THE Revd Paula Vennells said that she was “very, very sorry” for the sufferings of those affected by the Post Office Horizon IT scandal as she appeared before the independent inquiry on Wednesday.
Ms Vennells was the chief executive of the Post Office from 2012 to 2019, throughout the last years of prosecutions of sub-postmasters based on evidence from the Horizon IT system.
At the beginning of three days of questioning, Ms Vennells was being asked what she knew, and when, about problems with distant access to sub-postmasters’ IT accounts. Between 1999 and 2015, greater than 900 sub-postmasters were prosecuted based on evidence from the faulty IT system.
Ms Vennells was ordained priest in 2006, but in 2021 stepped back from her position as Non-Stipendiary Minister of Bromham with Oakley and Stagsden, in St Albans diocese (News, 30 April 2021). In January, BBC News reported that she had been considered for the position of Bishop of London in 2017 (News, 12 January).
After swearing an oath on the Bible, and pledging to reply every query put to her, Ms Vennells began her evidence session by apologising “for all [that] the sub-postmasters, and their families, have suffered”. She said that she had been “very affected” by statements made by sub-postmasters who were wrongfully convicted of stealing from the Post Office.
Asked whether she deliberately misled MPs when, in 2015, she told them that each one convictions counting on the Horizon system had been successful, Ms Vennells said that she had believed this on the time, though acknowledged that other people within the Post Office were aware of failed prosecutions.
During the afternoon session on Wednesday, Ms Vennells was confronted with a briefing paper that she had been given by staff to organize for the 2015 Select Committee meeting. This contained a firm denial of the potential for distant access, followed by concessionary answers “if pushed”. This was not a technique that she would have considered, she said.
Ms Vennells was in tears several times during her evidence session on Wednesday, when talking in regards to the impact on sub-postmasters, comparable to Martin Griffiths, who took his own life in 2013. “Sorry is an inadequate word. I’m just so sorry that Mr Griffiths will not be here today,” she said.
The inquiry was shown an email from Ms Vennells during which she responded to news of Mr Griffiths’s death. She described herself as “so so sorry”.
“Martin’s family have to be devastated,” she wrote, and offered “to talk to or to satisfy the family if we thought that may help”. The email shows Ms Vennells also asking “what background we’ve on Martin and the way/why this might need happened. I had heard but have yet to see a proper report, that there have been previous mental health issues and potential family issues.”
Asked on Wednesday whether she was asking staff to dig into Mr Griffiths’s file, Ms Vennells began to clarify that she had expected that the Post Office board would ask her such questions on the circumstances of Mr Griffiths’s death, before breaking off and saying that it “didn’t matter”, and that she “mustn’t have used those words”.
She said that she didn’t recall ever being motivated to prioritise the fame of the Post Office over alleviating the suffering of sub-postmasters, but could “see with hindsight that there are lots of examples where that’s clearly the case, since the Post Office got this very incorrect”.
Ms Vennells also said that she had not understood that the prosecutions were being brought directly by the Post Office relatively than the Crown Prosecution Service.
From 2010, Ms Vennells was a trustee of Hymns Ancient & Modern, the charity that owns the Church Times, for a full nine-year term, ending in January 2019.
