Paula Vennells was back in Phase 5/6 of the Post Office Inquiry and now we're at Phase 7 - thread 5

[nauticant]

A continuation of this thread about the Post Office Inquiry:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5105378-paula-vennells-is-history-but-now-at-the-post-office-inquiry-is-fujitsu-distinguished-engineer-gareth-jenkins-thread-4

The Inquiry is at Phase 7 which is about how things stand now and looking to the future. Here's the timetable:

https://www.postofficehorizoninquiry.org.uk/phase-7-timetable

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

Absolutely @nauticant

They may have changed thier name to the Assurance and Complex team, but the Investigation team is still the same as it was.
Now headed by John Barlett, the behaviour has not changed, as evidenced by Elliott Jacobs experience and the letter John Bartlett sent to Fujitsu demanding they provide a witness statement stating Horizon is robust

John Bartlett is due to give his testimony to the inquiry in a few weeks, I will be very interested to see what he has to say fir himself.

Nick Read keeps insisting that if the get a complaint about a POL employee they will investigate it. But this is bullshit.

I'll use Steve Bradshaw as an example.
He was one of the investigators and gave his testimony early this year.

3 SPMR said this about him:
..1 Jacqueline McDonald, who was sentenced in 2011 to 18 months’ imprisonment. It is recorded in the transcript of the interview SB told her "You have told me a pack of lies.”
..2 Rita Threlfal said that SB asked her for the colour of her eyes and jewellery, and said "good, so we’ve got a description of you for when they come”.
..3 Shazia Saddiq said SB called her a bitch over the phone.

These all were put to SB during the inquiry.
But my point is, I doubt very much this is the first time these 3 SPMRs have made a complaint about SB.
Plus POL have all of SB interview transcripts and tapes at thier finger tips. They have had 5 years to listen to how he conducted interviews.

Yet, he still works at the Post Office.

And now a long part about Tracy Marshall, an upcoming witness, who gave a key corporate witness statement on behalf of Post Office in August of this year who, it's now been revealed, was involved in some way in the cover-up over remote access of subpostmasters' terminals.

The point there is that Post Office is "reforming" itself through the work of those who led it into disgrace.

Here it comes, the two-faced Nick is about to be revealed.

He keeps insisting the SPMR Neds was his brilliant idea and they are great.
Yet, we are about to see what he says behind thier back.......

And now a grim meeting note showing Nick Read, Hollinrake and co conspiring against Staunton and the subpostmaster NEDs. Who, incidentally, were all damaged by Read having leaked Staunton's meeting note. Deary me

He really does talk out both sides of his mouth.

On one hand he says Saf and Elliott were not left by themselves to deal with the fall out, when he "accidentally" leaked the meeting note.

Yet, then admits that actually, he didn't do anything to help Saf and Elliott to sort out the mess he created.

Beer goes through the part of subpostmasters' contract dealing with their responsibility for losses, ie what's the machinery behind the words to ensure what the words say happens. Waffle from Read.

He's clearly not a "details man"

I mean I don't expect him to have detailed technical knowledge but a working knowledge of how his organisation handles interactions with the Police - even more so given that case decisions have previously been taken at board level.

Today is less "entertaining" than yesterday, but the basic issues being discussed are very important, this morning was largely about how Post Office responded to the High Court judgments and how there still seems to be failures in this regard, and, so far, this afternoon is about where things stand with subpostmasters having a relationship with Post Office to enable them to have decent lives.

I'm wondering whether the structure of Read's 3 days will be:
Day 1, hit him with loads of different issues to give him a good going over;
Day 2, past, present, and future of Post Office-subpostmasters relationship; and
Day 3, mainly given over to Core Participants for a second going over.

Absolutely @Lunde

Knowing he was coming to the inquiry, I would expect him to brush up on his working knowledge of how the organisation handles interactions with the Police.
But maybe we are expecting to much? 😂

I'm 20 mins behind, but to me it looks like Beer is setting Read up here.

Beer is talking through the agreed SPMR remuneration/salary and, essentially, is piss poor and getting Read to agree it isn't good and how POL has done nothing to deal with this.

But, presumably this is to set Read up to ask why he battled to get a pay rise for himself. But not for the SPMRs.

Hasn't he even taken a leave of absence for several months to "prepare" for the inquiry?

But hang on, there's been no cross-examination of Read putting so much energy into having his salary increased.

There's also the matter of him possibly not having been honest about threating to resign to get more money but that's tied up with Parliamentary proceedings and there are privilege issues there.

They're mixing things up. Mr Henry can't attend tomorrow so he's going to be slotted in now to ask Core Participant questions from 3-4pm. Mr Beer will continue after Mr Henry.

Blimey, this is a heart-rending story about the suicide of a subpostmaster and the fall-out. The telling of it followed Read assuring the Inquiry that claims would not be rejected on technicalities. Yet the story Mr Henry told sounds to be just that.

That case is just awful.

Mr Henry taking Read through aspects of claims, getting him to accept that the only reasonable response of Post Office in respect of a particular element would be X, and then showing that the claims process as run by Post Office does not take account if X.

Discussion of Post Office having a conflict in running the redress schemes. I believe Read that Post Office would prefer not to be responsible for them, but I think the government, realising the vast compensation amounts they're on the hook for, are happy to hide behind Post Office because Post Office have to fight to minimise the payments, and all the resultant shitty PR lands on Post Office rather than on the government.

Ahh, SWW is on this. In response to his question, Read answered that for the more substantial HSS redress payments, even though the scheme and the subpostmaster can be in agreement on the redress amount, government have to approve the payment actually taking place. Even if the government haven't been doing this, Post Office know that things get risky for them if government perceive redress amounts to be too "generous".

Am shouting 'bollocks' at the screen.. the idea that the system is designed that people could claim more than the 600K if necessary... Absolute horse shit, the system was and is designed to make it as tiring and difficult as possible for people to get genuine compensation!

I'm not normally a fan of Mr Henry's cross-examinations, finding that they can sometimes be more heat than light, but this is working well in drawing out that the redress schemes are not designed to adequately compensate subpostmasters and to do it in a straightforward way.

You can't make this up. Post Office were toying with the idea of charging fees for supostmasters to make an application for redress, but instead went for a heavy burden of documentation from subpostmasters that would put some of them off applying.

'You could certainly draw that conclusion'...

Should have said 'only an idiot could argue anything else'...

Just WOW… that last 10 minutes really cut to the chase
Bet Mr Read is very glad to be out of there now.