Post Office inquiry: Paula Vennells gives evidence on Horizon IT scandal - what did disgraced ex-CEO say?

Disgraced ex-Post Office chief Paula Vennells has told the inquiry that she allowed the Horizon IT scandal to grow as she was “too trusting”.

The former CEO is giving evidence to the statutory inquiry for the next three days, which is the first time she’s spoken publicly about the scandal for almost a decade. She started by apologising to “all that sub-postmasters and families… have suffered” and then said one of her issues was that she was “too trusting”.

This may ring on deaf ears to the more than 900 sub-postmasters who were given criminal convictions after faulty Fujitsu accounting software made it appear as though money was missing from their shops. Many more were left destitute, losing their homes and livelihoods, as the Post Office relentlessly pursued them, continually claiming there were no issues with its computer system. 

The scandal, described as the UK's “biggest miscarriage of justice”, was highlighted by the ITV drama series called Mr Bates vs the Post Office. Tragically, at least four sub-postmasters have committed suicide in the midst of battling the Post Office.

Ahead of Vennells’ evidence, former sub-postmaster and campaigner Chris Head told NationalWorld: “We just need her to tell the truth. It is only right we hear her side of the story.” The 65-year-old ordained priest was Post Office boss from 2012 to 2019 – a time period in which the company was beginning to have to deal with the fall-out of potential wrongful subpostmaster convictions.

The has been urged by the scandal’s victims to tell the truth in the lead-up to her evidence and “come clean” with any personal wrongdoings. The probe previously heard Vennells had hoped that there would not be an independent inquiry – even having her number blocked by ex-head of IT Lesley Sewell after seeking her help to avoid one.

Just hours before her evidence, an email surfaced which showed Vennells describe potential wrongful convictions of sub-postmasters as “very disturbing” more than a year before the company halted prosecutions. For years afterwards, the Post Office continued to wrongly insist that the Fujitsu software, which showed the sub-postmasters’ balances, could not be altered externally.

What has Paula Vennells said?

Opening her evidence at the Post Office inquiry, Vennells apologised to sub-postmasters and their families. 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 sub-postmasters and their families and others have suffered as a result of all of the matters that the inquiry is looking into. I followed and listened to all of the human impact statements and I was very affected by them.”

She was first asked by counsel to the inquiry, Jason Beer KC, if she was “the unluckiest CEO in the United Kingdom?” Vennells responded by saying: “One of my reflections of all of this – I was too trusting. I did probe and I did ask questions and I’m disappointed where information wasn’t shared and it has been a very important time for me… to plug some of those gaps.”

She added that she had “no sense that there was any conspiracy at all” at the Post Office to cover up or deny her information. Ms Vennells said “one of the biggest challenges” has been “realising how much went on at an individual postmaster level”.

She said: “One of the biggest challenges as I have been going through all of this documentation is realising how much went on at an individual postmaster level. When a bug affected a large number of post offices… they were raised.

“But if a single subpostmaster made a call X number of times to a service centre, it wouldn’t have been picked up and I think from a governance point of view there is a very important lesson around the issue of the institution and the individual.

“How does somebody as a chief executive of an institution that is large and complex have sight to what happens to an individual if they are affected by a bug?”

Asked if she did not believe there was a conspiracy to deny her information but rather that issues came out of the way the company was organised and structured, Ms Vennells said: “I think in the majority of cases yes that is true.”

Asked who was responsible for organising and structuring the company, she said: “As CEO you are accountable for everything. You have experts to report to you.”

Ms Vennells also said she regrets that concerns raised by a former subpostmaster “took too long to address”. In 2015, Tim McCormack wrote to Ms Vennells warning her that he had “clear and unquestionable evidence of an intermittent bug in Horizon that can and does cause thousands of pounds in losses to subpostmasters”.

Asked what she did after receiving this, Ms Vennells said: “I don’t recall.” Amid gasps from those in the room, she went on: “Genuinely, I don’t recall.” She later added: “In hindsight I think he was right and I regret that the matters he was raising took too long to address.”

Paula Vennells said she “regrets” using the word “noise” in association with complaints launched by subpostmasters about the Horizon IT system. Asked at the inquiry into the scandal if “noise” was what complaints were seen as at the top end of the Post Office, Ms Vennells said: “No, and I’m sorry it is not a good word but you have also seen how I have responded personally to other individual matters. It is a word I regret using.”

Asked if it reflected the “workings of the minds” of those at the top of the business, Ms Vennells said: “I think it reflects a wrong understanding yes that people believed that Horizon worked and this is me deploying a word that was unwise. I did not in any way mean that I personally did not take seriously issues when they got to me.”

This story will be updated as Paula Vennells gives her evidence.

Ralph Blackburn is NationalWorld’s politics editor based in Westminster, where he gets special access to Parliament, MPs and government briefings. If you liked this article you can follow Ralph on X (Twitter) here and sign up to his free weekly newsletter Politics Uncovered, which brings you the latest analysis and gossip from Westminster every Sunday morning.