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.

First up today is Amanda Burton, a POL NED. She does have a solid background in business but she also worked in Ratners Group, jumping ship at the time of its collapse

Straight away we get into dodgy territory. Burton is involved in the remuneration committee.

Counsel to Inquiry: Why should top people at Post Office have their bonuses calculated based on the extent to which they cooperated with the Inquiry?

Apparently this aspect of the bonus plan was approved within Post Office on the basis that it had been approved by Sir Wynn Williams, when this was simply false. Who are these people?

Ha ha ha, Blake backed Burton into a corner and she very reluctantly confirmed that CEO Nick Read was obsessed with increasing the level of his salary. So Staunton on Tuesday and then Read the following week could be particularly interesting sessions.

One thing that's interesting about Phase 7 is that some of the emails being discussed are much more recent than in earlier Phases, for example even as recent as a month ago, and the scope for witnesses to evade by calling in aid a plausible memory failure is much reduced.

A very interesting topic after the morning break, the departure of Henry Staunton, the Chairman. Until now reports of his interventions have sounded positive but if Burton is to be believed, and she's coming across as telling this straight, Staunton tried to use his position to prevent an investigation going ahead into his allegedly bad behaviour.

A hint there that in the context of there being the complaint against Staunton, with that being entangled with a parallel, more extensive complaint against the CEO Nick Read, then Read might have leaked the Staunton's note about meeting with the SPM NEDs, Ismail and Jacobs, in order to inject further mischief into an already complicated situation surrounding Staunton.

She put on a decent show, her caution served her well, but she's less self-assured under Mr Henry's question about why the top management should have had an incentive scheme to reward them for cooperating with the Inquiry.

Thank you@nauticant

I am painting today, so can't watch it live.
Your updates are fantastic, and I'll definitely watch it this evening.

You're roght, this Phase is going to be super interesting.
None iof this "I dont remember" or " I can't recall"
It would defy the realms of credibility if you can't remember an email from 1 month ago 😂

I did think Burton would be a "new" person giving underwhelming evidence but the morning session was far more interesting than that.

Now up, Sir Martin Donnelly – former Permanent Secretary and Principal Accounting Officer at the Department of Business and Trade (Phase 5/6 evidence).

He was in (the relevant) position from 2010 to 2017 so was there when many of the significant events occurred.

He's the first Permanent Secretary the Inquiry has seen.

Only a few minutes in and it looks like his key message is going to be: we-were-so-busy-Post-Office-was-one-issue-among-many-we-weren't-warned-nothing-we-could-do.

A technocrat with a rather annoying delivery, sort of condescending.

He does keep pulling a face like 'oh children, it was all so very complicated and busy, ho ho ho, hahaha, how terribly difficult to understand'.

It's up there with the most unrewarding of sessions. If anyone's going to catch up with today on youtube, watch the AM session but skip the PM one.

I did nothing because I knew nothing. I knew nothing because people below me told me nothing. I was reasonable to assume they'd tell me things that were important. Therefore I acted properly at all times.

But to be fair, the people who would have been best placed to have told him of problems at Post Office were ShEx and its successor entity UKGI, and as we've seen from the evidence of people working there, they were utterly blind to anything that rocked the boat, with many of them seemingly in post to nab a gong or some kind of award.

Just starting to watch the non-exec Amanda Burton, from this morning.
I'm intrigued after nauticant updates.

I'm.starting to really like Blake. His confidence has grown through the inquiry and I love when a witness says something stupid and his tone is " Really? Are you really trying to peddle this shit?" 😂

I did actually try to not go into too much detail in case anyone catching up would find new things in Burton's evidence. (There was no laziness in me only posting brief summaries, no, no way, not the case at all.)

This is outrageous

The board and Senior executives gave themselves a bonus for work they've done on the Inquiry.

Their "goal" was to provide and support all documents for the inquiry. Which they marked as "Acheived", and claimed Sir Wyn said they had achieved this.

Um, haven't we had Mr Beer time after time complain that POL are super slow at disclosing all thier documents?!? In fact they still haven't disclosed everything.
Sir Wyn has never said POL has achieved anything.

You'll have thrown your phone/computer out of the window by the time you get to Mr Henry putting questions to her.

Oh, and here is a meeting note.

Amanda Burton told everyone this bonus was wrong.
Nick Read (current CEO) paid the bonus back but wanted to have his pay doubled.
The rest of the senior execs are thinking about repaying this bonus.

😂

I'm only 20mins in and I'm bloody furious.

She is now moaning about having to get consent from BEIS (government department) to agree bonuses and pay rises.

There's a shocker.

When the recent SPMR survey results were presented to the board, by the HR team, the painted a "rosy" " all is great" picture.

Unsurprisingly, when the board actually looked at the survey results, nothing was rosy or great.

Why are they continuing to do this? Time after time, year after year, we've seen presentations to the board saying "everything is great, nothing to worry about", when this was false.
They are still doing it!

Amanda Burton (who is being questioned) asked for anonymous feedback from POL employees.

They certainly gave very harsh feedback about Nick Read (CEO) and othe senior execs.
Amanda then shows this to the board, including Nick Read.
Even though it is anonymous, I think this is pretty bad.
Nick Read and others, have basically dismissed the feedback.