Actor, who played campaigner Alan Bates in TV drama, calls Horizon scandal a ‘Hitchcockian nightmare’ at Hay festival
The post office operators prosecuted in the Post Office Horizon scandal have “extraordinary dignity” after living 20 years in a “Hitchcockian nightmare”, according to actor Toby Jones.
Jones played Alan Bates, a former post office operator and leading campaigner for justice for staff wrongly blamed for accounting shortfalls caused by faulty software, in the ITV drama that put the scandal back in the spotlight.
Exclusive: Investigation will dig into potential perjury offences and perverting the course of justice by senior leaders and Fujitsu
Police are planning to deploy 80 detectives for their criminal inquiry into the Post Office scandal, the Guardian has learned, but victims will face a long wait to discover if charges will follow.
The investigation will examine potential offences of perjury, and perverting the course of justice by Post Office senior leaders as well as the tech company Fujitsu.
Readers respond to the testimony of Paula Vennells, former managing director of Post Office Limited, at the inquiry into the failings of its Horizon IT system
Re your editorial on Paula Vennells (24 May), one of the main themes of the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry has been the complete lack of evidence of competence, curiosity or compassion in the leadership team; it is a theme that has often been seen in public inquiries in recent years. It is clear that the UK is infected with leadership teams staffed by people who are there not due to any sort of competence or merit, but because that’s just what their sort of people do.
The overriding characteristics of these privately educated, overpaid and arrogant groups of people are their indifference to the real-life consequences of their actions for ordinary hard-working people, their intrinsic belief that their sort are trustworthy and credible, unlike the little people, and their bewilderment at the idea that they should be held accountable.
Royal assent to be given to law overturning convictions of branch operators accrued over 22 years in England and Wales
Hundreds of post office operators convicted on charges including false accounting, theft and fraud are set to be exonerated by an unprecedented act of parliament.
The moment will be marked by the release of an open letter to all the affected operators, followed by individual letters containing assurances that their names will be removed from police databases, according to the government.
The Post Office boss’s self-serving behaviour was plain to see. But she was not the only one
Paula Vennells’s appearance at the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry was always going to be a big moment, even if it was overshadowed this week by Rishi Sunak’s decision to call an election. She was the chief executive of the government-owned business from 2012 to 2019, in charge when forensic accountants were hired to look into claims that subpostmasters had been wrongly blamed for errors caused by software – and when that investigation was terminated.
She was the boss when Alan Bates and more than 500 other subpostmasters won £58m in compensation. Since January, when ITV screened its remarkable Mr Bates vs The Post Office drama, Ms Vennells – who is also a vicar – has become the face of a scandal in which hundreds of people were wrongly prosecuted and 236 sent to prison.
There were times during Horizon inquiry when victims of scandal struggled to keep composure as former chief executive pleaded ignorance
It was difficult for the victims attending the public inquiry into the Horizon scandal on the fifth floor of Aldwych House in central London to demur from the conclusion of Moya Greene, a former chief executive of Royal Mail and Paula Vennells’ boss until the Post Office split off in 2012.
“I think you knew,” Greene had written to Vennells in January, according to a text message published by the inquiry this week.
Former boss claims IT executives and legal counsels let her down and tells inquiry she ‘loved the Post Office’
Paula Vennells, the former Post Office chief executive, has named five executives who she said were to blame for the Horizon scandal, including a missing IT expert and a former in-house lawyer who has refused to appear at the public inquiry.
During a third day of tearful evidence in front of the inquiry, Vennells denied she had given “craven and self-serving” testimony but readily provided the names of those she claimed had let her down.
Wyn Williams, the chair, has confirmed the timetable for day. Edward Henry KC will have questions for an hour, followed by Sam Stein KC for an hour. They both represent groups of victims of the scandal.
Then before lunch there will be questions from legal teams representing the National Federation of Subpostmasters and an individual, Susan Sinclair.
The former Post Office boss Paula Vennells killed a review that would have exposed the Horizon IT scandal more than 10 years ago after being told it would make “front-page news” but insisted she was not part of a cover-up.
During a second day of giving evidence at the public inquiry into the scandal, Vennells, who led the Post Office for nine years, said a different decision could have avoided a “lost decade” for persecuted branch operators.
Paula Vennells has begun giving her second day of testimony at the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry in London. She will be questioned again by lead counsel to the inquiry Jason Beer KC. The inquiry is presided over by chair Wyn Williams.
You can watch the inquiry on this live blog. The video feed produced by the inquiry has a three minute delay on it. Nearly 800 pages of Vennells’ written witness statement have also been published. Her two statements can be found here and here.
Ten years after making her last public comments, Paula Vennells, who joined the Post Office in 2007 and held the position of chief executive between 2012 and 2019, has given evidence at a public inquiry looking to provide justice to the thousands of people whose lives were ruined in the Horizon scandal. Between 1999 and 2015, hundreds of Post Office branch operators were prosecuted on the basis of the faulty accounting software, and thousands more were bankrupted or forced to pay back money.
As the former Post Office CEO faced the inquiry and her victims, she said ‘sorry’ a lot. About what? It was never really clear
The former Post Office CEO Paula Vennells would like the victims of the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British legal history to know that she hasn’t actually done anything deliberately wrong, and that she honestly doesn’t understand how all this has happened. I guess she’s asking all the jailed and wrongly convicted subpostmasters to try to imagine being swept up in a Kafkaesque nightmare of undue blame. So … please add the murder of irony to her notional future charge sheet.
To Aldwych House in London, then, where Paula produced tears in time for the lunchtime bulletins and reprised them for the section in which her emails seemingly found her on a fishing expedition for other “contributory factors” that might have caused an appallingly persecuted subpostmaster to take his own life. More on that horror show later. For now, let’s just say Paula Vennells now “can’t recall” more about the Post Office than you’d expect a tenuously engaged CEO on 700 grand a year ever to have known.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist.
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
The former Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells repeatedly broke down in tears as she told a public inquiry that she had been misled by her staff about the safety of the prosecutions of branch operators.
Under questioning from Jason Beer KC, the inquiry’s lead counsel, about her knowledge of the faults in the Horizon IT system, which led to hundreds of people being wrongly persecuted over missing funds, Vennells claimed: “I was too trusting.”
Former chief executive tells the inquiry she did not realise Post Office was carrying out prosecutions itself until 2012
Paula Vennells has made an opening statement at the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry where she apologised to the victims of the scandal and offered to stand outside the old Post Office of one of the victims with them to explain to people what happened and what they went through. She said she had been deeply affected by victim impact statements heard by the inquiry.
She said:
I would just like to say, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to do this, how sorry I am for all that subpostmasters and their families and others who suffered as a result of all of the matters that the inquiry has been looking into for so long.
I followed and listened to all of the human impact statements, and I was very affected by them. I remember listening to one subpostmaster whose name I noted, who said that he would like somebody to go and stand outside his old Post Office with him so he could tell them exactly what he’d been through. I would do that.
Former chief executive is to give evidence at inquiry into Horizon IT scandal this week
It is a moment wrongly convicted post office operators have waited years for. From Wednesday the former Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells will appear before the long-running inquiry into how hundreds were pursued in the courts, fined and jailed over accounting shortfalls that were actually the fault of the Horizon IT system.
Vennells, who held the top job between 2012 and 2019, has become the highest-profile face of the scandal since the ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office galvanised public opinion when it was screened in January – despite her keeping a low public profile in the past decade.
The former chief executive and archbishop’s confidant appears at the Horizon IT inquiry this week to explain her role in the affair that wrecked the lives of so many of her staff
When Paula Vennells was appointed chief executive of the Post Office in 2012, it felt like a true meeting of minds. The Post Office had long prided itself as the most trusted brand in Britain and here was a woman who, unusually among chief executives, was unashamed in emphasising, above all else, her personal ethical values.
Vennells was a committed Christian, an ordained minister, who gave sermons at her local parish church, in Bromham, Bedfordshire. A confidant of the archbishop of Canterbury (Justin Welby reportedly supported her – unsuccessful – candidature to become bishop of London in 2017) she had no hesitation, in her seven years as head of the 350-year-old institution, in moralising about the fundamentals of her leadership, while overseeing a billion-pound revamp of Post Office operations. As the keynote speaker for a Faith in Business forum in 2016, Vennells referenced the wisdom of King Solomon, in exercising her responsibilities as CEO (for which she was paid about £5m during her tenure): “Now, Lord my God … give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong … in administering justice …”
Finance chief gives evidence on Paula Vennells and says company looked like ‘corporate bullies’ in how it dealt with branch operators
The former Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells did not believe there had been miscarriages of justice, the Horizon inquiry has heard, as the current finance boss said the company looked like “corporate bullies” in the way it dealt with branch operators.
Alisdair Cameron, the Post Office chief financial officer who joined the board in 2015, told the inquiry on Friday that Vennells had been “clear in her conviction” that nothing had gone wrong with Horizon.
Her inquiry appearance has been long awaited. So far, no official has been held accountable for the ruining of so many lives
Strange to think the northern lights have been glimpsed in public more frequently over the past few years than the former Post Office CEO Paula Vennells. I didn’t see the northern lights last week, but I will see Vennells close up next week, when – at very, very long last – she presents herself before the public inquiry into the Horizon scandal.
Polite notice: if your attention has drifted slightly after the fireworks sparked by ITV’s sensational drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office earlier this year, next week is the time to return with laser-like focus to this story. Post Office is once again box office – and remember, NOT ONE PERSON has yet been held accountable for what happened. Alan Bates has just rejected his second “derisory” offer of government compensation.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
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