Post Office Inquiry live: Paula Vennells email says ‘managing media’ is priority over Horizon case reviews

Paula Vennells has insisted she didn’t know till 2012 that the Publish Workplace carried out its personal personal felony investigations.

Requested about notes from a gathering in 2008 which reveals trainee investigators and the sums reclaimed from postmasters had been mentioned, Ms Vennells stated it might be an affordable inference to attract from the doc that the Publish Workplace was personally recouping cash from its personal employees – however insisted she had not taken that from the assembly herself.

She added: “I ought to have recognized and I ought to have requested extra questions, and I and others who additionally did not know ought to have dug rather more deeply into this.”

Ms Vennells stated she was “stunned” to be taught in 2012 that the Publish Workplace prosecuted its personal employees, and stated she recalled no dialogue of that within the years she had served on the Publish Workplace’s danger and compliance committee.

The inquiry’s chair Sir Wyn Williams has stepped in to quiz Paula Vennells over her claims to not have realised the Publish Workplace prosecuted its personal employees till 2012 – regardless of becoming a member of the organisation in 2007.

Ms Vennells informed the inquiry “it was an accepted actuality, it was a established order that I joined and accepted”, including: “I shouldn’t have executed.”

This prompted Sir Wyn to interject: “Isn’t an accepted actuality an acknowledgement of an consciousness of the fact? Mr Beer’s urgent you on the way it might probably be that you just weren’t conscious of the usage of a perform which was extremely uncommon for a non-public firm.”

She replied: “I agree, Sir Wyn. The way in which that Mr Beer describes it’s that it was a perform that one didn’t hear about. We knew about instances being prosecuted, and I can’t bear in mind – the Publish Workplace board met sometimes – whether or not there have been important litigation studies that got here to the Publish Workplace board earlier than I turned chief govt.

“I can’t bear in mind, however I feel all people’s understanding – mine included – was that the place prosecutions had been carried out, they had been carried out by exterior authorities.”

However Sir Wyn famous: “There was at the very least one case two years earlier than 2012 – Mrs Misra’s case – which attracted nice deal of publicity. It does appear extraordinarily shocking that it didn’t filter via at that time that it was truly the Publish Workplace that was prosecuting, not the CPS.”

Ms Vennells stated: “I agree. I haven’t seen something within the documentation that factors to the truth that one would have recognized that”, prompting Sir Wyn to interject: “I don’t assume I would like documentation to deduce that this could be a degree of dialogue amongst senior individuals.”

Ms Vennells stated: “I apologise. My level about documentation was whether or not there was something that may have prompted my reminiscence. I’ve no recollection of being concerned in conversations about Mrs Misra’s case … there weren’t, so far as I do know, discussions concerning the reality it was Publish Workplace who had investigated and introduced the prosecution.”

Paula Vennells has been pressed as soon as once more by lead counsel Richard Beer KC on how she had not realised the Publish Workplace had an enormous group prosecuting subpostmasters when chatting with former head of safety John Scott after the Second Sight report.

Mr Beer stated: “While you spoke to John Scott about this, did you not say: ‘I’ve been within the organisation 5 or 6 years now, I didn’t know you had a group of 100 people who had been investigating up and down the nation subpostmasters and sending them to jail’.”

He added: “Dozens of prosecutions occurred whenever you had been community director, dozens of prosecutions occurred whenever you had been managing director – collectively tons of of prosecutions went on, carried out by the Publish Workplace, having been investigated by the Publish Workplace – and also you didn’t learn about it till 2012.

“So whenever you spoke to [former head of security] John Scott, did you not say: ‘how’s this all been happening? Who’s been managing you? Why doesn’t the board learn about this?’”

Ms Vennells replied that on the time she spoke to Mr Scott “all that had modified” as a result of “we had stopped prosecutions, his group had been considerably diminished in quantity and we had been wanting into the complaints made by the subpostmasters”.

Former subpostmaster Janet Skinner – who was sentenced to 9 months in jail in 2007 for false accounting – expressed sympathy for Paula Vennells in giving proof to a room of individuals with “eyes filled with hatred”.

“I’ll be trustworthy I felt fairly emotional this morning,” Ms Skinner informed the PA information company. “I truly felt emotional for her as a result of she is up there and he or she has obtained all these eyes there which can be simply filled with hatred in direction of her and that have to be such an awesome, horrible, intense feeling.”

However she stated Ms Vennells “has introduced all of it on herself” earlier than persevering with: “That is her time on that stand to now put her facet of the story on the market. All people has chucked mud at her, it’s time for her to open up and be fairly open and trustworthy about who was on the forefront of all of it.”

Paula Vennells has stated she doesn’t know why she was not proven a 2013 report warning that Publish Workplace programs had been “not match for objective in a contemporary retail and monetary surroundings” – and stated she will not be positive she even knew that firm Detica had been carrying it out.

Ms Vennells stated: “I discover it very unusual that it wasn’t delivered to me, not simply to my consideration, however to the eye of all people else who had obligations when it comes to the operating of the Publish Workplace.”

Requested whether or not it was a severe failure by Lesley Sewell, Chris Aujard and Angela van den Bogerd – who all seem to have had entry to the doc – to not inform her, Ms Vennells stated: “I discover it very unusual that it wasn’t delivered to my – and it isn’t simply to my consideration, it’s the eye of all people else who had obligations when it comes to the operating of the Publish Workplace.

Pressed on whether or not she had “any clue why they might wish to maintain you, the manager, and the board, out of this info”, she stated: “No I don’t. And I don’t recall both that they had been colleagues that I might have suspected had been witholding one thing from the board, or myself.

“I don’t perceive why the report didn’t progress.”

Fujitsu Europe’s then-chief govt described the core of Horizon like “Fort Knox” or an “plane flight recorder” when discussing distant entry, Paula Vennells stated in her first witness assertion.

Ms Vennells and Duncan Tait, Fujitsu Europe’s then-CEO, concurred it was “implausible” that Publish Workplace department accounts could possibly be altered remotely, Ms Vennells stated when detailing her understanding of distant entry as of July 3 2013.

She stated she requested Mr Tait if a Fujitsu colleague might alter department accounts remotely, and stated his response was no and “we concurred it was an implausible state of affairs”.

She added: “Why would a Fujitsu colleague attempt to hack right into a department’s accounts? We couldn’t discover any appropriate rationalization – there was no method they might profit financially from such an motion. The one potential cause can be a malicious act by a disgruntled worker.

“Duncan described the core of Horizon like a black field, ie., just like an plane flight recorder; he stated that even when somebody wished to, it was not potential to change or break it.

“I had heard the black field description earlier than. He described how safe the system was – that even when somebody had the motivation, it simply wasn’t potential – Horizon was like Fort Knox. I discovered it reassuring that the CEO of Fujitsu confirmed that there was no trigger for concern and that the system couldn’t be tampered with.”

Paula Vennells has damaged into tears for a 3rd time amid a grilling about what she known as “disturbing” studies from postmasters because the Horizon IT scandal unfolded.

She was requested about eight examples of complaints from postmasters who had utilized for mediation in 2013.

After studying the complaints, she wrote an electronic mail to a colleague saying: “Other than discovering them very disturbing, I defy anybody to not, I’m now even higher knowledgeable.”

She described the “dreadful” monetary impacts on some postmasters and stated she wished to share their tales with colleagues.

However, referring to a 2015 resolution by the previous Publish Workplace chief to shut the mediation scheme, inquiry counsel Jason Beer KC requested what occurred between that call and her discovering the instances “disturbing”.

“When did they stop to grow to be very disturbing?” he requested.

Ms Vennells broke into tears earlier than saying nothing had been discovered within the mediation course of and there have been “explanations” for what had occurred in each case.

“I’m very sorry we didn’t attain the fitting conclusion on these instances,” she added.

The Horizon IT Inquiry heard that Paula Vennells obtained direct correspondence from subpostmasters having points with the pc system from 2012.

Ms Vennells despatched an electronic mail after receiving phrase from subpostmaster Pervez Nakvi about Horizon points in February 2012, wherein the previous Publish Workplace chief govt stated: “It is extremely irritating to obtain mails like this. Pervez is true to lift it.

“It’s my understanding that Horizon is dependable…but when trusted people like Pervez at the moment are not feeling that’s the case are we monitoring the fitting metrics?”

Requested if it was related that they had been a trusted particular person, she stated: “I responded to all complaints in the very same method. It might not have made a distinction whether or not I knew the subpostmaster or not.”

Pressed on whether or not all complaints raised by subpostmasters would name for investigation, Ms Vennells stated: “I might hope so. I’m positive there are instances the place that was not the case however I might have tried to.”

Lord Arbuthnot, James Arbuthnot, a member of the Horizon Compensation Advisory Board has informed Occasions Radio that Former Publish Workplace boss Paula Vennells testimony is an “astonishing announcement of her ignorance” and is “displaying an incompetence of gargantuan scale”

He stated: “It’s an astonishing announcement of her ignorance of what the organisation of which she was chief govt was truly doing and I feel Sir William’s response was a little bit of incredulity. How might you not know that your organisation was prosecuting tons of and tons of of sub-postmasters.

“The query is, is it credible? She was both telling the reality however displaying an incompetence of gargantuan scale or she was not telling the reality.”

He additionally rejected her argument that she didn’t know concerning the prosecutions: “For one factor, I wrote to Moira Inexperienced, her predecessor chief govt, in 2011 and obtained a letter again from her, from Paula Vennells, speaking concerning the prosecutions.

“So, to say that she didn’t know till after she’d written the letter to me about prosecutions strikes me as being simply not credible.”