- Former Postmaster General Paula Vennells said she had “no one to blame” but herself
- Lawyers for junior postmasters accused her of being “crafty and self-serving”
- Activist Alan Bates said she “probably liked not having to know anything”
Disgraced former Post Office boss Paula Vennells yesterday admitted she had “no one to blame” but herself as ex-postmaster and campaigner Alan Bates dismissed her tears at the inquest, comparing her to “Cruelle de Vil trying to play Mary Poppins”.
The former chief executive of Vennells faced a barrage of criticism from lawyers for subordinate postmasters at the public inquiry.
She was accused of being “picky and self-serving”, in a “cloud of denial” and “in la-la land” after she said she did not know the full extent of the scandal when she was in charge. .
Ms Vennells – who lost her CBE earlier this year following a public backlash over her role in the scandal – wept the other day this week as she described how she “loved” the Post Office.
But her claims were dismissed as “humbug” by Edward Henry KC, representing some of the victims of the false accounting scandal at an inquest in central London.
The campaign by Alan Bates, whose fight for justice inspired the hit ITV drama Alan Bates Vs. The Post Office, Vennells was also unconvinced.
Speaking to The Telegraph, he said: “It felt like Cruella de Vil trying to play Mary Poppins.
“She probably loved the money, loved the bonuses and loved not having to know anything.
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“Her job was to say she loved the post office and she probably had that in her job description.
At the inquest, Vennells found she had been booed by sections of the hundred-strong audience after it emerged she had made disparaging remarks about post office victim Jo Hamilton.
It comes after Tim Moloney KC, representing another section of victims, pointed to an email Ms Vennells sent to senior colleagues in 2014 about a BBC One Show documentary on the Horizon software at the heart of the matter.
In it, she wrote that she was “more bored than outraged” by the show and said Mrs Hamilton – later played by Monica Dolan in ITV’s Mr Bates vs The Post Office – “lacked passion and admitted false accounting on TV”.
She turned to Mrs. Hamilton, who was sitting nearby, and said, “I regret everything I said. I regret everything I wrote.’
More than 700 post office operators were prosecuted for theft, fraud and false accounting between 1999 and 2015 after their Horizon software mistakenly created the impression that money was missing from their branches.
On the third and final day of Ms Vennells’ evidence before the inquest, lawyers representing the victims were given an hour to challenge her.
An extraordinary barbecue followed, which sometimes brought the former executive to tears.
Mr. Henry asked the sixty-five-year-old man, “There were so many forks in the road, but you always went the wrong way, didn’t you?”
Ms Vennells replied: “It was an extremely complex undertaking and I and the post office did not always get it right.”
In an apparent reference to her status as an ordained Anglican priest, Mr Henry told her: “You preach compassion but you don’t practice it.”
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After he suggested he “cannot blame anyone but you”, Ms Vennells replied: “Where I made mistakes and where I made the wrong call… where I had information and I made the wrong call, yes, of course. .’
She said she tried to contribute to the investigation “as best I could” after Mr Henry dismissed her witness statement as a “cowardly and self-serving account”.
She claimed she did not fully understand the legal and technological sides of the business and only became aware of errors in the IT system in 2013 – years after the Post Office began taking subpostmasters to court.
Ms Vennells also claimed she was unaware that Horizon’s software could be accessed remotely by other parties.
Mr Henry replied: “It’s extraordinary, isn’t it, because Cartwright King, your outside lawyers, know all about it and yet you say you don’t, the board don’t – I mean, this is la-la country, isn’t it?”
Sam Stein KC, representing another tranche of victims, accused Ms Vennells of “covering up mistakes in the Horizon scandal”.
She said: ‘There are no words to express the regret I feel.’