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

Hundreds of subpostmasters caught up in the Post Office Horizon scandal will have their names cleared on Friday, a minister has said – after parliament backed legislation to quash their convictions.

The Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Bill will receive royal assent on the final sitting day of parliament before it halts its business ahead of the upcoming general election.

Speaking as MPs accepted Lords amendments to the Bill, business minister Kevin Hollinrake told the Commons: “It’s an historic day because convictions will, as a result of this legislation, be overturned on royal assent – and with His Majesty’s agreement that means they will be overturned tomorrow.”

The Bill will quash convictions of theft, fraud, false accounting and other offences for subpostmasters who have suffered as a consequence of the Horizon scandal, and relevant cautions will be deleted from records – affecting those who were prosecuted from 1996 to 2018.

Those whose convictions are quashed will then be eligible to receive compensation payments from the Horizon Convictions Redress Scheme, which will be set up after the legislation is passed.

The Scottish Parliament will pass its own law to a similar effect north of the border, because of Scotland’s distinct legal system.

Ex-Post Office boss Paula Vennells followed a “grossly improper” suggestion to not review all subpostmaster prosecutions after a PR adviser said it would end up “front page news”, the Horizon IT inquiry heard on Thursday.

The public gallery at the inquiry, made up of mainly subpostmasters, groaned loudly after Ms Vennells said she did not remember if she took the “advice of the PR guy” not to review past prosecutions.

The probe was shown an email exchange between Ms Vennells and then director of communications Mark Davies in July 2013 in which she said she would “take your steer” after he said looking at all past cases would be “in media terms… very high profile”.

Ms Vennells agreed with the suggestion by inquiry lead counsel Jason Beer KC that, had the Post Office acted to review all prosecutions of false accounting, it “may well have” avoided the “lost decade” until miscarriages of justice involving subpostmasters were discovered.

Josh Payne has the full report:

Ex-Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells is set for her third and final day of evidence – unless she is recalled to testify again to the inquiry at a later date.

With the inquiry’s lead counsel Jason Beer KC having finished his questions, Paula Vennells will today face a grilling from lawyers on behalf of subpostmasters.

Such showdowns with other Post Office bosses earlier in the inquiry have proved to be combustible bouts.

The former boss has already faced a bruising two days this week, breaking down in tears multiple times on Wednesday as she apologised to subpostmasters and was quizzed on her reaction to the death of former subpostmaster Martin Griffiths.

And on Thursday, there were audible groans from the public gallery after emails showed Ms Vennells had appeared to suggest that “managing the media” was a priority over reviewing Horizon cases.

Good morning, and thanks for joining us on our Post Office inquiry blog, where we’ll be bringing you live updates on Paula Vennells third and final day of testimony.

Paula Vennells has said it was “completely unfair” of the Post Office to maintain that there were no systemic errors in Horizon.

Counsel to the inquiry Jason Beer KC asked if a “frequent refrain” of the Post Office in 2014 was that there were no systemic errors in Horizon.

Ms Vennells replied: “It was, and it was wrong ... it was completely unfair to use in the business.”

Counsel to the inquiry Jason Beer KC asked Paula Vennells why a number of “false statements” or “folklore” about Horizon were circulating within the Post Office.

Mr Beer put to her that the Post Office falsely believed that every time it went to court it won, that there were no faults in Horizon and that there was no remote access for Fujitsu. Ms Vennells responded: “At the time they were not considered to be false statements. The source of those statements, I can’t recall clearly, but on something like this the only possible source of this statement would have been through the Post Office legal team.

“So the answer for all of them would be to look for where the expertise sat within the organisation as to the genesis of what we now know are false statements.”

Mr Beer asked if it is a “serious issue” if “folklore develops” which has “no foundation in fact”.

Ms Vennells said: “I agree.”

Mr Beer also asked if it says something about the culture of the Post Office if “such folklore developed or was perpetuated and nobody checked the real facts?”

Ms Vennells replied: “That’s a difficult question to answer because in hindsight it is completely valid. At the time, certainly where I was concerned, I believed that I was getting information from the people who were employed to give me the best advice because of their expertise. I didn’t believe that any of those things were folklore at all.”

Six more former Post Office workers have had their convictions for offences including theft and fraud quashed amid the Horizon IT scandal, lawyers have said.

One of the six, Sushma Blaggan, attended the nearby inquiry shortly after her theft conviction from 2004 was quashed to see former Post Office boss Paula Vennells give evidence.

Assad Alli, Marion Chapman, Thomas Mulhall, Kimberly Connors and Seema Rahman also had their convictions overturned on Wednesday at a Southwark Crown Court hearing which took place at the Royal Courts of Justice in central London.

Paula Vennells has been confronted with a damning text from the former chief executive of the Royal Mail suggesting she knew about flaws in the Horizon IT system used by the Post Office.

“I think you knew,” the ex-Post Office boss was told by Canadian-born Moya Greene, who was in charge of the Royal Mail for eight years.

Ms Vennells replied, telling Ms Greene: “No Moya, that isn’t the case.”

But, in an exchange of messages shown to the official Post Office Horizon IT inquiry, Ms Greene told Ms Vennells she could no longer support her “after what I have learned”.

Archie Mitchell reports:

Paula Vennells said she “did not register” a briefing given before she gave evidence to the select committee which said that if she was pushed further when being questioned she could say there was “functionality” in Horizon for the Post Office or Fujitsu to edit, manipulate or remove transaction data once it has been recorded in a branch’s accounts.

She added that she “did not reach a conclusion” that meant she was giving “inaccurate information to the select committee”.