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

It does seem that the IPO/liability point is muddy. For example, there was a large pension liability for the whole of Royal Mail that was specifically retained by the government and Royal Mail, as floated, was off the hook there. So there could be the argument that the government arranged things so that Royal Mail became free of the big liabilities. However, the transparency around pensions is a very different animal to the hidden liability of the wrongful prosecutions.

But as you say, the government generally would wish to avoid the Royal Mail IPO be questioned. There isn't one scandal there's a bunch of interlocking ones, and the government and others will engage with the unavoidable scandals, eg the treatment of the subpostmasters (but doing it on the cheap), but would prefer that other scandals get brushed under the carpet. For example, the IPO, ShEx having become captured by Post Office in some ways, and doing its bidding even where it was against the public interest, and the behaviour of the super lawyers, manipulating Post Office, and spending tax-payer money, to play some game of their own in trying to damage Justice Fraser.

I suspect the relevant regulatory authorities, all of which are independent from the government, will be taking a very close look at the behaviour of various lawyers. A lot of those acting for Post Office appear to have breached ethical standards, and it is certainly arguable that some have strayed into criminality. We know that the SRA has 20 live investigations into law firms and individual solicitors as a result of this scandal. I hope the Bar Council also looks at the behaviour of some of its members.

Regarding Royal Mail liability, the business that is now Post Office Ltd became a wholly owned subsidiary of the Post Office (now Royal Mail) in 1987 as Post Office Counters Ltd. Whilst the names of the organisations have changed, Post Office Ltd remained as a subsidiary of Royal Mail until April 2012. I suspect that arguments Royal Mail should be liable for anything fail on the basic principle that a company's shareholders have limited liability. To breach that, it would be necessary to show that Royal Mail was complicit in what was happening. I may be wrong, but I'm not convinced that Post Office using Royal Mail lawyers is enough.

I’ve been watching Andrew Parsons. The thing that struck me was that the Post Office seemed to go running to lawyers every time they needed to make a decision. And then just ask different lawyers to review the first lawyer decision. Andrew Parsons seemed to be involved in deciding operational matters that were clearly outside his knowledge/skill set and they acted on his direction? How much must all this almost daily involvement from Andrew Parsons have cost? It seemed to go on over many years.

I wasn't thinking in terms of which legal cases would likely to succeed and which wouldn't. Instead it was more about the levers of power available and being curious about which would be used and which would not. Leverage has been applied against Fujitsu, and seemingly they've said they'll hand over a very large amount of money. Leverage could be applied against Royal Mail, but I think that many involved would see that potentially turning horribly messy and unpredictable so it's off the table.

To me the acid test of the Inquiry and handling things afterwards will be seeing who the authorities go after and who they decide to leave alone. (But I do recognise that there are limits and this turning into an eternal quest for justice would benefit no one except the lawyers.)

for you all.

I haven't lost interest, but I'm attempting to have a life at the moment and my one brain cell is otherwise engaged.

This week:

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

Wednesday 24 July - Margot James - former Parliamentary Under-Secretary for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy

Thursday 25 July - The Rt. Hon. Sir Vince Cable - former Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills
The Rt. Hon. Greg Clark - former Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy

Friday 26 July - Allan Leighton (continued) - former Chair of Royal Mail Holdings plc; former Chair and former Non Executive Director of Post Office Ltd; and former Non Executive Director of Royal Mail Group
Martin Edwards - former Chief of Staff to the Chief Executive and Group Strategy Director at Post Office Ltd

I'm most interested in tomorrow. Although Allan Leighton is giving evidence that's "(continued)" that doesn't necessary indicate anything special, they just ran out of time in his session earlier this year. Martin Edwards might be interesting too being Vennells' Chief of Staff.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0021cxh

Assuming this Twitter thread is an accurate and fair account, it looks like a day of another person having presented to them the opportunity to make a great intervention but who lost their nerve:

x.com/ElCShaikh/status/1815504475668545793

Interesting to see ShEx blithely carrying on with the cover-up to mislead ministers years after internally the scandal was known about.

It's pretty clear that the motivations of ShEx were that uncovering things would have cost money and would have damaged the Post Office brand, and overall ShEx shielded its activities behind "the public interest".

ShEx worked hard to exclude JFSA from meeting anyone with any influence. They also wanted Second Sight to be kept out of the way. This seemed to trigger a degree of pushback by Baroness Neville-Rolfe.

This civil servant Laura Thompson of ShEx was indefatigable in wanting the cover-up to continue.

Nothing blockbuster so far, just a series of stones being overturned with people looking grimly at the (many) nasties revealed beneath.

I need to resist my continual temptation to have sympathy for Vennells as somehow finding herself out of her depth. The 2015 letter from her just before the break, and the resulting commentary, showed whatever piety she affected, she had no scruple whatsoever about lying whenever it suited her.

Jason Beer trying to get to the bottom of why, as BNR's misgivings rose over the behaviour of ShEx, there's not much evidence of her intervening in a way that might stop ShEx's shenanigans. She's a strong witness but turns into an off-topic waffler when such difficult questions are asked.

It does look like BNR did rumble ShEx as being up to no good and pushed back, but that just led her into a war of attrition with ShEx continually being obstructive that did serve to wear her down, and make her less disobedient.

What today's evidence has clarified for me is that there isn't a Post Office scandal, but there's a load of interlocking scandals with passing the baton on from one scandal to the next to keep the whole horrible show in the road. So today was about the cover-up part of the scandal and shows, that without ShEx's hard work over years, but most actively in 2015, the cover-up would probably have been blown earlier than it did.

I do hope that when the report of the Inquiry is finally published it treats ShEx's behaviour with the level of seriousness it deserves.

More evidence at ShEx and others having as a clear priority that the minister having responsibility for Post Office must not meet Second Sight. The reason for this was that SS had given Post Office the line, taken out of context, that Horizon had "no systemic problem" and that through effective lobbying, this line had spread everywhere, Post Office, government, Parliament, NFSP, the media, the civil service, etc.

Policing of the line was done by having layers of obfuscation that would make anyone not expert having a complete pain of a job in trying to form an independent view. And lies, it needed to be buttressed with lies. This was effective.

That's why SS had to be quarantined. If they'd met the minister, it could have cut through the obfuscation and destroyed the line that so much effort had gone in to create.

Although I'd like to be annoyed at BNR that she didn't try to drag the Swift Review out of Post Office, she had been so comprehensively misled by the Chairman Tim Parker, I can understand that she might he felt she should have been able to trust him to tell the truth.

Ahh, another insight into what happens behind the scenes. It seems that Inquiry counsel consults beforehand with Core Participant counsels to discuss which counsel will go down which lines of enquiry to avoid duplication of work.

Early finish just after 3pm, back tomorrow with a later start of 10.05 to avoid the Wednesday morning fire alarm.

Margot James today. Her relevance:

Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy), Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, 17 July 2016 - 9 January 2018

2016 – An application for a Group Litigation Order (GLO) was submitted to the Queen’s Bench Division of the High Court.
2017 – Following a hearing in January 2017 a GLO was agreed and ordered; subsequently 555 ex and serving Subpostmasters names were attached to that order.
2017 – A four week Common Issues trial was held during November in the High Court under HH Mr Justice Fraser. The Common Issues mainly being the terms of the Post Office contracts with Subpostmasters. [Although the judgment wasn't handed down until after she left, and, seemingly, until then, everyone on the Post Office side had been brainwashed into assuming their side would have a decisive victory.]

Two hours in and I've seen nothing beyond James being tame and incurious in post. She didn't see any of the significant documents. The civil servants must have been delighted to get a minister they could take out for walks on a training lead.

O.M.G. When she did decide to find out more she asked the outgoing general secretary leader of the NFSP, George Thomson, and was reassured by him that all was well.

Oh well, that’s OK, then!! 😳🤦‍♀️

One interesting thing she did say, that there were effectively no meeting minutes available from the meetings she attended related to Post Office business. Baroness Neville-Rolfe said the same yesterday. So either there were certain meetings civil servants decided not to record minutes for or, afterwards, minutes for certain meetings were destroyed. Both Neville-Rolfe and James were surprised that this could happen.

Vince Cable being cagey today with JB

I've only been catching bits of this, but Vince Cable said he believed the missing documentation was down to things getting lost in the switch over from paper records to digital ones. It would be very interesting to know how much is missing elsewhere from that time.