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

Paula Vennells has once again been questioned about her request to her husband for “less emotive” language than “bugs” to describe the flaws with Horizon.

Ms Vennells says: “I was concerned by the bugs”, to which Mr Henry interjects: “You did nothing.”

He alleged that Ms Vennells “did not heed the warning” that “these bugs could manifest themselves under unforeseen circumstances”, adding: “It was staring you in the face.”

The former chief executive said that “what I’ve said on this so far is all I knew at the time ... and I repeat again, we should have said ‘bugs’”.

Pressed that she has “no one to blame but yourself”, Ms Vennells continued: “Absolutely. Where I made mistakes and made the wrong calls, whether or not in those cases where I didn’t have information that’s more difficult, but where I had information and I made the wrong calls, yes of course.”

Put to her that she is “responsible for her own downfall”, Ms Vennells said she had lost all employment since the Court of Appeal judgement and that since that moment she has only worked on this inquiry, which has been “a full-time job” for the past year.

“I have avoided talking to the press, perhaps to my own detriment, because all the way through I have put this first.”

Things are off to a fiery start.

“You exercised power with no thought for the consequences of your actions despite those consequences staring you in the face,” says Ed Henry KC.

Ms Vennells discusses the mediation scheme, saying: “I believed we were doing the right things and clearly that was not always the case”, before conceding: “There are no words I can find today that will make the sorrow and what people have gone through any better.”

Mr Henry retorts: “That’s humbug. You preach compassion but you don’t practice it.” He notes that Lee Castleton was “closed out of the mediation process” because he was an “illustrious scalp” that could be used in the Group Litigation Order.

Ms Vennells says she was not personally involved in which cases were involved in the mediation scheme, but admits that what happened to Mr Castleton was “unforgivable”.

The inquiry is under way once again.

“There were so many forks in the road, but you always took the wrong path, didn’t you?” Ed Henry KC begins by asking Paula Vennells, who admits: “The Post Office and I didn’t always take the right path, I’m very clear about that.”

Paula Vennells did not accept yesterday that finding out there were bugs in the Horizon IT system was “world changing information”.

Counsel to the inquiry Jason Beer KC said: “You tell us time and time again in your witness statement that up until May 2013 you had been told time and time again that there were no bugs in Horizon”, to which Ms Vennells replied: “Yes.”

Mr Beer asked: “Isn’t this world changing information for you?”

Ms Vennells accepted it was “information that changed” but later added, when asked the same question: “Sorry what I’m not getting across clearly enough was that this was important but I was reassured at the same time that these bugs had been dealt with.”

The barrister asked: “Is that reassurance anywhere in writing or is it one of these corridor conversations?”

Ms Vennells said: “I think it is in writing in the Second Sight interim report.”

Paula Vennells has arrived at Aldwych House for her third and final day of testimony at the Post Office inquiry.

Members of the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance demonstrated outside the building on Friday morning, holding up a banner listing their demands for a full statutory inquiry, full recompense for the scandal’s victims, and for the individuals responsible to be identified and held to account.

A former subpostmaster has said Paula Vennells appears to have been “very well drilled by her legal team” ahead of her inquiry testimony.

Former sub-postmaster Damian Owen told Sky News: “I think she’s been very well drilled by her legal team to not say anything, not remember anything.

“Even when she’s caught out in something that she might have said, doesn’t remember, but then again they produce a document to prove that she’s not only heard it but also signed that she’s read it, then she’ll just have a little pause or a cry and they know then that they have to move on because they are encroaching on the boundary of self-incrimination.”

Paula Vennells said it was a “goal” of hers that all press “should be scoured for negative comment and refuted” in an email she sent in 2011.

The Horizon inquiry heard she made the comments after she was notified about a Private Eye article on the Horizon IT system and criticism from subpostmasters.

In September 2011, Ms Vennells wrote: “We need to be front foot and counter anything that has a reputational impact. It’s a goal of mine that all press even local press (perhaps esp local press), should be scoured for negative comment and refuted.”

Giving evidence on Thursday, Ms Vennells said: “This was a general ambition of mine.

“The Post Office’s reputation and its brand was built every single day in Post Offices across the country by the people who worked so hard serving customers, many of whom were particularly vulnerable people, and so it was important to me that where the Post Office was misrepresented that that should be corrected, and especially at a local level because the local Post Offices were so important to people.”

Asked if that was her “general instruction” to the business to contest all and any negative comments, Ms Vennells said: “It was an ambition, well, only if they were inaccurate.”

“In the Post Office’s view?” counsel to the inquiry Jason Beer KC asked. “In the Post Office’s view, yes,” Ms Vennells said.

Paula Vennells has admitted attempting to “manipulate language” when she sought to make Horizon bugs sound “non-emotive”.

In a 2013 email to then-communications chief Mark Davies, Ms Vennells wrote: “My engineer/computer literate husband sent the following reply to the question: ‘What is a non-emotive word for computer bugs, glitches, defects that happen as a matter of course?

“Answer: Exception or anomaly. You can also say conditional Davies exception/anomaly which only manifests itself under unforeseen circumstances xx.”

Mr Davies replied: “I like exception v much.”

The former Post Office boss told the inquiry on Thursday that she should “not have engaged” with the conversation, describing her words as “wrong and stupid”. Inquiry counsel Julian Blake previously said the language was “absolutely Orwellian”.

Ex-Post Office boss Paula Vennells has admitted it was “possibly” her hope that a mediation scheme with subpostmasters would “minimise compensation”.

Ms Vennells accepted that an email she sent in August 2013 which said “the hope of mediation was to avoid or minimise compensation” sounded like subpostmasters were only welcome on the scheme if they agreed to receive a “pat on the head and a token payment”.

She told the inquiry on Thursday that she did not believe the mediation scheme, set up for people who believed they had been wrongly prosecuted by the Post Office, was for paying out “substantial figures”.

In an email from August 2013 to Post Office lawyer Susan Crichton, Ms Vennells wrote: “When we discussed this, the hope of mediation was to avoid or minimise compensation.”

After a lengthy discussion about the email, counsel to the inquiry Jason Beer KC said: “Why did you write an email that says ‘when we discussed this the hope of mediation was to avoid or minimise compensation’?”

Ms Vennells replied: “Because that was what we discussed.”

Mr Beer continued: “Right, good - that was easy then, wasn’t it?”

The former Post Office boss said: “But not as the purpose of doing it.”

Mr Beer then said: “A hope?”

Ms Vennells said: “Possibly, yes.”