Vennells: ‘completely unacceptable’ that I did not know Post Office was carrying out its own prosecutionsPaula Vennells has insisted that she did not understand that the Post Office carried out its own prosecutions until 2012, several years after she joined, despite during that time there being the high profile case of Seema Misra and “collectively hundreds of prosecutions”. She said it was “completely unacceptable”.
Jason Beer KC, the counsel to the inquiry, showed her evidence she had been in a meeting in 2008 when the subject of training Post Office investigators was raised. “Who did you think was doing the investigating?” she was asked. The meeting note showed that the Post Office was recovering money from its staff. Vennells was asked who she thought was doing the recovering.
“My only explanation for that is that it had been going on for so long, that it was an accepted reality. It was a status quo when I joined,” said Vennells.
She said “I should have known and I should have asked more questions, and I and others who also did not know should have dug much more deeply into this.”
Multiple senior witnesses to the inquiry have also maintained they did not know the Post Office had a prosecutorial function.
In another passage of this morning’s sessionm, her response to the death of Martin Griffiths was questioned. The subpostmaster took his own life in 2013 while being pursued by the Post Office for debts, including a portion of money stolen during an armed robbery, and shortfalls he said were due to the Horizon IT system.
Vennells denied “trying to get on the front foot”, tasking a team to “counter the narrative” that Griffiths’s family, as well as Alan Bates, held that Griffiths had killed himself because his life was ruined by the Post Office. At one point she had to halt her testimony because she was crying.
“What I was trying to do, quite simply, it was to get the wider picture,” she said, of emails in which she raised the potential that “there were previous mental health issues, and potential family issues” involved.
The Communication Workers Union posted to social media to contrast her crying at the inquiry with a previous lack of concern, saying it was “too late” when she had “No tears when postmasters were tragically taking their own lives due to stress. No tears when postmasters were being jailed. No tears when postmasters had their whole communities turning against them.”
Beer questioned Vennells’ ability to only recall details that painted her in a better light, something which he said had been the approach of several people during the course of the inquiry.
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