Witnesses to the Post Office inquiry showed a tendency to be cautious about guilt. When pressed to name those responsible for failing to fulfill their duties, they will often try to recall or refuse to identify individuals.
That wasn’t such a problem for Paula Vennells, the former CEO. From the beginning of her evidence, she stated that her biggest failure was to trust too much people who kept the whole truth from her.
Asked to “tell us the names” of who was to blame, Vennells pledged: “I trusted the people who gave me the information, so on the IT side Lesley Sewell and Mike Young… and on the legal side the general counsel, Susan Crichton and Chris Aujard and later Jane MacLeod and people I worked with on a number of other very important projects.’
Vennells may have hoped that her appearance might reverse, or at least neutralize, the narrative that she was the person responsible for the cover-up of this most egregious of judicial scandals. Judging by the public’s reaction to her appearance, such hope is justified.
But taking her evidence at face value, Vennells has opened up a whole new level of culpability by lawyers advising the Post Office after prosecutions of subpostmasters have largely ceased.
According to her evidence, it was lawyers who failed to point out or share advice that Horizon IT’s system and associated beliefs were flawed. They were lawyers who advised against opening the floodgates by reviewing old cases, and lawyers who warned that even contacting one victim would be “a red rag to a bull”. At one point, Vennells said she was assured that “lawyers are doing what they need to do” when it comes to disclosure. They were the lawyers who led the civil litigation strategy to continue defending cases until the plaintiffs ran out of money.
In fact, it was Vennells who spoke out against this culture of fighting applicants: “It wasn’t the policy I put in place and the questions I asked [general counsel] I do not [MacLeod] on two occasions it was, “This feels really bad, what can we do? We shouldn’t be in the process of fighting sub-post offices in court.”’ Despite these concerns, the lawsuit reached a disastrous outcome in court.
Of course, one way Vennells could have overcome this problem of Chinese walls between her and the Post Office lawyers would have been to listen to them.
The inquest heard harrowing details of the now infamous board meeting in July 2013 where Susan Crichton was to brief members on the progress of the forensic accountant’s report to Horizon. Crichton remained seated outside the room (counselor Jason Beer KC described her as a “naughty schoolgirl”) and Vennells presented the paper instead.
Given Vennells’ complaints that she was excluded from key legal advice, it may have been wise to listen to some when it was offered. However, as was so often the case, it was not Vennells’ fault: instead, chairperson Alice Perkins excluded Crichton from the meeting without any intervention from the CEO. Crichton was sacked three months later – not necessarily a sign of a chief executive who, Vennells repeatedly claimed, put too much faith in her.
Even if we take her evidence at face value and clear her of knowingly covering up the scandal, it was a stunning inability for her not to slam the door on those who were.
What Vennells evidence has certainly done is focus even more attention on what lawyers were doing during this period. Vennells was willing, with a little prodding, to point the finger – and regulators were certainly taking notes.