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

Thank you @nauticant and @rivermum for the excellent updates.
I am in back to back meetings today. So will catch up later.

@rivermum is it quite tense in the room?

Getting snappy now with Mr Stein

Stein was digging into a fundamental point, that Young did not bring "new" bugs to the notice of the Board (seemingly keeping this knowledge to himself). Young went along with this to some degree and then pushed back hard, perhaps at the point where he could see it turning into him confirming that he was an executive who had failed to carry out his responsibilities.

Two 25 minutes sessions of further cross-examination to come with Oldnall supposedly taking less time than Young.

One thing Young made very clear. At the time he was being made aware of new problems with Horizon he was fully occupied with separation from Royal Mail and opening such a can of worms was something he needed like a hole in the head.

Nauticant is spot on. Stein went straight for the unanswered questions.

As for the atmosphere here, it's quiet.
There are only 20 visitors, so we are relatively spread out. But definitely gasps of incredulity at Young's attempt to conflate the 2 issues.
And patience running short at his lengthy non-answers.

Interesting body language from Young, anticipating tough cross-examination. Leans right back in his chair and seemingly often looking off into the distance and not at counsel. A rather "distancing" approach.

That's Young done. Let's see whether they can gallop through Oldnall and be done by Sir Wyn Williams' indicated cut-off time of 16.45.

Easy. Done just after 16.10. I have nothing to report from his evidence.

Yes - Oldnall was an anti-climax after the morning/early afternoon session

At least Sir Wyn clarified for the record that the statements that Mike Young was missing and couldn't be found were mistaken and he had in fact been in touch with the inquiry team

Clearly I am very behind.... Im. just starting to watch Mike Young now. 😁

Apologies if I'm.repeating anything rivermum, *nauticant and Lunde has said. *

It's good testimony and helpfully illustrates some of the important threads running through the scandal. My overall take is that Young didn't want to find that Horizon was unreliable and that he was keen to seize on things, such as the Ismay Report, that enabled him to not make that finding.

Oldnall, not so much. Unless you've got spare time and there's nowt on telly.

there's nowt on telly.
😂

Well, so far Mike Young likes to talk and doesn't get to the point.
Thing is with Mike is he has had the opportunity to watch everyone else's testimony and read thier witness statements.
Where the evidence is in a letter/email/document he has got an answer for it.
If there is no document, his memory is fantastic and he can remember exactly what was said. Strange as other people have struggled to recall conversations from 12-15 years ago.

Here comes the Ismay report.....

He definitely came across as being strong willed and, mostly, having a grip. As such, he was a rarity in Post Office witnesses in the Inquiry by being seemingly capable.

He is being challenged, as a former police officer, that it was the SPMR who had to prove thier innocence, and have hard evidence.

First he says he can't recall.
But he's changed it to maybe he did think it was wrong, but he didn't do anything about it and blames the sheer number of emails he got, that he didn't do anything about it.

He identified, at the time, that the prosecutions was wrong based on the Horizon data and Fujitsu were not an independent expert. Yet did nothing.

He claims he was told not to raise it, either by John Scott or Lesley Sewell, and just let the process happen.

I'm not buying what he is selling.

Young made the mistake of not keeping his answers short. His long-windedness only raised more questions than it answered.

An example of this was when he was sent an e-mail meant for (I think) Lesley Sewell - he could have just said "I have no idea about any of the points raised here as I was not dealing with these issues and shouldn't have ever received this message." But instead he waffled on and on which raised new and follow up questions.

That's exactly it @Lunde

He has got himself into a right pickle with the receipts and mismatch bug.
Because he kept talking and talking. Everything he was saying didn't match up to his email he wrote at the time.
Sir Wyn had to step in to get him to give a direct answer.

To me, he is trying to come portray himself as someone who knew the prosecutions were wrong, but for various reasons that are not his fault, he didn't raise his concerns.

Here's another good example.

He is talking about giving a comment to the Computer Weekly article.

He is saying he knew at the time Horizon data was not reliable for the prosecutions, but because he was having a bad day, that wasnt his fault, he just followed the corporate line and didn't do much else to sort it.

Here goes Mr Stein.

Mr Stein has got it.

He is stopping Mike Young from blaming others for why he didn't raise his concerns. And he should take some personal responsibility.

Mike Young is not loving this.
He seems to think that because Lesley Sewell, Paula Vennells, Fujitsu didn't say anything, then it isn't his fault.

But he can't gave it both ways. He can't say on one hand that he identified the scandal long before anyone else, but because no-one else spotted it, he isn't to blame for not raising it.
It's a nonsensical argument.

I love Ms Page. She has such a great stare, after she asks a challenging question.

She's pointed out Mike Young blames Paula Vennells and Paula Vennells blames Mike Young.
Mike just said that Paula was at POL for another 7 years, so she's more to blame.
🤷‍♀️

That's interesting

Mike Young has relied on the Ismay report to explain why he stopped being concerned about the prosecutions.
Yet here is Dave Smiths evidence saying Mike Young had influence in the Ismay report and gave advice to Rod Ismay on what to write.

This is getting silly now.

Of course Mike Young doesn't recall this.

Ms Page is getting very cross with him.
They are talking about Seema Misra, and Mike Young claimed he knew nothing about Seems Misra until the Channel 4 documentary many years later.
But sure enough, he is copied into the horrendous congratulatory email after her trial.

She just asked if he made any other self-serving mistakes in his witness statement
I heard the laughs from the gallery.