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

@nauticant VFM and MPM are very well known in the Civil Service.

If you are interested in the detail
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/managing-public-money

Yes! VFM was the big buzz term when I joined the Civil Service in 1983,

Lorna Grafton is a Civil Service highflyer who has moved around a great deal accumulating experience and seniority. My initial impression is she's smart, not clever-clever smart but rather depth and grip smart.

Some common sense from LG, she couldn't see why in the HSS there would be quibbling over relatively small amounts of money when this would involve lots of time being spent by the administrator Herbert Smith Freehills who would be charging a king's ransom for any work they were carrying out.

The first question at which LG faltered and was less direct. This was the one that all Civil Servants are strongly averse to: Would you explain why the money available to be paid out to subpostmasters suddenly increased enormously not so long ago?

As a retired CS, I was shocked how the procurement rules were seemingly thrown out during COVID. I have always said the exponential increase in global demand for PPE was unprecedented and there was no way anyone could match demand initially.

Driven by the adverse media, I believe the gmt really panicked and threw out the boring rules that ensured procurement of fit for purpose PPE at a fair price and instead threw money at anyone who seemed to have PPE, no matter how poor the quality or lack of manufacturing background.

LG had a couple of tricky areas but she dealt with them reasonably effectively by adding context to show that where she'd apparently said something eye-catching, the reality was more mundane.

The afternoon's witness was Sir Alex Chisholm. Another Civil Service high-flyer. He's completely transcended that world now and exists in an elevated plane. Intelligent and smooth.

All rather plausible but one exchange made clear that his evidence was, in some respects, a re-writing of history. He was on solid ground explaining how Post Office hid significant information in its reporting to government, and went further to say that if relevant documents had been mentioned, he'd have asked to see them and dastardly schemes would have been revealed. But then Miss Price went to a part of one report where the Second Sight report is specifically referred to, and is clearly significant, and she asked him that since here was a named document, did he ask to see that? I'll leave you to guess at his response.

Imagine if Yes Minister had been given the House of Cards treatment, and you've got Sir Alex.

Now there's an interesting detail. Apparently government were opposed to the recusal application, but felt that they couldn't impose a veto, so they fed their view and thoughts into the UKGI man on the Board Tom Cooper, who then withdrew from the critical Board meeting meaning that the view of government was not provided to the Board. Chisholm went into somewhat blahblahblah detail why in response he didn't do anything further when he and his colleagues felt Post Office might be charging into The Valley of Death.

Absolutely- very smooth ( couldn’t see any hidden stiletto bulges in that suit ).

Gareth Thomas MP (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for the Department of Business and Trade) giving evidence has now for the second time said he can't answer now but will provide an answer in writing. I can understand that certain things he says could mean creating government commitments on the fly but too much of this might annoy the Chair.

Tomorrow the last week of evidence sessions starts with, unusually, evidence being taken on a Monday:

Monday 11 November
The Rt. Hon. Jonathan Reynolds MP - Secretary of State for the Department of Business and Trade
The Rt. Hon. Kemi Badenoch MP – former Secretary of State for the Department of Business and Trade
William Paul Patterson - Director of Fujitsu Services Limited

Tuesday 12 November
Dame Sandra Dawson and Dr Katy Steward – Governance experts

Wednesday 13 November
Dame Sandra Dawson and Dr Katy Steward – Governance experts

For me, the most interesting evidence is going to be that coming from Kemi Badenoch.

Jonathan Reynolds MP looks a bit like 18th century royalty. He's giving answers having a distinct political spin where, whenever possible, he's comparing what the government are doing now favourably with the previous administration. There's a bit of the windbag about him.

Reynolds is sticking closely to his Civil Service briefing which is to put forward a balance between Value for Money and making sure that, on the whole, subpostmasters aren't under-compensated. However, whenever he's asked about edge cases it's clear he's not been briefed/thought about creating further injustices. There are 3 competing factors:
(a) without full analysis of claims most subpostmasters will receive an inaccurate amount of compensation;
(b) to avoid making things grossly unfair, the amounts awarded need to err on the side of over-compensation;
(c) but (b) conflicts with the absolute VfM requirement of the Civil Service.

Thanks for all the updates OP. I just can’t understand where the thousands and thousands of £ went to that the Subpostmasters paid ‘back’ have gone. In my simple way I assumed the monies went into an account,so surely even without consideration for compensation,those particular monies can be repaid from the same account? Each transaction should surely be traceable ? Or is it just a slush fund it goes to then onwards to ‘profits’?
I’m so fkin angry about this whole thing but also how much this is now costing ,when I suspect no one is going to be held accountable/jailed or even have their cosy lives/ income disrupted in any way after the inquiry. Those people always just move on to the next extravagantly paid job with their mates & brush the inconveniences caused by ‘the little people’ into a corner.
Its shameful

Excellent questions by Mr Stein. Understated but getting to the heart of things in a clear way.

Post Office have been asked again, and again, and again, and again about where the shortfall payments by subpostmasters went and have never been able to give any kind of satisfactory answer Yogachick. Added to that the records available to Post Office are a shambles.

In looking at what caused the scandal, one thing not to overlook is that Post Office has been an utter mess for decades, with terrible infrastructure, and terrible management.

Thanks for the continued reporting, @nauticant.

I shall try to catch some of today, particularly the Fujitsu guy, though I don't think I can put in a full day stint. I appreciate so much those of you who do.

I probably need to mug up on the Staunton debacle before Badenoch comes on, as it's presumably something on which she can shed light.

Would you like some Beer with your Badenoch?

Yes please!

Badenoch is providing compelling evidence. So far she's coming across well. She was ahead of the curve in trying to get more money more speedily to the subpostmasters, and this is evident in the written evidence.

As a bonus, she's one of the few people, on the government/Civil Service side, if not unique, in being frank about the ITV drama making all the difference.

For her, the Inquiry is giving her a platform to present her view about how the machinery of government/Whitehall has become too bloated and sclerotic so that decision-making can grind to a halt. This resulted in an exchange about a lack of "common sense" which caused much amusement.

Afternoon session starts with the Staunton Affair. Now going carefully through the transcript of the phone call between him and Badenoch.

Beer asks about Badenoch's comment about "vanilla" note taking in the Civil Service. This gives her a chance to expand more on her criticisms of that body.

Beer ended his questions with a very pointed barb that was most amusing.

Arghh! And no sooner had I posted than there was a knock at the door.

A productive afternoon... but not on the inquiry! Thank you for being there for us, @nauticant .