Top judge told Vennells ‘again and again’ that Post Office case made no sense
A SENIOR judge told Post Office boss Paula Vennells that criminal charges against branch workers ‘did not make sense... again and again’, a public inquiry heard.
Former Appeal Court judge Sir Anthony Hooper said yesterday he was confident there were ‘serious miscarriages of justice’ as the Post Office continued to prosecute hundreds of subpostmasters over money supposedly missing from their tills.
He said chief executive Ms Vennells was unwavering in her contention that there was nothing wrong with Horizon, the accounting software used in branches and upon which convictions relied. It was later proven to be riddled with glitches.
Ms Vennells maintained Horizon was ‘robust’ and that ‘temptation was an issue’ for subpostmasters, despite evidence to the contrary, the public inquiry into the scandal heard yesterday.
Sir Anthony, who led the mediation scheme for subpostmasters prosecuted by the Post Office, said: ‘It didn’t make sense that reputable subpostmasters, appointed by the Post Office after an examination of their characters, would be stealing these sums of money.
‘It just never made sense. I made that point over and over again.’
The scandal saw more than 700 subpostmasters prosecuted by the Post Office for theft, fraud and false accounting between 1999 and 2015. Many were sent to jail and bankrupted, while at least four are believed to have taken their own lives.
The inquiry heard how Ms Vennells continued to stand by the 2006 case against Jo Hamilton, whose plight was depicted in the ITV New Year drama Mr Bates Vs The Post Office, which shone a fresh light on to the issue. Ms Hamilton was falsely accused of taking the money from the branch she ran in South Warnborough, Hampshire. She eventually admitted false accounting in fear of going to jail but had her conviction quashed 15 years later.
In a 2012 letter to Lord Arbuthnot, Ms Hamilton’s thenMP and who took up the subpostmasters’ cause, Ms Vennells wrote: ‘There has been no evidence to support any of the allegations and we have no reason to doubt the integrity of the [Horizon] system, which we remain confident is robust and fit for purpose.’
Lord Arbuthnot said he remained convinced of his constituent’s innocence and was so concerned about the safety of the conviction that he urged the Post Office to halt prosecutions while forensic examiner Second Sight investigated the Horizon system.
Minutes taken at a meeting between the veteran Tory politician, Post Office chairman Alice Perkins and Ms Vennells in 2012 also showed the latter raised the issue of sums of cash ‘lying about’ and whether this had tempted subpostmasters to ‘borrow’ it.
He told the inquiry: ‘Alice Perkins and Paula Vennells both raised the problem of there being lots and lots of cash lying around in unexpected places. Whether this meant that they thought that led subpostmasters into temptation and being inherently dishonest wasn’t entirely clear, but that was the issue they were raising, I think.’ Ms Vennells, chief executive of the Post Office between 2012 and 2019, was stripped of her CBE following the Horizon scandal. She is due to give evidence to the inquiry this summer.
Lord Arbuthnot said he felt that by the time he stepped down as an MP in 2015, bosses were worried about Second Sight ‘getting too close to the truth’.
Sir Wyn Williams, inquiry chairman, said it appeared the Post Office ‘had an entrenched view as to the robustness of Horizon’.
In a letter to senior Tory MP Oliver Letwin, Ms Vennells made a ‘false statement’ about courts finding in the Post Office’s favour ‘in every instance’ when prosecuting subpostmasters, the inquiry heard. Jason Beer KC, counsel to the inquiry, said: ‘It’s just not true.’
The inquiry continues.
‘Getting too close to the truth’