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

That was rather dry but it seems that in the ways the prosecutions of subpostmasters were run in Scotland, they had even less opportunity to resist than subpostmasters South of the border.

Right, that's submissions from the victims done, the rest of the day is submissions from the National Federation of Subpostmasters (who are purporting to be standing up for the victims but they have a horribly mixed record) and UK Government Investments.

That was a ve-e-ery long advert for the NFSP.

Overall I'd suggest anyone catching up to watch the am session and think about maybe skipping the pm session.

Counsel for UKGI: we were rubbish but meant no harm and having seen what went wrong we've put measures in place to make sure this well never happen again. 1 hour of saying that in umpty million different ways is a bit much.

@nauticant I am absolutely indebted to you for all this.

I shall invest the time catching up on the morning session, and as you say, skip the PM.

I was unfair on Mr Munro, first 30 minutes of the afternoon, who talked about how things were different in Scotland. But you definitely don't need to continue past his submissions.

One unintended bit of humour from UKGI counsel, about their (mis-)handling of the recusal application. Basically that it was such a unique situation that everyone needs to not look too closely at it.

Second day of Closing Submissions.

First up was counsel for Post Office.

Plenty of passive voice delivery. Things went wrong. It's all very unfortunate. We are sorry. Occasional clear acceptance of blame where denial would be futile and possibly harmful.

Things are getting better! There are subpostmaster NEDs! And lots of other good stuff!

Mercifully, and I think sensibly, it only took 30 minutes rather than the scheduled hour.

The fundamental point for me though is that I don't think Post Office has effective control of its own destiny.

Paula Vennells' counsel is going for a highly forensic approach going through various points of Vennells' knowledge and involvement and arguing that there's no actual proof that she knew or did anything. It was her underlings, they kept the bad stuff to themselves, and they're the ones who should be thrown to the wolves. Much of the blame is being put on Susan Crichton.

So far in these submissions Vennells has accepted no responsibility for anything. To not do so would be a huge mistake so I assume there'll be a mealy-mouthed and very narrow mea culpa at the end. Maybe "my only mistake was to be too trusting of those around me".

Taking this at face value, maybe a just outcome would be for Vennells to hand back all of the pay and bonuses she received since, according to her counsel, she spent her years as CEO not actually doing anything at all. Well, apart from playing mean girls with Alice Perkins.

To be honest, I do think there's something to these submissions. Vennells was the perfect (passive and useless) person to be put in charge of a company having a rotten culture that would do anything to avoid that being changed.

Yes, indeed . Listening to this is difficult, I want to scream at the screen but I am listening intently trying to find errors. Knew nothing, didn't ask just took the pay and kudos while it lasted. It is a very careful speech; expensive I reckon too- almost as if the Vennells is still aiming for the vacant top clergy post.

In the end that was defensive all the way and there was no acceptance of responsibility. A noble hero brought down by those around her. I'm not sure that was a good idea.

Coming up:

Fujitsu Services Limited

Gareth Jenkins

Department for Business and Trade

I'm curious about how Fujitsu will spin this, Jenkins' submissions could be pretty interesting, and I expect to hear nothing of interest from the government.

Fujitsu's approach was broadly that they simply provided a system and the abuses of the scandal were what Post Office did with it. There is evidence to support this, Post Office were cheerfully prosecuting subpostmasters before Fujitsu arrived on the scene.

At least they accepted responsibility for making a contractual agreement to support Post Office carrying out the criminal prosecutions, and, worse, they did this without applying any of the necessary legal oversight.

There was then a section about the willy-waving between the Fujitsu and Post Office CEOs. I'm not sure what the point of that was.

@nauticant I would also like to thank you very much for your PO Inquiry threads. I remain hopeful of a fair and reasoned report and some justice for all the victims.

Oh and some real sanctions against the many perpetrators of this scandal!

Thanks, I was following this no matter what, purely out of my own personal interest, and it was good to share stuff with others also having an interest.

The Fujitsu submissions also ran short and an early lunch has been called.

@nauticant as we are near the end a huge thank you for the threads. I have dipped in and out and your commentary and updates have been really helpful.

Just finished listening to Paula Vennells' counsel.

An hour all about what everyone else did or failed to do, with next to no mention of Vennells other than, "so she didn't know about it" appended at regular intervals.

The hour with (this verbatim), "she has no desire to point the finger at others"!!!

Classic Vennells!

What a shame for her all those emails of discussions with and about the PR guy came to light. And the one (to van den Bogard?) saying "the answer I want to hear is..." And all her inaccurate precis and recastings of information. And all the multifarious other examples where she conspired to ensure information did not quite reach people – sometimes including herself.

Damning stuff.

Thanks Harassedevictee.

Gareth Jenkins' counsel is tiptoeing through a minefield of the degree to which he can be held responsible. In her version, it all hangs on him having never been appointed as an expert witness, and, particularly, instructed as to his duties in that role, and so he was a mere witness and a great deal of the seriousness falls away. As such he did not breach expert duties. This was a mess created by the prosecutors and he was simply caught up in it. Even more, he was very frank with the prosecutors and their lack of candour is not his doing. He also wasn't responsible for most of the lawyers he encountered being incompetent in one way or another.

One thing she said that was striking was her contrasting the frankness of his answers to the Inquiry to many of the other witnesses.

Along with the Vennells' submissions, these were the most compelling parts of the day.

I won't say much about the government submissions except that, apart from making the valid point that the government acting as shareholder does need to be hands off to some degree, the most eye-catching part was about the government frequently being misled by Post Office, either directly or via an incurious ShEx/UKGI. When, considering how things were run, the government has to be able to trust those it needs to rely on to be frank and honest.

Effectively Post Office had (has?) a rotten culture. And ShEx/UKGI were pretty rubbish.

So is anyone held to account then? Not PV.

Well, there we are.

It was made clear some time ago that no one will be charged until after the report of the Inquiry has been published. At the end of today's final session, the chairman Sir Wyn Williams said that it will be "many months" before we see the report.

@nauticant I too would like to thank you for these threads. I have found the updates, commentary and analysis from you and everyone else who has contributed invaluable in getting to grips with the evidence before the inquiry.

I too would like to thank @nauticant very much indeed.
And all of you, for the ride.