Paula Vennells is history but now at the Post Office Inquiry is Fujitsu distinguished engineer Gareth Jenkins - thread 4

It does seem that the IPO/liability point is muddy. For example, there was a large pension liability for the whole of Royal Mail that was specifically retained by the government and Royal Mail, as floated, was off the hook there. So there could be the argument that the government arranged things so that Royal Mail became free of the big liabilities. However, the transparency around pensions is a very different animal to the hidden liability of the wrongful prosecutions.

But as you say, the government generally would wish to avoid the Royal Mail IPO be questioned. There isn't one scandal there's a bunch of interlocking ones, and the government and others will engage with the unavoidable scandals, eg the treatment of the subpostmasters (but doing it on the cheap), but would prefer that other scandals get brushed under the carpet. For example, the IPO, ShEx having become captured by Post Office in some ways, and doing its bidding even where it was against the public interest, and the behaviour of the super lawyers, manipulating Post Office, and spending tax-payer money, to play some game of their own in trying to damage Justice Fraser.

At the moment the rough estimate to completely settle the claims from the subpostmasters is in the order of £1 billion. That's a vast amount of money and so, unsurprisingly, there have been noises about Fujitsu footing part of the bill. But if Fujitsu has a financial liability, what about Royal Mail? After all, they did most of the prosecutions. Here's the trick, if the government starts talking about that, then I'd expect Royal Mail shareholders to start talking in terms of suing the government for misrepresentation in a prospectus as to the value of a company being floated on the stock market. I think that this could open up the possibility of both civil and criminal legal action.

That is such a huge can of worms, with executives, civil servants, and politicians potentially being in the frame that everyone with power will want to make sure that that can remains very solidly sealed.

I suspect that that was behind a lot of the evidence by Greene putting on a pretence that before separation Post Office had its own Criminal Law department that was separate from the one in Royal Mail.

Mr Henry seems to think that Greene's evidence is with her having in mind that she was in charge of separation and flotation of Royal Mail, and so for her to accept the liabilities remained with Royal Mail to some degree would mean that she had participated in misleading the markets.

That would explain a great deal of her sometimes baffling evidence this afternoon.

Part of the problem is that she is not separating what she knew in 2012 from what she knows now, and being specific about how they differ. It's all sorted of muddled together.

She's back to this pretendy world in which, before separation, there was a team in Post Office that was responsible for the prosecution of subpostmasters, and that they, and the liabilities for the wrongful prosecutions, vanished from Royal Mail on separation back in 2012.

Having justified prosecutions in theory on the basis that they can be managed so there's no problem, Mr Stevens follows up by asking Greene what the board of Royal Mail actually did in managing the risk of these prosecutions. Greene goes for the escape route of management speak and circular reasoning.

Greene is quibbling and trying to create uncertainty around the legal responsibility point. Having thoroughly lost this point already she really should have left it there.

It's like she thinks there are points in play that are there to be won.

It looks like Mr Stevens is well-prepared to go deep into Greene having a fundamental, and possibly convenient, misunderstanding about the Criminal Law services and that, in fact, they'd been run by Royal Mail on behalf of Post Office.

She's saying there was a Criminal Law team in Post Office that was separate from the one in Royal Mail. Mr Stevens seems surprised by this, as am I.

This looks like a rewriting of history to put liability in a place other than in Royal Mail. I think she'd be well advised to make clear she was wrong then but knows better now.

Uh-oh. Seems like Greene thinks the Post Office had its own legal function before separation from Royal Mail. I thought it had been established that it definitely did not. Investigation, yes, legal, no.

Could that be wishful thinking to distance the prosecution function from Royal Mail?

I don't see the point in questioning the CEO of Royal Mail about remote access into the Horizon system in 2011. To no one's surprise she knew nothing about it

Dame Moya Greene up now. I was wondering about her accent, she's Canadian and has a civil service background.

Comes across as no-nonsense so far but I assume there's not a great deal at stake for her.

Overall, Swinson's argument is that ShEx felt it suited its purposes to manipulate the responsible minister and to that end they were allied with Post Office against the minister and thus against the public interest.

That's certainly consistent with evidence we've heard from a number of people over the past few weeks.

Swindon arguing with counsel for Vennells there about what Vennells knew, ie the Clarke advice. It would have been better for Swinson simply to say there's the admission in the Vennells-Perkins email exchange, and that she knew no more than that. That was a pointless argument.

I was broadly on board with her version. There's plenty more she could have done but having seen 4 Post Office ministers now, I'm forming a view of them having less freedom of movement than I would have thought, and plenty of activity to keep them in the dark.

I still have some hopes for Baroness Neville-Rolfe.