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

I see this now.

Jo Hamiltons lawyer, Ms Patrick, has Mike Young by the goolies.

Paula Vennells cross email about the independent review into Horizon and how Mike Young or Lesley Sewell didn't tell her about it.

Mike Youngs answer is he can't recall, but he was super busy with the separation from Royal Mail and it was Paula and Lesley fault.

Ms Patrick makes a very valid point that Mike Young has spent the entire day today talking about how he spent years pushing for an independent enquiry into Horizon, yet here was the perfect opportunity for it, yet he does nothing.

Just watching Simon Oldnall.

He confirms shortfalls are repaid when the SPMR agrees they owe the loss.

I'm still really concerned about this.
If you take Jo Hamilton as an example, I watched her evidence to the Select Committee.
She explained that through bullying, tactics, threatening with prison etc, POL convinced her the shortfall was her fault.

For a long time, she really believed it was her fault there was a shortfall.
And thats why she kept paying the losses out of her pocket. The only reason she stopped paying it was because she ran out of money.

I'm very concerned this is happening now.

It's not that hard to get someone to agree the shortfall is thier fault and get them to pay it.

Thanks for all the updates. Glad to see Rivermum is actually there. Laughs from the gallery re asking Mike Young if he made any other mistakes.

Good morning.

Today it is the turn of:
Tracy Marshall - Retail Engagement Director at Post Office Ltd

Melanie Park - Central Operations Director at Post Office Ltd

Melanie Park I can't remember much about her.

But Tracy Marshall, I think we've seen her name on a couple of things.
The 2 points I'm interested in is
..1. Does Steve Bradshaw work in her team?
..2 Saf Ismail and Elliott Jacob said the Retail team are still behaving appallingly. The culture is still very much bullying and nasty.
They reported a SPMR said Steve Bradshaw told him that if the SPMR didn't do what he said, Steve threatened to close the post office branch that day.

Plus, the Retail team have been entering cash sales for stamps, sometimes with the SPMR knowledge sometimes without, into post office branch Horizon system and creating shortfalls/losses.
Apparently this has been sorted out, but what the hell were the Retail Team playing at?

Here is Nick Wallis summary of Mike Youngs testimony https://www.postofficescandal.uk/post/its-mikes-world-we-just-live-in-it/

He has headed it Its Mike's world. We just live in it
Which I think sums up Mike Young quite well.

You misspelled 'persecuting' :(

Oh I remember Tracy Marshall, from Nick Reads testimony.

She is one if the "untouchables".
She was involved in some way with the prosecutions.
Nick explained she recently had to move roles from stakeholder engagement to something else, but it's not a good .

Was Melanie Park involved in the Elliot Jacobs issue after he faced down the investigators and got his discrepancies resolve through business discussions?

Yes, you're right.
This is from Eliott Jacobs witness statement.

After his investigations into his Post Ofiice branch shortfalls ended, he said this:

On 16 January 2024, I emailed Melanie Park, Central Operations Director in the Retail Team, to confirm the finalised reporting on UOE's account and provide
written confirmation of the withdrawal of the investigation. Ms Park responded that she would speak with the Legal team. I forwarded the email to Mr. Staunton and Mr. Ismail to notify them that UOE's trading account had not been updated with the removal of the invalid claims of losses and a letter of withdrawal had not been issued. I did not understand the delay in resolving the issue, which first began in March 2023. Mr. Staunton responded, copying POL CEO Nick Read, noting the unsatisfactory handling of the matter and recognising the "tremendous upset" caused.^
On 8 February 2024, I received a letter notifying me that the investigation had been closed. This was almost a year after the investigation opened

Uh-oh. The Inquiry IT people have accidentally enabled the chat function on the youtube live stream.

At a pinch I'd say the chat here is somewhat better than the live chat on youtube.

You charmer you @nauticant 😂

I sometimes read The Mirror chat, but that's proper extreme.

I was actually on the Mirror's live stream and not the Inquiry's!

I am sure that I clicked through on the Inquiry website so don't know what happened there.

That happens to me sometimes as well, nauticant, and I can never work out how when I’ve definitely clicked on the Inquiry's own website….

That's good to hear, I was beginning to doubt myself.

how was the afternoon session? I wasn’t watching live so will have to wait for the video x

I caught up with Tracy Marshall and Melanie Park from yesterday.

Not much new to add apart from:
Tracy Marshall - is not going to admit she was part of the overall POL culture of treating SPMRs appallingly.
She was there. She recieved the emails and forwarded them on, knowing there was bugs and backdoor access to Horizon.
But, like many before her, she is using the old "didn't know what it meant" and "I was just a conduit".

Melanie Park didn't add much.
But I am still very concerned about current SPMRs being forced to agree to repay shortfalls.
It's clear from Parks evidence that POL are talking put both sides of thier mouth.
On one hand saying SOMR only repay shortfalls if they agree.
Yet on the other hand have a stupid contract that means they can cease a SPMR contract and close thuer post offuce for any reason they want.

There is nothing stopping POL from saying to a SPMR if you don't agree to pay back this shortfall, we will sack you and close your post office. Leaving the SPMR in a terrible position.

The thing that stood out for me from Melanie Park's evidence is that she's a new face at Post Office, only a handful of years in (which seems rare for these witnesses unless they're at the very top), so she didn't have so much at stake in terms of having to cover things up. She'd actually attended the Inquiry to watch cross-examination around the time she joined Post Office.

But if there was one theme from yesterday it was that counsel would ask again and again whether a safeguarding feature was in place, that would help subpostmasters, the witness would say there wasn't, counsel would ask whether it would be good for it to be in place, and then the witness would agree and say she'd take the suggestion back to Post Office. Post Office is years behind in everything. All change seems to come from things going horribly wrong.

I've been in meeting all morning, so just startingbto watch John Bartlett.

I've been looking forward to hearing.his testimony.

So, far my immediate opinion is he verily softly spoken. But is this really him? Has he learnt how not to come across in the Inquiry from his predecessor John Scott?

Ahhhhh! And there were have it, he has just confirmed that some of the investigators who prosecuted SPMRs, still work in supporting SPMR roles and have contact with SPMRs.

Nick Read completely denied this and said they had been moved to roles where they have no contact with SPMRs.

Another insight.
The new criminal lawyer (who replaced Jarnail Singh) works in the Remediation Unit, sorting out the appeals against the prosecutions BUT ALSO gives advice to John Bartletts team about criminal prosecutions of current SPMRs.

I dont like that at all.

Hold on, John Bartlett just said they no longer interview SPMRs, but may interview POL staff.

But Elliott Jacobs, attended an interview for the shortfalls in his post office branch.

John Bartletts letter to Elliott first called it a "meeting" ( then slipped into calling it an interview)
Is he playing with words here?

So, he is now clarifying what he means by "interview".

There are 3 types of interview
..1 Witness interview
..2 Conduct interview - I.e you've done something wrong but not necessarily criminal
..3 criminal interview.

Thus is all very wishy washy.
He keeps saying SPMRs will not be interviewed. For any reason, criminal or not, by his team.
His team will not conduct investigations into SPMRs.

The Contracts Team will investigate SPMR, but won't conduct interviews, just have "discussions".

But this doesn't tie up with how Elliott Jacobs was treated.

In case people haven't noticed, tomorrow's session with Ben Foat starts at 9am. He'd been scheduled to appear some time back but that was cancelled at the last minute. It looks like he's been squeezed in at this stage and the Inquiry team are now realising that they'll struggle to go through everything in a day.

I'm going to call him "Tricky Dicky"

He is playing with words.
He is now saying the 15 cases of SPMRs investigations with the police, were not initially investigated by the Investigations Team.
Plus, none of those cases involve shortfalls

But that doesn't make sense either, because we've seen his email to Fujitsu demanding they provide a witness statement to the Police, confirming Horizon data is robust.
That's the email that caused the huge fallout between Nick Read and the Fujitsu CEO.
Why would he demand Fujitsu give a witness statement to police about Horizon if the police were not investigating a shortfall?