Paula Vennells, chief executive of the Post Office from 2012-2019, has told the public inquiry into the scandal she was ‘let down’ by senior IT managers and the organisation’s legal counsels, naming five of her former colleagues.
Vennells denies taking part in any cover-up over the long-running scandal in which about 900 subpostmasters were prosecuted over financial discrepancies, which were caused by the Fujitsu-supplied Horizon accounting computer system. The Post Office knew that there were bugs in the system from the early days of its operation but did not reveal this information to the subpostmasters it accused, or the fact that Fujitsu staff could access their individual accounts and alter figures.
On her final day of giving evidence she named five senior Post Office staff who had “let her down” by withholding information as the scandal developed; she listed the senior IT executives Mike Young (who the inquiry has not been able to locate), and Lesley Sewell; and the general legal counsels Susan Crichton, Chris Aujard and Jane MacLeod.
Previously Vennells had repeatedly told the inquiry that she could not recollect key conversations and events.
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However, emails seen by the inquiry from August 2013 showed that Vennells had told senior staff she was concerned mediation with the subpostmasters could lead to high levels of compensation. The inquiry saw a memo in which Post Office lawyer Susan Crichton was criticised internally for commissioning investigators Second Sight to probe the subpostmasters’ claims. Vennells wrote that Crichton had “put her integrity as a lawyer above the interests of the business”.
Vennells today told the inquiry that she had twice raised her doubts with MacLeod, an in-house lawyer, about the Post Office’s strategy of trying to force victims to abandon their campaigns for justice at a time when there was internal knowledge of problems with the IT system.
In a strategy paper issued in 2017, seen by the inquiry, the Post Office’s lawyers warned that the costs of litigation with subpostmasters was likely to be “extremely high”. They said “a better solution is to try to force the claimants into a collective position where they will either abandon the claims or seek a reasonable settlement”.
The paper said the intention was to target those funding and insuring the Post Office operators’ claims, who would adopt a “cold, logical assessment of whether they will get a payout”.
Several of the emails shown at the inquiry reveal derogatory comments from senior managers about subpostmasters. In 2014 Vennells wrote an email about sub-postmasters in which she said wrongly convicted sub-postmistress Jo Hamilton “lacked passion and admitted false accounting”.
Hamilton, who was present at the session, told the media: “I accept anyone’s apology but whether she means it or not is another matter. I’m not sure.”
Vennells has apologised, admitted errors and said she regretted many of the actions she and senior managers had taken. But many of lawyers representing the subpostmasters at the inquiry have accused her of “humbug”, being in “la la land” and of talking “absolute rubbish”.
The Metropolitan Police is monitoring the inquiry as part of an investigation into potential fraud offences committed during the prosecutions of subpostmasters. The Solicitors Regulation Authority could bring misconduct charges against lawyers involved in the cases.
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