Meet the Other Phone. Protection built in.

Meet the Other Phone.
Protection built in.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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

961 replies

nauticant · 24/05/2024 09:29

A continuation of the discussion started by@Sausagenbaconhere:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5080262-to-enjoy-hearing-paula-vennels-being-taken-apart

Paula Vennells' 3 days of evidence ends today but there are more hearings coming up and we can discuss those too.

When the hearings are going on, live-streaming can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/@postofficehorizonitinquiry947/featured

All of the previous hearings can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/@postofficehorizonitinquiry947/videos

OP posts:
Thread gallery
10
beergiggles · 24/05/2024 23:41

Some sort of sociopathy or narcissistic personality maybe?

Peregrina · 24/05/2024 23:42

The crying annoyed me too and the self pity. She started going on about how she had resigned her various post PO positions and had been working hard on this enquiry and attending hospital appointments ( I suspected for a family member?) and at this point she got all teary. There seemed to be no contrition, that now she knew what other people had been put through.

murasaki · 25/05/2024 00:00

Her attending hospital appointments while failing to read any documents for an enquiry until recently are knocked into a cocked hat by having to give birth while under a jail.sentence.

Remagirl · 25/05/2024 00:26

She's a psychopath- people died and their lives changed irrevocably because of her actions. She doesn't give a shit!!

WiddlinDiddlin · 25/05/2024 01:43

Good point whoever said it - who made the decision to tell people that they were the only person reporting problems. Thats not a throwaway remark said to just one person, it's not an implication, its something specifically said, some part of a script the helpline people were given. Someone made a decision to do that, for a reason - who was that, what did they know?

That was going on long before Zero Recall Vennells was involved. Did it come from Fujitsu or from POL?

Harassedevictee · 25/05/2024 06:08

Reflecting back, ironically it may be the impact on wealthy people and institutions that sees PV convicted.

The paper trail and her evidence is clear that PV was completely responsible for the removal of the “risk” of civil cases from the Royal Mail prospectus. I think this will come under the remit of FCA or its predecessor FSA about not providing potential investors with full disclosure.

WatchOutMissMarpleIsAbout · 25/05/2024 07:16

Excellent points @Fizbosshoes and @WiddlinDiddlin

who did make the decision to tell the SPM they were the only ones when they patently weren’t.

I fervently hope that some of those responsible are brought to brook. In their pockets and reputations.

Thisoldheartofmine · 25/05/2024 07:49

@meimei80 where are you rewatching the last barrister ?
I've found it hard to identify sections on you tube and find myself rewatching a different day altogether .
And I read Nick Wallis's excellent blog on the first day - does anyone know if he did another ?

OP posts:
Thisoldheartofmine · 25/05/2024 08:14

Thank you so much @nauticant .I don't know why I'm struggling with this, I can normally find things easily .

Thisoldheartofmine · 25/05/2024 08:26

https://x.com/nickwallis/status/1793306047290970286
This is the account I was referring to
I found it so much easier to read rather than watch you tube.
But I can understand that he may well not have done any others .

x.com

https://x.com/nickwallis/status/1793306047290970286

Paul2023 · 25/05/2024 08:39

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?

Paul2023 · 25/05/2024 08:39

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.

Quebeccles · 25/05/2024 08:44

WiddlinDiddlin · 25/05/2024 01:43

Good point whoever said it - who made the decision to tell people that they were the only person reporting problems. Thats not a throwaway remark said to just one person, it's not an implication, its something specifically said, some part of a script the helpline people were given. Someone made a decision to do that, for a reason - who was that, what did they know?

That was going on long before Zero Recall Vennells was involved. Did it come from Fujitsu or from POL?

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?

nauticant · 25/05/2024 08:45

Nearly a thousand subpostmasters were convicted. Here are the annual numbers of convictions from 2011:
2010/2011 - 31
2011/2012 - 38
2012/2013 - 42
2013/2014 - 2
2014/2015 - 0
2015/2016 - 1
2016/2017 - 0

This means that the vast majority were convicted before Vennells was appointed CEO (in 2012). The prosecutions stopped soon after she arrived.

Vennells isn't about the convictions happening. She's about the cover up, and how that meant unfair convictions couldn't be overturned.

OP posts:
Harassedevictee · 25/05/2024 08:52

WatchOutMissMarpleIsAbout · 25/05/2024 07:16

Excellent points @Fizbosshoes and @WiddlinDiddlin

who did make the decision to tell the SPM they were the only ones when they patently weren’t.

I fervently hope that some of those responsible are brought to brook. In their pockets and reputations.

My bet is Angela Van Den Bogerd.

Harassedevictee · 25/05/2024 08:55

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

WayMeanWood · 25/05/2024 08:59

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

nauticant · 25/05/2024 09:04

I'm not sure they can realistically go after people before Vennells because they'll have a strong case to say that there's no way they could have known. Vennells was the one in place when claiming that eventually became clearly untrue.

OP posts:
prh47bridge · 25/05/2024 09:09

Fizbosshoes · 24/05/2024 23:14

The thing that puzzled me was that if the programme was glitchy or had faults why were they always in favour of the post office (ie the subpostmasters had to pay from their own money) ....if there were random errors why weren't there a number of accounts where the amount shown was much lower than accounted for?

But also while I absolutely think Paula Vennells carries much of the responsibility and is being rightly held to account, her name has been linked and publicised far more so than either her predecessor or successor, both of whom held the position while the scandal was unravelling. Or anyone at horizon or Fujitsu?? The horizon helpline was fobbing off people left right and centre telling them thry were the only one. Who authorised that script and clearly knew it was an ongoing and widespread problem....?

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?"

meimei80 · 25/05/2024 09:13

Thisoldheartofmine · 25/05/2024 07:49

@meimei80 where are you rewatching the last barrister ?
I've found it hard to identify sections on you tube and find myself rewatching a different day altogether .
And I read Nick Wallis's excellent blog on the first day - does anyone know if he did another ?

Edited

Here: s

🔴 LIVE: Former Post Office chief Paula Vennells testifies at Horizon IT Inquiry

Paula Vennells, the former Post Office chief executive, appears for the second day of questioning at the Horizon IT inquiry following the Post Office scandal...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=17989s&v=EixP8eIvxUY

Quebeccles · 25/05/2024 09:19

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.

https://www.private-eye.co.uk/pictures/special_reports/justice-lost-in-the-post.pdf

drusth · 25/05/2024 09:20

nauticant · 25/05/2024 08:45

Nearly a thousand subpostmasters were convicted. Here are the annual numbers of convictions from 2011:
2010/2011 - 31
2011/2012 - 38
2012/2013 - 42
2013/2014 - 2
2014/2015 - 0
2015/2016 - 1
2016/2017 - 0

This means that the vast majority were convicted before Vennells was appointed CEO (in 2012). The prosecutions stopped soon after she arrived.

Vennells isn't about the convictions happening. She's about the cover up, and how that meant unfair convictions couldn't be overturned.

Edited

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.

BigBurrata · 25/05/2024 09:21

PerkingFaintly · 24/05/2024 22:27

Those tears and "I love the Post Office" are twanging something in my memory...

Can't place it, but some character, real or fictional, saying, "You'll never know what I've done for you..." as they die or are carted off.

And the object of their devotion is puzzled and worried, because dreadful things have happened and people have died.

And it transpires the devotee has done these terrible things to, as the devotee saw it, "protect" the object of their devotion. Indeed the devotee feels heroic, that they were the only one brave enough to have done these difficult things, out of love...

Now what film is that from?

His Dark Materials?

VickyEadieofThigh · 25/05/2024 09:25

ThePearlSloth · 24/05/2024 23:31

I also thought the crying showed a tremendous lack of dignity in a mature professional woman who was patently crying for herself and not attempting to compose herself until told to by Jason Beer. I admit I’m not much of a crier but I find it very unprofessional AND disingenuous. I also noted the flash of anger in her eyes immediately after she ‘loved the post office‘ and someone (inaudible) heckled her. THEN she started bawling. Screwing her face up like a red faced child. Extraordinary. Awful.

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."