Post Office Inquiry – live: Paula Vennells booed over calling postmasters ‘inadequate’ in bombshell email

Paula Vennells has been booed by some in the gallery as an email was shown in which she said postmasters had appeared “inadequate” and “boring” during a TV appearance in 2014.

Pressed by Tim Moloney KC over her “triumphalist” email (see post below for details), Ms Vennells said there was “simply no excuse” for what she had written and that she had apologised to subpostmaster Jo Hamilton.

“Is it in fact that they were triumphalist remarks and you regret them now because you’re here?” he pressed.

She said: “I completely agree, that the pressure we were under at the time to try to manage what we genuinely felt was an imbalance of media coverage and representation about what was happening in the Post Office, and I think under pressure ... I have no excuse for what I wrote.

“Other than, as I say, I was under pressure, and I think I was relieved that the programme hadn’t been perhaps as bad or as hard-hitting as I’d expected it to be. And I’m just hugely sorry – it was a terrible thing to write.

She added: “I was perhaps very relieved ... There is simply no excuse because, it wouldn’t matter, would it, how bad it had been – because we were wrong.”

Ms Vennells denied that this really reflected the behind-closed-doors attitude towards postmasters.

Following her denunciation of Post Office comms director Mark Davies’ claim in 2014 that subpostmasters “faced lifestyle difficulties”, Paula Vennells has been shown an email she sent eight days later congratulating him for “achieving a balance of reporting beyond anything I could have hoped for”.

The email sent by Ms Vennells about a One Show broadcast said: “They emphasised everything we have done and came across as ... fact! Very good.”

She claimed the rest of the show was “hype and human interest” and said she “was more bored than outraged” watching it. She added that now-acquitted subpostmaster Jo Hamilton “lacked passion and admitted false accounting on TV”, and claimed the segment made postmasters look “inadequate”.

Paula Vennells is being asked about Post Office comms director suggesting in 2014 on BBC Radio 4 that subpostmasters had “faced lifestyle difficulties”.

Asked what she thought of these remarks, Ms Vennells said: “I remember listening to it and thinking ‘oh Mark’. As he said here, I don’t think he ever intended that word to come out.”

She accepts it was extremely insensitive. By that time, one subpostmaster had served an 18-month prison sentence while a mother to teenagers. She has subsequently had her conviction quashed. Another longserving local councillor had spent his 60th birthday behind bars.

Tim Moloney KC said: “They’d all been subject to public censure and humiliation, and you’ve had a taste of that now Ms Vennells, haven’t you, in recent times. And it’s not very nice, is it? And if somebody were to say to you, Paula, you appear to have a bit of a lifestyle difficulty at the moment, might you consider that could be viewed as slightly ironic or sarcastic.”

Ms Vennells said: “It was just completely the wrong word.”

Asked to explain why she would never have said that herself, Ms Vennells said: “For the reason that I’m here today. Because people’s lives have been absolutely devastated.”

Challenged that it was “not simply reflecting the dismissive attitude Post Office had” towards subpostmasters, Ms Vennells said: “I don’t believe so. I can understand why people would think that, and I regret hugely that we are where we are today.”

She denied fostering that dismissive attitude.

Barrister Tim Moloney KC is now asking Paula Vennells about media coverage in 2014.

She tells the inquiry she can’t recall whether there was a degree of damaging revelations about Horizon starting to emerge, saying: “I’ll take your word for that, I’m sorry, I can’t recall the detail now.”

Mr Moloney states that “campaigning postmasters were appearing on radio and television to describe their experiences at the hands of the Post Office, and about how their lives had been ruined and Horizon was at the root of their problems”.

Ms Vennells then accepts that she told the inquiry this week that she had been working closely with the Post Office’s comms director Mark Davies and kept a close eye on how the Post Office was being portrayed on TV and radio.

Paula Vennells has been shown a document compiling her key achievements over the previous 12 months in her role.

One point noted within the document was Ms Vennells’ having “intervened personally” to change the wording in the Royal Mail flotation prospectus in relation to the Horizon investigation”.

Ms Vennells said it was “one of a list of areas that I worked on”.

Challenged that she “remembered it well enough to cite it as a key achievement in your review of your year in 2013/14”, she said: “That was at the time. It’s now that I haven’t remembered it.”

She said she imagines the reason she had shared this in her report to the Post Office chair because it was considered inappropriate for that statement on the Post Office IT system to be listed under a section in the Royal Mail prospectus, when at this stage “we believed there weren’t” problems with Horizon and “was not seen to be something helpful because it could have been picked up and misinterpreted”.

Barrister Tim Moloney has made good on his suggestion that he may be able to provide evidence contrasting with Paula Vennells’ recollections.

Ms Vennells was shown an email sent to her shortly after the legal advice circulated to Post Office staff in 2011, in which the subject line had been changed to read “legally privileged and confidential” – just as the note had advised in a bid to keep criticism of the Post Office in correspondence legally privileged.

Ms Vennells can be seen discussing the legal note in that email chain, having told the inquiry minutes earlier that she did not believe she had seen it.

The inquiry is being shown communication circulated within the Post Office warning employees to be careful when creating documents that could be called upon as evidence in litigation threatened by four ex-subpostmasters in 2011.

The email states that it will be possible in some circumstances to claim legal privilege over such documents, advising a number of steps advising how best to ensure this will be possible.

Asked whether she saw this advice, Paula Vennells said: “I don’t believe I did – unless you can take me to something that shows that.”

Barrister Tim Moloney says: “I might be able to.”

Proceedings are back under way after a break for lunch, with barrister Tim Moloney KC now questioning Paula Vennells.

Letters before claim from four former subpostmasters received in August 2011 by the Post Office were perceived as a potential class action and could have cost the company a lot of money and been highly damaging reputationally, Ms Vennells agreed.

Former subpostmaster Lee Castleton said he wishes Paula Vennells would have recognised a decade ago that what happened to him and his Post Office colleagues was “unforgivable”.

The former Post Office chief executive admitted the business’ treatment of Mr Castleton, who was made bankrupt after he lost his legal battle with the company, was “unforgivable”, on her third day of her evidence to the Horizon IT inquiry.

Asked how he felt about her comments, Mr Castleton told the PA news agency during a break from the hearing: “It’s a different world for me now. It’s 20 years on and we have had to fight so hard.

“I just wish she would have recognised that in 2013 – it would have made such a difference to a lot of people. It would have been so much better for everybody had the Post Office not done what they had done. There have been so many people punished for nothing.”

Asked if he thought Ms Vennells’ comments on his case had been forced, he said: “Kind of. If I ever believed that it was just about me, me personally, then I probably wouldn’t be here today. But I think it has been forced and we have had to fight every step of the way, and it never needed to be like this.”

Mr Castleton said his overwhelming feeling over the course of Ms Vennells’ evidence has been sadness, adding: “This never needed to happen to anybody.”

The inquiry has now broken for lunch, and is due to resume at 2pm.