary …
Today is the second day of former Post Office CEO Paula Vennells appearing at the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry in London.
The inquiry is chaired by Wyn Williams, and Vennells will bequestioned again by lead counsel to the inquiry, Jason Beer KC.
In her testimony yesterday, Vennells said that she had been misled by colleagues, but that she did not believe there had been a conspiracy. She also argued that she was telling what she believed to be the truth when she told MPs in 2015 that there was no remote access to the Post Office’s beleagured Horizon IT system, despite being shown documentary evidence that appeared to show she had been briefed otherwise.
On more than one occasion an emotional Vennels appeared to cry, but her tears and apologies didn’t cut much ice with the most high profile campaigner for justice, Alan Bates. After yesterday’s hearing he told the media “The whole thing is upsetting for everybody, including for so many of the victims. I’ve got no sympathy really.”
The inquiry is expected to start at 9.45am, and you will be able to watch it here with a three minute delay on the video feed.
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