Paula Vennels being questioned at the Post Office Inquiry, followed by others - thread 2

I think that part of the problem is one of terminology - PV was Managing Director of the PO before 2012 - this was referred to in Court yesterday because she corrected a barrister - the CEO title was only adopted post separation from Royal Mail in 2012.

I have been trying to nail down PV's jobs at the PO - which has not been easy and I think have been deliberately blurred to avoid accountability - but as far as I man make out PV's roles at the PO
2007-2010 - Group Network Director
2010-2012 - Managing Director
2012-2019- CEO

So she was in senior management for a long time so her claims of not really knowing the organisational structure etc were blatant lies

I wonder whether Susan Crichton could bring herself to watch any of the previous few days….

Corporate manslaughter applies when an organisation causes someone's death and its actions are a gross breach of its duty of care. I doubt the courts would apply it when someone commits suicide. However, even if it was corporate manslaughter, it would only result in a fine for Post Office. That wouldn't help subpostmasters at all. They want to see individuals held to account.

The whole three days was one big excuse and dodging questions. She is a worm. End off. Her only intent is saving her own skin and taking no responsibility for what happened. She should face severe consequences IMHO.

don't know if the law of corporate manslaughter can extend to actions which drive innocent people to suicide, but if it does, then that is another ground for prosecutions.

i think Susan had it from the naughty chair at a minimum it’s harassment

I was working yesterday so am just catching up now so apologies if this has been talked about.

the time lines for me are sketchy. But, does this mean the floated share price was also inflated on the stolen profits?

I was listening to the radio yesterday when a guy mentioned about how Vennells was in charge of the PO in 2013 when Royal Mail was privatised in 2013. Meaning she may have known about the problems with the Horizons software at the time of the sale.

This would have put off buyers of Royal Mail, had they been aware.

Apparently in the corporate world, this is quite serious.

My partner took one look at PV when she burst into tears and said "She's been pulling that same face since she was a toddler."

His Dark Materials?

She arrived at the Post Office in 2007. She was made Managing Director in 2010 so was in a position of power and would have known about the prosecutions.

For anyone who hasn’t seen it, Private Eye’s summing-up of the story is very useful in mapping the chronology and main events.

Here: s

These weren't random faults or glitches. They were bugs in a system that had been developed very poorly, compounded by poor training, a helpline that regularly gave subpostmasters faced with unexplained shortfalls advice that actually resulted in doubling the shortfall and so on. A bug that gives an error in favour of Post Office will always give errors in favour of Post Office.

There were undoubtedly some errors in favour of subpostmasters. We know of some cases. However, the evidence is that the vast majority of errors were in Post Office's favour. We can see this from the fact that Post Office were putting millions of pounds each year into a suspense account because they couldn't figure out who the money belonged to. The money would sit there for three years then, if they still hadn't identified who the money should go to, Post Office took it as profit. It seems that no-one joined the dots and thought that this money might be related to the alleged shortfalls for which they were pursuing subpostmasters.

Paula Vennells became CEO when Post Office was spun off from Royal Mail. The CEO of Royal Mail from 2003 until shortly before Post Office was spun off was Adam Crozier, who has given evidence to the inquiry. Whilst Post Office was part of Royal Mail it had an MD rather than a CEO. All three holders of that post whilst Horizon was in operation (David Mills, Alan Cook and David Smith) have given evidence to the inquiry. Vennells left Post Office in 2019, at which time it was clear that the subpostmasters were going to win the group litigation, and was succeeded by Nick Read, the current CEO, who isn't implicated in the scandal at all. His involvement is in the compensation schemes.

Why is Vennells the focus? Evidence of Horizon's unreliability didn't start to emerge until shortly before she became CEO. She was in charge throughout the time Post Office was desperately trying to cover up the scandal. She was in charge when Post Office decided to try and win against Bates & Co by running them out of money. She was in charge when Second Sight were sacked for getting too close to the truth. She was the CEO who made promises to MPs and then broke them.

Fujitsu employees and ex-employees have given evidence at the inquiry. One witness still to come is Gareth Jenkins, the former chief architect at Fujitsu, who appears to have perjured himself in giving evidence that helped to get subpostmasters wrongly convicted. It is not yet clear to what extent his behaviour was due to instructions from Jarnail Singh, Post Office's Head of Criminal Law (a post for which he was totally unsuited based on his evidence to the inquiry). Those instructions were highly inappropriate for an expert witness and effectively told him to perjure himself.

My understanding is that the main people telling subpostmasters that they were the only one having problems with Horizon were Post Office's investigators rather than the helpline (which was manned by Fujitsu employees). We don't know, but I suspect this was driven by John Scott who was Head of Security at Post Office until 2016. This is the man who ordered that documents related to Horizon should be shredded to prevent their disclosure. This is the man who saw subpostmasters as enemies of Post Office. This is the man who failed to mention that he had been a policeman in his witness statement, leading to Jason Beer, counsel for the enquiry, asking, "Did the documents that we sent you assist you to remember whether or not you were a police officer?"

@nauticant I agree, Vennells is very much about the cover up and all the lying that went along with it.

I agree other CEOs as well as Royal Mail staff pre-split should also be held to account.

My bet is Angela Van Den Bogerd.

I don’t know but I suspect it was a function of the Post Office being in the highly unusual position of having the power to carry out its own investigations and private criminal prosecutions. Buried somewhere within that, a decision must have been taken to pick off victims individually and isolate them by telling them they were the only ones affected. It was mentioned in the Private Eye coverage but with no further details. Will they ever get to the bottom of whose decision it was, I wonder?

As much as I’d love to see Vennells thrown into a prison cell and pay back all her ill gotten gains, it seems to me she’s being the sacrificial lamb?

One of the post mistresses was on the BBC news and made a valid point that she was sent to prison before Vennells became head of the PO. As were many others.

People were convicted from 1999. That was long before Vennells came to the PO.

Where are all the other head sheds , why aren’t they all being questioned?

I can’t help but feel that they hope that if they let Vennells take all the blame, they can all get off Scott free.

Vennells has obviously been advised what to say and not what to say by the legal team.

Hence the pauses before she speaks. Shes being very evasive and obviously says the bare minimum when it comes to answers.

How does Vennells have the gaul to ever step into a church , let alone she carried on her work with the church when innocent people were convicted?