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

11.10.

I have the sub titles on. They are being done on the hoof - some are quite entertaining: Lord our bus North, for one!

Flat denial from AP that she was a promoter of the "there's nothing wrong with Horizon" line. Even when presented with evidence that she was. She's reinvented her position into one where she had an open mind and facilitated the truth being uncovered. And seemingly now believes this.

"I don't know what was in my mind when I said that"

This woman is full of shite 🤣

Beer can't even hide it in his voice.

How foolish she is

My god, this woman could lie through a six-inch plank.

They're gonna have that alarm go off again any moment, 'cos her pants are in big red flames.

I'm not able to watch it now because I have to work (boooo)

But all your c9mmrnts have me very much intrigued on what she is saying. I may need to have a long lunch 🤔

Ahh, we're now getting into the cosy relationship AP had with PV. Which lies at the heart of a lot of the mischief.

JB highlighting that it was cosy enough for many of the briefings to have occurred only verbally and not recorded. AP actually confirmed this.

I think what's happening here is JB is giving AP opportunities to throw PV under the bus while claiming to be led into error by bad people, and this will turn into showing that AP had been active in some of the bad stuff that happened later on.

AP not as devious as PV. They have got AP via notes in her own handwriting whereas PV was always briefed verbally and thereafter suffered amnesia

AP on responding to evidence of her pushing the line of no faults in Horizon: "I was prepared to lift the rock and look at what was underneath it."

The evidence here is showing AP in a good light, that she wanted the external review of subpostmaster cases to include those who hadn't been prosecuted and those who had. It looks like she was in opposition to "the business" which was in cover-up mode.

Have they broken for lunch? I had to answer a phone call and now they've gone

Susan Crichton and Mike Young named by Alice Perkins as pushing back on her preferred scope of review, as well as giving her the some organisational guff about capacity. That rings true.

You need a backbone of steel to Chair a business like that successfully and it sounds like AP ended up out of her depth, swimming with the treacle sharks.

2nd morning break.

The second 10 minute break of the morning. Back in 5 mins or a bit more.

This evidence is nauseatingly fascinating.

AP is contradicting the evidence in front of her (about attitudes toward Second Sight).

Then Mr Beer KC introduces a veeeery interesting email from AP to Vennells. She's stumbling a bit now.

AP says she was 'sceptical' about Second Sight. Worried about becoming close to having a public document and causing avoidable damage to the PO, and negative publicity.

It would unkind to ask how that's going for her now.

AP claims the PO feared Second Sight's report would advance a negative take on Horizon without offering evidence to substantiate that take, other than anecdote.

So the PO... advanced a negative take on the (as yet unseen!) Second Sight report without offering evidence to substantiate their, the PO's, negative take on it.

They really were the champions of DARVO.

'Badly handled ... by everybody really'

Under stress
Memory problems
Irritation
Having to apologise to MPs
Realising there could be other undisclosed computer issues eg bugs
'I can't help you with that, I'm afraid ...'

What a shit show.

Wow. The Chair pretty much saying that she was uncritically accepting of statements made to her (frequently verbally) by senior people in the Post office with an agenda, notably about the long-standing issues with Horizon.

I don't think she has yet fully absorbed what she enabled, and how bad this is. Her job was to challenge the CEO and the Executives, not enable them.

Break for lunch till 2pm.

AP saying it was wrong to claim that the board wanted to sack Second Sight. Contradicting a meeting where others had said this to external lawyers. This is a surprising argument from her when, ultimately, Second Sight were indeed sacked because the board wanted this.

She's a fucking mess