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

So the Chair of ShEx just admitted the flotation prospectus was compromised, and dodgy as f*ck. Am I over-reaching here?

As we saw though - getting this removed from the Royal Mail prospectus was something Paula Vennells was proud of achieving.

why did ShEx operate as not having many of the responsibilities that one might have expected to be reasonable?

I think this is a fascinating question and one which shows the limitations of part-privitisation of a critical piece of national infrastructure like the mails (ie. both Royal Mail and Post Office), and we see again the similar issues with the railways, the water companies, etc. If the government maintains an ownership role they're not able to exercise the same kind of shareholder function that some other actor would be able to do: they want to be just like the other shareholders because of the worry of how it would look if government was perceived to be taking decisions or steering the strategy of a "private" company. And yet, if they completely privatise like Thames Water, they still have to step in at some point because critical services like water are too significant to be allowed to fail like another business.

It just flies in the face of reality that the government can act like a shareholder just like everyone else. If it was a private equity firm who was even a minorty owner, would they have been cavilling about not wanting to influence the board in the decision to recuse? Of course not.

Dishonestly concealing material facts in a prospectus is a criminal offence. It certainly looks like Vennells and others committed this offence when they ensured that Horizon-related risks weren't mentioned in the Royal Mail prospectus.

@prh47bridge I keep trying to put myself in their shoes - obviously they were all frantically trying to bury their heads in the sand but I think they must have really been able to tell themselves that thousands of branches use Horizon every day, these SPMs are just a few bad apples and it's far more likely that there are individual circumstances that apply there eg. Elaine Cottam's evidence that she suspected the husband of the SPM was a thief, it's not a material risk because it's just a few convictions etc. When of course even one unsafe conviction is a material risk.

Post Office currently has 10 people on the board, not counting the company secretary. As Tom Cooper's evidence yesterday demonstrates, it can be very difficult for one board member to change things when the other members of the board don't want to listen and have been entirely captured by the lies of the CEO, General Counsel and other senior staff. He did, of course, represent Post Office's only shareholder, but that doesn't automatically give him more authority in board meetings than other directors. And, with Tim Parker complaining that Cooper was being too interventionist and with relevant politicians apparently being uninterested, it made it difficult for Cooper to get his (entirely valid) concerns acted on. He could and should have done more, but it is clear that the culture at the Post Office was toxic (and, according to reports, remains so) with excessive secrecy and resistance to outside governance.

By the way, in checking how many directors Post Office has, I noticed that Susan Crichton was Company Secretary when she worked for the Post Office. Whilst the Secretary's attendance at board meetings is not mandatory, it makes her exclusion from a meeting in which Vennells (mis)reported the Second Sight report even more astonishing.

I think that for many of those involved within Post Office, the consequences of admitting there might be a problem with Horizon, that the subpostmasters might have a point, were so huge that they could not even contemplate it. They therefore convinced themselves that these subpostmasters, despite going through a rigorous process prior to appointment to ensure they were honest, were genuinely thieves who were trying to convince people that there were problems with Horizon as a get out of jail free card. For some, this was easy. It is clear that many in the business had long thought that a lot of subpostmasters were stealing from the Post Office. Indeed, we know that some regarded subpostmasters as enemies of the business.

I think that for many of those involved within Post Office, the consequences of admitting there might be a problem with Horizon, that the subpostmasters might have a point, were so huge that they could not even contemplate it

The Confederation guy was the one who said this quiet bit out loud. He spelled out that his support for Horizon was because he understood what the consequences would be if it were wrong.

I think that, unbearable though Shouty Man was to sit through, his evidence was valuable for this reason.

This is a good write-up by Nick Wallis about the morning session (Tom Cooper) yesterday:

https://www.postofficescandal.uk/post/poor-tom/

Thank you for the link. That blog piece is absolutely fascinating.

From my IANAL perspective but having worked mostly in the private sector (ICI followed by some time on one of the big 6 management consultancies, followed by a few years in NHS management, then back to the private sector in a large telecoms company) I am genuinely at the lack of oversight from the board.

I was always under the naive impression that the non-execs had a duty to question and challenge the executive directors.

I know I always prepared any board papers that I had to produce (both in the public and private sectors) carefully so as to give the board an accurate picture of whatever it was I was preparing a report about (sorry for the convoluted sentence ), so that they could make informed decisions.

It seems that almost no-one at the PO, Royal Mail or any of the associated organisations had any such sense of responsibility

What were they getting paid for????

Isn't it the case with such things though, that it's made clear to show them what they want to see rather than what's actually happening? In subtle and not so subtle ways but these guys clearly had their eyes closed and their fingers in their ears. And they wouldn't have wanted to be presented with anything that caused them an issue (that couldn't be blamed on someone else).

I was always under the naive impression that the non-execs had a duty to question and challenge the executive directors.

They do. However, if the executive directors are lying to the non-execs and deliberately concealing information from them, and they all work together to present the same false picture to the board, it is difficult for the non-execs to fulfil that part of their role properly. I think the non-execs on the Post Office board could have done better, but the CEO, executive directors and senior management colluded to hide the truth from them.

There's some scene in the West Wing talking about 'is there anything I should know' Vs ' is there anything I need to know'. Kind of like that.

Oh yes - CJ (the press secretary) to President Bartlet - during the big health condition cover up (kind of prophetic given the situation with Biden)

That's the one! I'm due a rewatch. I'd say I've watched it about 20 times but have taken a break in the last couple of years. Funny though, is it art reflecting life or life reflecting art.

Richard Callard giving evidence today. From Nick Wallis:

Another thing which gives lie to the government's position is that there has been a government representative sitting on the board of the Post Office as a non-executive director since it split from Royal Mail eight years ago.

First was Susannah Storey (April 2012 to March 2014), second was Richard Callard (March 2014 to March 2018). The third and current incumbent is Tom Cooper. I met Mr Cooper last year. He told me he was a reader of this blog. Hello Tom.

Callard was there for the critical period of knowledge spreading internally of the scandal, with the Second Sight interim report having been released the year before he came on the scene.

Jason Beer intervenes to get the witness to point the microphone towards himself and to be positioned so that he speaks into it. That providing much better audio than the very quiet day on Wednesday.

Beer examining with Callard how the latter saw his role as a government shareholder non-executive director and the degree to which he was willing to challenge what Post Office was doing. Also, how Callard would flip between being a NED and representing the sole shareholder and whether there was conflict in those roles.

To be honest it all sounds hideously conflicted.

Beer has settled into the shorthand of referring to Callard as a "shareholder NED", which is tickling me.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4075012.stm

Too much information!

This sounds like Callard had been captured by the Post Office comms department and was used by them to get the right kind of message put into the ear of the minister responsible.

Considering how incompetent Post Office were in many ways, they did have this amazing ability to draw people into their narratives.

He was just telling them what to write basically?

I suppose like the banks they would have been 'too big to fail'. A national institution that had been trundling along forever. I doubt many had an appetite for getting stuck in to looking behind the scenes, easy to assume they'd always been there so nothing could possibly go seriously wrong.

That was revealing. Callard seemed to think that if Horizon were to be found to be not reliable it would be down to a single bug that had caused all of the losses experienced by all of the subpostmasters.

Overall, he comes across as a slightly ineffectual Sir Humphrey Appleby figure. Very much don't-rock-the-boat.

'Why were you so credulous?'

Ouch 🔥