Witnesses to the Post Office investigation have shown a tendency to err on the side of caution when it comes to accusations. Pressured to name those responsible for failing to fulfill their duties, they will often struggle to recall or refuse to identify individuals.
That was no problem for Paula Vennells, the former CEO. She stated from the beginning of her testimony that her greatest failure was that she had too much trust in people who hid the whole truth from her.
When invited to ‘give us the names’ as to who was to blame, Vennells responded: ‘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 counsels , Susan Crichton and Chris Aujard and later Jane MacLeod, and the people I had worked with on a number of other very seriously important projects.”
Vennells may have hoped that her appearance might counter or at least neutralize the narrative that she was the person responsible for covering up these most egregious miscarriages of justice. Judging from the public reaction to her appearance, this hope is misplaced.
But if we take her evidence at face value, Vennells has opened up a whole new level of culpability on the part of the lawyers who advised the Post Office, after prosecutions of sub-postmasters had largely ceased.
According to her evidence, it was the lawyers who failed to indicate or share advice that the Horizon IT system and associated convictions were flawed. They were lawyers who advised against opening the floodgates by reviewing old cases, and lawyers who warned that contacting even one victim would be a “red rag to a bull.” Vennells said at one point she was reassured that “lawyers were doing what they had to do” on disclosure. They were lawyers who led the civil litigation strategy to continue defending cases until the plaintiffs ran out of money.
Indeed, it was Vennells who opposed this culture of fighting claimants: ‘It was not a policy that I put in place, and the questions I asked [general counsel] Jane [MacLeod] on two occasions were: ‘This feels completely wrong to me, what can we do? We should not be in the process of fighting in court with sub-postmasters.”’ Despite such misgivings, the trial proceeded to a catastrophic outcome.
Of course, one way Vennells could have overcome this problem of the Chinese walls between her and the Post Office lawyers was by listening to them.
The inquiry heard excruciating details of the now infamous July 2013 board meeting where Susan Crichton was due to brief members on the progress of the forensic accounting report into Horizon. Crichton remained seated outside the room (counsel Jason Beer KC described her as a ‘naughty schoolgirl’) and Vennells presented the paper instead.
Given Vennells’ complaints about being excluded from important legal advice, it might have been wise to listen to some when it was offered. However, as is often the case, this was not Vennells’ fault: instead, chairman Alice Perkins had excluded Crichton from the meeting without any input from the chief executive. Crichton was fired three months later – not necessarily a sign of a CEO who, as Vennells repeatedly claimed, had placed too much trust in her.
Even if we take her testimony at face value and acquit her of knowingly covering up the scandal, it was a staggering incompetence for her not to bang on the doors of those who did.
What Vennells’ evidence has certainly done is to draw even more attention to what the lawyers did during this period. Vennells, with a little prodding, was willing to point fingers – and regulators will certainly have taken notes.