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

[nauticant]

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

They always have a fire alarm test on a Wednesday morning Lunde.

This notebook! Perkins' notes on the meeting with the independent auditor, right at the beginning of her time at PO.

Auditors: Your computer system that you depend for everything is fucked.
Perkins: I didn't make a connection to it being important for the business.

- in that order. But mostly

She was in post a week or so and Angus Grant of Ernst & Young, the external auditors, warned her about Horizon in terms of compromised quality and assurance and unreliability for audit. She's claiming she didn't see this as being of any significance, and is rewriting history as she's giving evidence.

@minou123

Yeah that makes total sense. No sincere apology has been given, it seems like something they've all said for appearances.

She buried this critical information right at the very start and is now denying she didn't do anything with it.

Good grief ... the external auditors tell her that Horizon is a risk because it doesn't capture data properly - and Chair Alice doesn't see it as a problem for the SPMS

🙄

Effectively: My standards are of the very highest and it naturally follows that what I would have done would have been the right thing. And if it wasn't it can't have been my fault.

"I'm a human being and I didn't see it"

Well that's a new one.

Hang on….she'd never heard about Horizon or any problems with it? A former very senior civil servant, married to Jack Straw, surely impeccably well-connected in political/establishment circles? Recruited to head the PO Board and she'd never heard about it, in 2011?

I think the first day will just be Jason Beer letting her trot out all of her rehearsed bullshit answers. Let her talk as much as she wants for as long as she wants. Eventually she'll run out of things to say, then he can really start asking her challenging questions.

No she didn't read Private Eye, but someone in the PO should have been scouring the Press for mentions of the PO and drawing it to someone's attention.

Sorry, this doesn't wash.

'Too naive' is the new 'I was too trusting'

The PO director of communications worked for Jack Straw. A labour party coms director doesn't know what's in Private Eye?? Bollocks.

Didn't tell his boss, who in turn didn't tell his wife????

Her account of the relationship between Post Offices and Fujitsu rings completely true to me. It might be her high point in terms of giving honest testimony.

Now throwing Paula under the bus.

Its mutual..

Thanks to Vennels' behaviour, she will have absolutely not one shred of loyalty left.

Jason Beer JC asked whether she gladly accepted reassurances if they came from inside the company. That got an indignant denial from AP. Looks like that suggestion did sting.

A bit unfair to ask her what was going on in PV's head .... who knows if anything went on PV's head

BTW, it really does seem to be true that the PO slogan, as printed in AP's official notebook, was We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are!

Ouch.

Jason Beer KC did highlight that and lingered on it momentarily.

Sir Wyn Williams asked about the date of the review document and Jason Beer's immediate account of the version history was amazing for something off the top of his head.

Yes, and she's also revealed she knows exactly what the problems of IT procurement from private contractors are.

Further undermining her pretence that "Oooh, big computer stuff, I didn't have any feel for that."

I was in the kitchen and returned to see it's on break, when they back?