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

[nauticant]

A continuation of this thread:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5094266-paula-vennells-was-done-the-other-week-the-post-office-inquiry-is-now-questioning-associates-and-others-thread-3

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

Ah, maybe that’s what they meant. I stand corrected, m’lud 😉

Thought we were coming back with questions for the first guy after lunch?

I keep on thinking of this guy as a character in (the British version of) House of Cards.

He succeeded in boring counsel for the Core Participants into silence.

I can’t remember where I saw it but someone has suggested that there’s no more really interesting witnesses now … we will see!

The witnesses today were boring.

The politicians might be more interesting

Of the politicians, not only does Ed Davey still have an active political career but he has a resurgent role as the party leader of a 72-strong Lib Dem group MPs in parliament.

He has a lot to lose.

Predictions on his tactics? 'I'm sorry for what has happened to the SPMs - I am clear it has been a human catastrophe of epic proportions'; 'key people didn't tell me important things'; 'if I had been told I would have acted on it'; 'I don't recall receiving that information'. Ditto Cable and Swinson.

I don't expect the politicians to have anything of great interest to say.

I agree that the blockbuster witnesses have now been heard. There'll still be some interesting lines to investigate and here are the ones I'm most interested in, in terms of maybe having been close enough to get their hands dirty or to have witnessed it:

Wednesday 10 July
Tom Cooper - UK Government Investments Official
Patrick O’Sullivan - former Shareholder Executive Official

Friday 12 July
Richard Callard - Shareholder Executive / UK Government Investments Official

Tuesday 16 July
Andy Dunks - former IT Security Analyst at Fujitsu Services Ltd

Friday 19 July
...
Dame Moya Greene - former CEO of Royal Mail Group

Tuesday 23 July
Baroness Neville-Rolfe - former Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills; Minister of State at the Cabinet Office

Tuesday 30 July
Susannah Storey - former Shareholder Executive / UK Government Investments Official

Cooper joins that government shareholder body, gets briefed ("brief" being the operative word) by his predecessor that there's a difficult and intractable litigation with the subpostmasters, and once he was reassured by those already working there that there was nothing-to-see-here-move-on didn't see fit to look at any of the relevant documents. He'd had other indications too, eg media coverage, but wasn't prompted by this to think about learning more.

Another investment banker who'd made his pile and was after a gong it would seem, and realising that the way to get it would be to not overturn any stones.

But he does seem to be more sophisticated on the legal aspects than just about anyone else I've seen. For example, he's saying that once he'd been there for a while he had string reservations about the subpostmasters' contract and was taken aback that Jane MacLeod's position was to compromise on nothing and to appeal against any adverse finding, no matter how unreasonable that would be. In other words, it became clear to Cooper that Post Office was not seeking to resolve the dispute with the subpostmasters.

This is much more interesting than yesterday's evidence despite Cooper's soporific delivery.

Just started watching now but I expect k will catch up with the fire alarm and breaks

Well, at least once the decisions started to come out of the High Court, alarm bells were going off in ShEx causing them to intervene with the Chairman and CEO of Post Office about their conduct of the litigation, but Parker and Vennells effectively said "talk to the hand", it was too late to get an oil tanker to change direction when the captains were determined to go full steam ahead. Also, those in government kept Cooper and co. at arm's length so as not to get involved.

ShEx there should be UKGI.

Cooper expresses disbelief over Post Office having no contingency planning as part of the litigation strategy. "What would happen if Justice Fraser had said Horizon doesn't work?" Even to the extent of would branches be able to operate after that?

That was an insightful and intelligent email from Cooper looking ahead at what might happen as result of Post Office badly losing its civil litigation case.

It took Cooper an hour to come out with his first "I can't remember" and it was completely believable because he had nothing to gain by saying it.

Cooper even spotted that the advice from Brian Altman QC about unjust prosecutions of subpostmasters was fishy.

Remember the option to catch up on YouTube at x1.25 or even x1.5 eeyoredebbie.

Just joining the livestream - I think it's break time?

The first mis-step from Cooper's evidence was that being early to see the implications in relation to the prosecutions of subpostmasters, then having tried to raise the alarm and finding no one would engage, he fell silent.

Cooper said that in 2019 (?), when Kelly Tolhurst arrived as minister with relevant responsibility, she was the third such minister they'd had in a matter of months.

@nauticant late to the party here. What was this guy's role could you tell me please?

I just looked them up - and it's true Between Jan 2018 and July 2018 there were Margot James, Andrew Griffiths and Kelly Tolhurst in the role, according to this wiki page.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minister_of_State_for_Enterprise,_Markets_and_Small_Business

He was senior in UKGI, ie the government entity being the single shareholder of Post Office, having responsibility for Post Office and, as such, he was a non-executive director of Post Office. The curiosity is that he was ideally placed to understand, was incisive in his thinking, but was strangely disconnected from being able to apply any influence.

Thanks a million!

By his own telling, he was a Cassandra, wailing about Post Office heading to the rocks, who no one would listen to. But he was nowhere near as forceful as he should have been in getting others to listen. Somewhat cerebral and detached, and demotivated in the whole thing having been captured by zealots/true believers.