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

After a while it was nails down the blackboard stuff. Especially since you had to strain hard to listen to her words from time to time.

Thanks for all the updates,

Have had a holiday and a break from the inquiry but catching up now thanks to YouTube. Veronica Branton’s session hasn’t made it on yet I don’t think but I agree with you about Scarabelotti, just suffering through it now

These first few sessions have generally been a lot more interesting than I thought they would be! Seems a lot at the post office has not changed

I was the same as you @eeyoredebbie. I thought Phase 7 would be a bit boring. But nope, the Post Office hasn't changed.

This week is going to be very very interesting.
Monday- not sitting
Tuesday - Karen McEwan – Group Chief People Officer of Post Office Ltd
Nigel Railton – Interim Chair of Post Office Ltd

Then clear your days for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, because its Nick Read, the now, former CEO.

This is what I predict we will hear about:.
The untouchables
Stupid pay rises and bonus.
In fighting, bullying, sexual harrassment, racism
Nick Read lying to the MP Select Committee
The culture not changing anf SPMR still viewed as thieves.
And with all of that, why not one day, since 2018, has the Board dealt with the compensation/redress for the SPMRs.

Karen McEwan is up first today. She is the Chief People Officer.

She is very critical of POL.
Didn't like the former chair Henry Staunton.
Claims doesn't know Nick Read very well.
People management and poor performance management is bad
The Chief People Officer role is too hard and is affecting her personal life.

They keep using the term "Onboarding".

Of all the corporate speak, this is the word I hate the most.

I absolutely loathe it.
It doesnt make sense. What ever happened to having a "Induction Training" for new staff? Why are we now "onboarding" them?

So Karen has done quite a bit of work and plans for improving people engagement at POL.

But has done nothing for the relationship and change in culture between POL and the SPMRs.

Karen is quite interesting.

She chooses her words very carefully and uses a lot of corporate speak. But she is honest. Occasionally needs to be pushed to give a specific answer.

For example she was asked if there was problems i.e poor performance with other executives, which she said yes.
But she was pushed for specific names and she said Martin Roberts, the Retail Director.

She is balancing being truthful with the Inquiry and being professional quite well.

They have shown the sexist and racist comments Henry Staunton said ( he's denied saying them)

I'm not going to repeat it in here. But they have shown them if anyone wants to know exactly what was said.

Oh, they are showing a letter dated May 2024 from POL employee whistleblowers.

The letter says the internal staff survey results were bad, yet it was given a positive PR spin to the board.
Karen denies this.

An allegation that Karen got the job unfairly and is a cover up and is Nick Reads mate.
Karen denies knowing Nick Read. She says he knew him 20 years ago.

The letter is quite eye opening.

Hmm.

So they have created a new role in POL: The Postmaster Experience Director.

A SPMR has just been appointed. His role is to bring to the board all the issues SPMRs are having.
I have no doubt he will do a good job.

My concern is that's what the NFSP was meant to do, and look how that turned out.
POL don't have a great history.
They either buy the loyalty = George Thomas NFSP.
Or if the SPMR doesn't conform, they get investigated = Elliott Jacobs SPMR NED.

OK, scrap what I said before about Karen being honest.

They are going through Saf Ismail and Elliott Jacobs email complaints about Martin Roberts, Ben Foat, Steve Bradshaw etc.their conduct and poor behaviour.
She waffles about her team investigating the allegations, but finally says there were no consequences.

They are now showing the investigation report "Project Pineapple" into Martin Roberts, Ben Foat, Nick Read. As a result from the SPMR NEDS complaints.

The investigation was done internally by one of Karen's team.

The summary of findings is there is a lack of communication between the Boatd and the SPMR NEDS. But there is no toxic culture towards SPMRs, thet just need to improve the flow of information.

Karen admits, amongst a lot of corporate waffle, that they shouldn't have said there is no toxic culture towards SPMRs. L

They are now going through Project Phoenix, which is the strategy for dealing with the "untouchable" or the "Past Roles Review".

Ha ha, Karen keeps saying she wasn't in post when these documents were being created, to get out of answering questions. But it has now been pointed out to her she was in post for the Board document.

I wrote a summary before seeing your informative posts minou123 but I'll post what I wrote in any case:

Karen McEwan, another witness talking about the top of the Post Office being in chaos only a short while back. (I've heard nothing to suggest it's improved markedly since then.)

McEwan had a negative impression of Staunton. She and others didn't like his behaviour. (Note that she isn't the person who made the Employment Tribunal complaint that mentioned Staunton, that was Jane Davies. I think McEwan is Davies' successor.) She added substance to the allegations that Staunton had tried to close down the investigation related to Davies' complaint. While he was doing this, Post Office top people thought the complaint was only about Nick Read, and Staunton didn't set them right on this mistaken assumption, but they learned that it also related to Staunton when they received particulars of Davie's claim from the Employment Tribunal. She views Staunton's interventions as being self-serving.

She made clear that as Chief People Officer, she was responsible for employees, which did not include subpostmasters. This didn't come across as evasive but was more about recognising the reality. But this has had an impact on trying to tackle the mess(es). For example, the interface between the Retail Function and the subpostmasters was failing. In her view, that was down to the people involved on the Post Office side. She had to have her arm twisted to give a name and eventually identified Martin Roberts, Chief Retail Officer. He's (sort of?) been replaced.

She does come across as a professional person, and not one of those who were keen on playing games. But she's in post and is toeing the party line. She's reasonably direct but at times lapses into HR speak, and some of the documents she's produced are remarkable in their lack of clarity.

The recommendations to deal with staff who still work for POL who were involved in the scandal are to either:
..no further action
..redeployment or given new work duties
..only in limited circumstances sacked.

That said redeploying the "untouchables" to new work would take ages because they are currently working on the Remidiation Team and if they moved them now, then the compensation/redress to SPMR would slow down.

The report states no conflicts have been found, but it just looks bad.

You couldn't make this up!

Excellent summary @nauticant . Much better than mine.

I was reading twitter earlier and someone has reported Nick Read is sat in the gallery watching.
When the camera scans out, I'll see if that is true.
But it may explain why Karen is being careful with her answers.

The Post Office report into the complaint by Jane Davies was by Marianne Tutin at Devereux Chambers. The Telegraph reported on this earlier this year:

An investigation into bullying at the organisation has found that during his brief tenure as chairman, Mr Staunton had made “discriminatory remarks” on the grounds of race and sex.

The report, seen by The Telegraph, revealed that during the recruitment process for a board member, he said: “She doesn’t look coloured, where does she come from?”

He described younger women as “girls” and older women as “ladies” and, in an attempt at humour, asked whether another female candidate would be a “pain in the arse”.

Here is the whistle-blower letter from POL employees.

Yes, Nick Read is there!

He is sat with the POL lawyers, behind Howe & Co.

Mr Stein from Howe & co is asking questions, so I'm going to focus on Nick's face.

Nick is making copious notes.

Nick is pulling faces, I suspect, to make him look like he is taking this inquiry seriously.
But he just looks like he has smelled a fart.

Next is Nigel Railton, the current interim chair.

Hevperhaps hasn't been told the truth that the Horizon system is still a pile of poo poo. He was under the impression it is now working fine.

This afternoon session is somewhat of an unappetising starter in advance of the main course tomorrow.