The Post Office Scandal

Really Bob is that all you've got???

The first is a BOARD MEMBER of the POST OFFICE asking a question to the POST OFFICES Head of Legal (their General Council) (the woman who has famously REFUSED to attended to give evidence to the inquiry).

The bloke IS the government's representative on the POST OFFICE BOARD, that is true - but his knowledge of what the POST OFFICE is doing/has done, is from what has been presented to the board.

Unless you missed it completely - and I have put it on a plate for you to see for yourself - Jason Beer (who you have lauded profusely up to know and he fully deserves it) has made it blindingly obvious to the inquiry's Chair, Wyn Williams, that the POST OFFICIES EXECUTIVE TEAM led by Vennells has NOT presented to the POST OFFICES BOARD with anything like the full extent of the truth as to what has actually been going on.

I fully expect Williams will state this to be one of the key failings in his findings and the chief exacerbating factor that prolonged the scandal for years to the SPMs.

If you want a comparison of sorts, then think of how BWFC owner Saint Eddie Davies, allowed BWFC's Board (Gartside) to basically fuck up the company and land Davies with being £200m out of pocket at the end of it.

I'm not suggesting that Gartside did anything deceitful though but Garside was the link to the owner and kept Eddie informed of the Boards decisions in just the same way as Cooper was the representative of the owner (the government) and kept the government informed of what matters the post office board were dealing with - and obviously he (and therefore the government) where completely unaware of the scandal as Vennells hid all the 'dirty linen' away from them (the POL board) by means of 'gatekeeping'.

Your second link is not even relevant to the scandal as such but does show that the POST OFFICE BOARD in their complete ignorance as to what had actually been going on for years behind their backs because Vennells et al had kept them in the dark, had genuinely thought they had been doing a good job!


Come on Bob, surely you've got something more substantial than these two sticks of limp rhubarb to have built your conspiracy theory of a deep state cover-up upon?

For the first time 'conspiracy theory' has been implied at the inquiry!!!

11:00
Vennells accused of 'keeping the lid' on Second Sight report

Edward Henry KC next focuses on July 2013, when there was to be the privatisation of Royal Mail was to be announced, as well as the publication of the Second Sight interim report.

Henry puts to Vennells that she was given the job of "keep[ing] the lid on this", adding that it would have been politically damaging both to the Post Office and to the privatisation plans.

Vennells responds that she had no role in the privatisation, adding that the inquiry has seen many conversations and documents showing that she hadn't drawn a link with privatisation.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-69056259



Basically Henry is suggesting that the government was intending to sell off Royal Mail (and thus split off the Post Office to make it separate from the Royal Mail to do so).

The issue was that Royal Mail, prior to POL being split from it, was the prosecutor of Post Office cases and therefore still held a 'legacy' responsibility for these cases (before the POL took on their prosecutions themselves).

The fly in the ointment being that Gareth Jenkins (the unsafe witness) testified under a 'Royal Mail' prosecution, meaning that all the relevant cases THEY prosecuted, THEY (and not POL) would be liable for claims on them from the now 'unsafe cases' - and this would undoubtable impact negatively on the Royal Mail sell-off.

The inference therefore being that agent Vennells was deliberately covertly and actively working on behalf of the deep state government to supress this knowledge.


Great conspiracy theory put forward by Edward Henry KC who claimed Vennells was living in La La Land.

Anyway as usual I look forward to the proof...

...because Bob has come up with nothing so far...

Vennells testimony is over.

I'm intrigued to know more about this 'conspiracy' particularly that Tim Moloney KC has now tied in Richard Callard, the government representative on the Post Office board (being the Shareholder Executive or Shex for short) as having involvement with the removal of a reference to Horizon (I think it was?) on the intended Royal Mail ('sell off') prospectus.

Edward Henry had earlier brought the inquiries attention to Vennells emailing Alice Perkins (Chair of POL) saying that she had "earned her corn" by having it removed and Tim Moloney linking Callard's earlier failed attempt remove it - necessitating Vennells to step up and do so.

Moloney also provided evidence of Vennells stating it was one of her achievements that year to have done so, on what I imagine to be some sort of end of year corporate report (on which their bonuses are rewarded on?).

By providing such evidence Moloney seemed to make a complete mockery of Vennells claims she gave first to first Henry and then (initially) to Moloney that she had little to no memory of stepping in to change the prospectus that she only saw "at the last moment" before Moloney sprang his trap.

Moloney then went on again lead her into a second trap about remarks Mark Davis (POL PR Head) made to the BBC, which she said to the inquiry she was personally appalled over, and that she knew at once he should not have said them and that she would NEVER have used such words - by Moloney then showing a memo she sent after just after the remarks had been said, praising Davis for saying them!!!


It won't be a major shock to me if Wyn Williams classifies Vennells as unreliable witness in his inquiry findings.

The Inquiry now has a weeks break and a chance to question Perkins and Callard (and others?) as to what part they played in all this and how much the government did indeed have their hands all over this (or not) in any way, shape or form?

Given how long this catastrophe went on for it's not possible to blame any one government or even party. Personally I think there was a lot of fingers in the ears to avoid hearing about the problems and even more butt covering by PO management who in all likelihood did NOT properly inform ministers about the problems with the IT system until they were actually forced to by outside events, most notably the revelations in the papers and whistleblowers who finally found not just the courage to speak but an audience willing to listen. 

If I have any criticism of the government at all on this issue it's the fact they were very slow to grasp and then react once the problems became apparent to them but this is hardly the first time that's happened. 

While I have no time for Sunak and his cabinet on most things I do feel it's unfair to try and blame them alone for the lack of a proper inquiry until now. I do however firmly believe there are several people in the upper echelons of the post office and at horizon who should be criminally charged with perverting the course of justice. They DID know and deliberately chose to cover it up even as hundreds if not thousands of innocent people were convicted of entirely non existent crimes based on a totally flawed system.

Its clear that my former SPM client was right about the computer system, right about Post Office management and right about the NFSP.  My offer to him of help at the time was made more in the sense of moral support than anything practical. I am quite sure that he knew that letters to MPs or to Post Office management would be futile and more likely to increase the risk of the Post Office closing down his SPO.

I have learned, from recent inquiries I have made, that my former client's son did get to take over the business but it was very short-lived and was closed down within a couple of years. Father and son seemed to me to be very close. The SPM's wife had died of cancer about 25 years previously quite possibly whilst their son was still at school.

The only thing government and politicians take note of is the media and they spare no effort in trying to manage that. POL had its own spin doctor in Jack Straw's former assistant, Mark R Davies. Davies  got off far too lightly at the Inquiry.
 
Its half-term next week and a chance to catch up with a few essential tasks but I'm sure there's still a lot to look forward to and quite a bit more to emerge from this Inquiry.

Bob, you said you knew about this from the very start 1998/99 but the 'Post Office' was part of the Royal Mail organisation and did not split from it until 2012 - a decade or so later.

Meaning that any 'cover-up' up to that point MUST have been known by the Royal Mail Board - agreed?

Moya Greene was appointed Chief Executive-designate of Royal Mail (replacing Adam Crozier in July, 2010).

It's pretty clear from Moya's text to Vennells in January of this year that she had no idea of any potential cover-up and states herself that her ongoing support to Vennells until that point had been detrimental to herself.



If as you continue to infer that 'deep state TPTB "had there hands all over this from the very beginning" that Greene MUST have been in on the cover-up too - how could the person who brought the Royal Mail to privatisation, which had prosecuted SPM's up to the split in April 2012 and were based on the unsafe testimony of the expert witness and thus were legally and financially responsible for these 'legacy' case?

Clearly Greene must therefore be either an exceptionally good liar or she believed what she was being told by Vennells (and no doubt her own Royal Mail legal team that had done the prosecutions to that point) that Horizon was 'robust'.

If therefore the Royal Mail Board wasn't aware of an on-going scandal and were in the process of an ongoing cover-up, then how would the government have known from the very beginning, in order to have their hands all over it???

It simply can't have.

From what I understand from the inquiry to date, the first time anyone became truly aware that something was very wrong, was dated Monday 15th July 2013, when the first Clarke report was written based on what Gethin Jenkins himself disclosed to Second Sight's independent forensic examination of the Horizon system - namely that there were 'bugs in the system' and remote access was possible and in use.

https://www.postofficescandal.uk/post/the-first-clarke-advice/

(There was also a slightly earlier disclosure in the Helen Rose report).


The majority of Royal mail was sold off on 11th October, 2013.

There was a three month window from when the Jenkins 'issue' was first known about and the sell off of Royal Mail.

NOTE the date of the Clarke Report and the date (below) of when Crichton was stopped from reporting to the PO Board.



Post Office lawyer ‘made to sit outside board meeting like a naughty schoolgirl’

A top Post Office lawyer was made to sit outside a board meeting “like a naughty schoolgirl” when an independent review into the Horizon IT system was discussed, an inquiry has heard.

The company’s former chief executive, Paula Vennells, presented former general counsel Susan Crichton’s board paper on an interim report into the computer system at the meeting on Tuesday 16th July 2013, the Horizon IT inquiry was told.

In the report, forensic accountants Second Sight identified bugs that raised concerns over the reliability of Horizon data used to prosecute subpostmasters.

Ms Crichton claimed when she gave evidence to the inquiry that she spoke to Ms Vennells before the meeting to say that in her view there would be many successful claims against the Post Office arising from past wrongful prosecutions.

Ms Vennells said she had “no recollection of that whatsoever”.

She agreed it would be “very significant information”.

“I don’t recall that at all, my recollection is what is in her paper which is that the lawyers thought it would be about 5% of the cases they had looked at,” Ms Vennells told the inquiry.

Counsel to the inquiry Jason Beer KC asked the former chief executive: “If she had told you that, that would be about the last thing you wanted to hear wouldn’t it?”

Ms Vennells replied: “No, not at all.

“Mr Beer I would not cover anything up in this process that would not have been – I’m sorry because this is an important point – if Susan had explained (that) to me very clearly, why in her paper did it say 5%?”

She said she “never once withheld information from the board” before adding: “I’m very sorry but my recollection on that is I don’t recall it.”

The inquiry heard that Ms Crichton was “made to wait outside on a chair”, which Ms Vennells said she “felt bad about”.

Mr Beer asked: “Sitting there like a naughty schoolgirl?”

Ms Vennells said: “She must have felt terrible.”

The former Post Office boss denied taking over the paper and presenting it to prevent the board from hearing Ms Crichton’s “opinion” and explained that she was expecting the lawyer to come in to the meeting but “minutes before that should have happened the chairman told me she had decided to stand Susan down”.

Mr Beer asked: “Did you say ‘I’m not a legal expert, the person that is is sitting outside on a chair?’.”

Ms Vennells replied: “I’m sure I did, but the chairman… I think she possibly had the thought of bringing Susan in at some stage, I’m not sure how Susan would have felt about that, but the board ran out of time and Susan didn’t come in.”

The former chief executive also denied putting “spin” on the Second Sight report in the board meeting.

Minutes of the meeting recorded: “The CEO explained that although the Second Sight report had been challenging it had highlighted some positive things as well as improvement opportunities.”

Asked if that was “to put it mildly spin on the Second Sight report”, Ms Vennells said: “I don’t believe I was doing that.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/post-office-horizon-ceo-b2550381.html


I'm not a greater believer in coincidences, so in my mind I have a question as to why 'honest' Susan was clearly stopped from telling the board about the bombshell.

No doubt Wyn and Jason have the same thought too...!

Bob you've mentioned a couple of times about people getting off 'too lightly' but the inquiry is not about 'punishing' anyone but merely to determine how people claimed the events happened and their parts in them.

It's Williams findings that will determine what then happens such as future criminal investigations.

It's looking to me that the shit hit the fan with the Clarke Report.

Vennells claims the first she knew about it was the next morning when Crichton told her.

When did Perkins know?

When Vennells told her or prior to that?

It seems reasonable to assume Crichton would have disclosed it if she attended the Board meeting.

Why then was she stopped?

Was it genuinely thought by Perkins she wasn't up to managing Second Sight - if so why should that stop her from presenting the same paper Vennells went on to do?

Moving on the Clarke report should have stopped further court cases but Davies persuaded her to carry on - because it would 'look bad' if they didn't. Well it would have done I guess but it was contrary to clear legal advise not to use Jenkins testimony.

Did Davies appreciate that and ignored it, or was he unaware of the fact?

Why didn't Vennells cease further court action as per council advise?

What did Perkins know about continuing prosecutions?

Was all this tied into a successful privatisation of Royal Mail?

Did the government know or was this all an in-house PLO cover-up by Vennells?

Why was Callard (Shex) involved in trying to remove mention of Horizon from the Royal Mail prospectus - as this suggest the issue is wider than a POL cover-up?


It's beginning to get really interesting now - although you've still not linked me to anything showing TPTB had their hands all over this from the start (some 14 or 15 years prior to the Clarke Report)!!!

Its always been evident that this scandal established its roots whilst the Post Office was still part of the Royal Mail Group (RMG) and the separation of the two, for commercial reasons, appears to have added more to the intrigues and potential motives.

In 2001 the Sub-postmistress at Cleveleys, Julie Wolstencroft, was sacked by the Area Manager. She complained that Horizon was at fault for discrepancies that emerged at her branch and made off with the SPO's computer hardware to retain as evidence. The Post Office/RMG sued her but two years later ended up having to settle her counterclaim of £188K on account of the independent evidence of forensic computer expert, Jason Coyne.

The exact amount of the settlement in favour of Ms Wolstencroft has still not been disclosed but is believed to be in the region of £180K.

Plainly there was something seriously wrong in both the governance and the financial control of Post Office/Royal Mail if that kind of money could be handed over without the Board (and the government representatives) knowing about it. After all, the government was funding it.

Learning absolutely nothing, later  Post Office/RMG  spent another £320K suing Lee Castleton, an SPM of very modest means, over another Horizon discrepancy. They didn't get the money, they just bankrupted him.

Ms Wolstencroft seems to have stayed silent (possibly gagged by an NDA) since 2003 but Jason Coyne's expert evidence was again deployed many years  later in the appeals procedures that, in due course, resulted in the acquittals of the wrongly convicted/imprisoned SPMs and the downfall of Paula Vennells

Should the Police investigate? Lots of folk think they should.

There can only be a cover-up when something wrong is known and not immediately disclosed.

That point was from the circulation to POL of the Clarke report.

Once that was known and as per the words of Moya Greene...

When it was clear the system was at fault, the PO should have raised a red flag, stopped all proceedings, given people back their money and then tried to compensate them for the ruin this caused in their lives.

Unless you KNOW differently, then there is no reason not to believe that the RMG Board (and government representative) didn't fully know about the Wolstencroft and Castleton cases which would have been reported to them under 'confidential' board items (where any members of the general public are asked to leave the meeting).

(The minutes of confidential items are restricted and not circulated with the minutes of the meeting that were held in public).

As to whether the police should investigate, that would depended on the findings of the public inquiry chaired by Sir Wyn Williams.

Personally I believe there will be as there seems to be clear evidence of deliberate non disclosure in multiple cases leading to perverting the course of justice -

Perverting the course of justice is an offence committed when a person prevents justice from being served on themselves or on another party. In England and Wales it is a common law offence, carrying a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverting_the_course_of_justice#:~:text=Perverting%20the%20course%20of%20justice%20is%20an%20offence%20committed%20when,maximum%20sentence%20of%20life%20imprisonment.

In fact looking back further it appears that RMG lawyers knew about it even earlier in 2010

Note the following articles talk about 'Post Office lawyers' but in 2010 there was only one legal group in the organisation which at the time was Royal Mail.

A senior Fujitsu engineer made a false statement to court about the flawed Post Office IT system, contradicting a report he had written days earlier.

The BBC has obtained Gareth Jenkins' 2010 statement, which helped wrongly jail pregnant postmistress Seema Misra.

It said there were "no cases" where branch accounts could be altered without postmasters' knowledge.

But he had just produced a Post Office report which proposed remotely altering data in branches to fix a bug.

Mr Jenkins, Fujitsu's former chief IT architect, is currently being investigated by the Metropolitan Police for potential perjury, the BBC understands.

At least three Post Office lawyers were told about the internal report which contradicted Mr Jenkins' statement to court, but his report was not disclosed at the trial of Mrs Misra - who had been running a branch at West Byfleet in Surrey.

Mr Jenkins' report and an accompanying memo, external provide the clearest evidence yet that as early as autumn 2010 the Post Office and Fujitsu, which built the Horizon IT system, were aware of details about the software which could cast doubt on prosecutions, and were keeping them hidden.

The memo, which summarised a series of meetings about the report, said that if the bug was widely known, it could cause a "loss of confidence in the Horizon system", provide branches with "ammunition to blame Horizon for future discrepancies" and have "potential impact upon ongoing legal cases".

The Horizon bug, known internally as the "receipts/payments mismatch" issue, was causing discrepancies between the accounts postmasters saw and those on the Post Office main servers. According to the memo, it was known to be affecting 40 branches.

In his report on 29 September 2010, Gareth Jenkins suggested remotely altering data to resolve the bug.

He met other Fujitsu and Post Office representatives a few days later to discuss the possible solutions.

The memo says Mr Jenkins' proposal to remotely access sub-postmasters' accounts had raised "significant data integrity concerns", could lead to questions of "tampering" and could prompt "moral implications" of the Post Office "changing branch data without informing the branch".

Nine days after delivering his report, Mr Jenkins submitted his final expert witness testimony, which was used by the prosecution in Mrs Misra's trial. In the months leading up to it, he had been drafting his statement for the court, with input from Post Office lawyers.

Mr Jenkins' testimony was also later used in the prosecution of many other sub-postmasters, where details of his report on the bug were again not disclosed.

The BBC has obtained his 2010 testimony, which states there are "no cases where external systems can manipulate the branch's accounts without the users in the branch being aware and authorising the transactions".

On the same day, 8 October, internal documents show that a number of Post Office lawyers had copies of both Mr Jenkins' contradictory claims - his witness statement, and the report about the bug in which he proposed remotely altering branch data.

A member of the Post Office security team had attended the meeting that discussed Mr Jenkins' report and had emailed Rob Wilson, then head of the PO's criminal law team, expressing "concern" about the proposed solutions, external. He wrote that they "may have repercussions in any future prosecution cases and on the integrity of the Horizon Online system".

Attached to his email were the meeting's memo and Mr Jenkins' report.

Mr Wilson then forwarded this email - and the attachments - to Jarnail Singh and Juliet McFarlane, senior lawyers who dealt with Post Office prosecutions.

Mr Singh was specifically assigned to Seema Misra's case and was responsible for disclosure - the duty to share information that might help the opposing side's case.

In a written statement to the public inquiry into the Horizon scandal last year, he said: "I do not recall having seen this document."

But Post Office records reveal that just minutes after receiving the email in 2010, he had printed off Mr Jenkins' report.

The BBC showed Mr Jenkins' report and the meeting memo to Prof Charles McLachlan, an expert witness for Mrs Misra's defence team.

Prof McLachlan said they were "completely incompatible" with Mr Jenkins' witness statement at her trial.

"There's absolutely no question that he not only knew, but was recommending remote access at a point when his witness statement was claiming there was no remote access," he said

Mr Jenkins' witness statement was made in response to technical issues originally raised by Prof McLachlan.

During his appearance at the Post Office inquiry in December 2023, Rob Wilson - the former head of the Post Office's criminal law team - was asked why he had not disclosed knowledge of remote access to the courts.

He said he had read the meeting memo about the receipts and payments bug and discussed it with Mr Singh and Ms McFarlane, but did not "understand" that one of the solutions to the bug meant remotely accessing sub-postmasters accounts.

When asked by inquiry counsel Jason Beer why the receipts/payments bug had not been disclosed, when it had been flagged as having an impact on legal cases, he said that he had viewed the issue "as being a completely different system".

He admitted he had "made the wrong decision".

Jarnail Singh is being questioned again by the Post Office inquiry on Friday. His lawyer said it would be "inappropriate" for him to comment "whilst his participation in the inquiry" was ongoing.

A lawyer for Gareth Jenkins said it would be "inappropriate" for him to comment ahead of him giving evidence to the Post Office inquiry in June.

The Post Office said that Ms McFarlane has died.

The solicitors watchdog, the Solicitors Regulation Authority, said it was investigating "a number of solicitors and law firms" who were working on behalf of the Post Office, but would not take disciplinary action until the inquiry had heard all the evidence.

Fujitsu declined to answer the BBC's specific questions but said it offered "its deepest apologies" to sub-postmasters and their families.

Full article here -
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68857142#:~:text=The%20BBC%20has%20obtained%20Gareth,be%20altered%20without%20postmasters'%20knowledge.

The acronym TLDNR might have been invented for poor old Sluffy.

I expect he means well...... most of the time.

Ian Hislop cut to the chase on HIGNIFY. Straight forward 'THEFT', he said. That's exactly what I thought before they started to treat it as PROFIT and available for BONUSES.

TLDNR - To long did not read.

Fair enough Bob, your choice not to...

Let me make it simple for you...

Sluffy wrote:Time and time and time again you have failed to produce a shred of evidence to to support your belief of a massive deep state cover up and absolutely nothing to refute hard evidence produced at the public inquiry.

If there IS a deep state cover-up then I hope it is fully exposed but up to now you produce nothing other than a conspiracy theory and ceaseless petulance towards me.


Don't you deal in facts anymore?

Sluffy wrote:Good old Bob, detests anyone standing up to him.

Where's your proof that the government for the last TWENTY YEARS knew anything about this?

Sluffy wrote:


Cat got your tongue Bob?

Sluffy wrote:I'm still waiting to be linked to your facts...

Sluffy wrote:PS - I'm still waiting for you to link me to the facts supporting your conspiracy theory...

Sluffy wrote:Anyway as usual I look forward to the proof...

...because Bob has come up with nothing so far...

WELL???

'They’re  inward looking, insular and generally hide things, there’s a culture of keeping things contained within the walls.  It’s almost as if some of the fear of the places, the mythology is sort of in the cement, in the bricks and mortar, it’s a bizarre culture and totally dysfunctional'.


Source: Panorama 1998  'Out of Sight, Out of Mind.


It could have been about the the Post Office but it wasn't. It was about the High Security Ashworth Hospital; home to Ian Brady, Charles Bronson etc etc.

Ashworth was the responsibility of the Mental Health Act Commission (MHAC). Not long afterwards the CEO of MHAC was no longer CEO of MHAC; he was Chairman of our local NHS Trust with an annual budget at the time of £500m.

That was 'only the beginning'.

And...?

Is that IT!!!

Your PROOF that the government and Post Office Board was fully  involved in the cover-up of the Horizon failures and the subsequent imprisonment of innocent sub postmasters?

Are you one of those who really believes in the Deep State conspiracy theory?

A deep state[1] is a type of government made up of potentially secret and unauthorized networks of power operating independently of a state's political leadership in pursuit of their own agenda and goals. In popular usage, the term carries overwhelmingly negative connotations.[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_state

And you think it's ME that is the TWERP!!!

Poor Sluffy.

It's simple Bob, you've made a claim that the Post Office scandal is a cover-up by The Powers That Be - for all I know you might be right, so I've asked for you to link to the proof you've based your 'belief' on (because without proof it is only your 'opinion' that something did or did not happen).

I've asked you time and time again and you still haven't done so and instead you throw childish insults at me.

You've spent your working career dealing with FACTS, so I would have thought that YOU more than anyone else on here would be only too happy to provide links to these facts that prove what you are saying to be true, to share with others such as myself.

You haven't.

I don't believe you have any.

Instead you seem to be carrying a huge amount of personal baggage of bias and prejudice around arising from the dealings you have had in respect of a Health Authority many years ago - and this has a direct bearing on why you feel the way you do to the establishment.

Nearly everyone judged Anderson with bias and prejudice based on what they had heard about him previously but you and I measured him on the FACTS - and in the end were proved right.

So simply show us your FACTS Bob and prove to me and everyone else that you are right this time too.

If you can't do that - and you can't - then aren't you just like Iles and all the rest who got it wrong about Anderson with their 'belief' and only you and I got it right based on the FACTS?

So I ask again...

Sluffy wrote:Don't you deal in facts anymore?

...because if you aren't you are just stating a unproven conspiracy theory about the 'deep state' that you've chosen to believe in without any poof or evidence whatsoever.

Aren't you?

Paula Vennels breaks her silence!

https://www.postofficetrial.com/2020/06/paula-vennells-breaks-her-silence.html

'The government were completely aware of and involved with every significant decision the Post Office made during her tenure'.

Recollections may vary but is that what she said?

Well, well, well, finally you've managed to link me to something!

Strange you didn't spell it out what it is though, let me do that for you!

The scene is that Bates v The Post Office has been won and the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy had called in Nick Reed (the new CEO of POL) to face the parliamentary committee for that department to answer questions on what the fuck had happened.

However Covid was happening and Vennells had left, so it was carried out by questionnaire, one of which Vennells was required to complete.

The questions asked was sent in a letter to Reed dated 2nd June 2020 and and a n a customised version to Vennells -

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5801/cmselect/cmbeis/correspondence/BEIS-Committee-Chair-to-Paula-Vennells.pdf

Part of the letter to her states this...

Lord Callanan has stated that on Horizon, Post Office Ltd “clearly misled” BEIS officials, while the
Minister has told this Committee that the advice Post Office Ltd gave BEIS was “flawed”.
o Did Post Office Ltd under your watch mislead BEIS officials with flawed advice and, if not, are Government Ministers wrong?

Government officials 'misled' by POL, advice from POL 'flawed', are you calling the Minister a liar!

Lord Callanan was Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy from 14 February 2020 to 7 February 2023 and is now the current Minister of that Department.

https://www.gov.uk/government/people/lord-callanan

Also in the letter to her was this...

The Judge in Bates v Post Office Ltd said that Post Office Ltd had operated with a “culture of secrecy and excessive confidentiality generally with the Post Office, but particularly focused on Horizon”.
o Did you as Post Office CEO oversee a culture of “secrecy and excessive confidentiality”?
o Was Post Office Ltd, as the Judge stated, fearful of what it might find if it looked too closely at Horizon?

Fearful of what they might find!!!

The key person responsible for giving the 'misleading' and 'flawed' information (and preventing others from looking to close because of 'fear in what they might find') was Vennells as POL MD/CEO.

This (I assume?) was her reply to which you have linked me to (thank you).

(I assume because I haven't been able to find it myself).

"The UKGI directors were fully engaged in the discussions and Post Office (including myself and each subsequent Chair) had conversations with their senior line director and the Chief Executive of UKGI too from time to time. The present UKGI incumbent director joined the Board in 2018 with a fresh pair of eyes. His questioning was challenging and because of that it was helpful; it did not lead to any different outcomes. He was fully engaged on the Board, sub-committee and with ministers and lawyers at BEIS."

So yes in theory "The government were party to every significant Post Office decision on Horizon" PROVIDING they again were told the full truth, not 'clearly misled', given 'flawed' advice and kept away from Horizon for 'fear of what they might find'.

(Also fwiw the quote is a sub heading that you copied from Nick Wallis which I think are HIS words as I couldn't find Vennells or anyone else saying them).

(Have you ever considered you are seemingly believing without question what Wallis is writing because you want it to be true - Beware of Confirmation Bias
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias ).


I am at a bit of a loss as to what you are saying here...

Ten Bobsworth wrote:'The government were completely aware of and involved with every significant decision the Post Office made during her tenure'.

Recollections may vary but is that what she said?

The statement is that of Wallis NOT Vennells, (you do realise that don't you?) and it was said after he put 1 - Nothing was her fault, 2 - A lot of it was Fujitsu's fault and 3 - She told the government everything!!!

Do you really think Wallis believes 1?
Do you think he believes 2?
So why is he (and you) so willing to believe 3?

(Or is that simply what you both have been wanting to hear?   Confirmation Bias again?).


I also don't understand the question, are you addressing it to me - if so I don't know who is saying it of whom (presumably about Vennells?).


Anyway It's pretty clear from what the judge at the Bates High Court trial said that POL (Vennells) kept secret everything they could about Horizon, added to that, that Vennells misled the BEIS Parliamentary Committee in 2014, and was clearly caught out lying at the inquiry only a few days ago.

The current Minister for BEIS has all but called her a liar - in the questionnaire she was required to respond to, so in the sense of 'crying wolf' I find it not credible that her reply in 2020 was telling the truth whilst all other evidence seems to suggest she had been constantly lying, misleading, providing flawed advice and fearful of what might be found if Horizon was looked into more deeply.

It doesn't make any sense to me that she was telling the truth on this one and only occasion?

It's just another of her lies Bob it's just that you want to believe it because it fits in with what you want to believe about the establishment being corrupt.

That's my take fwiw.

With the exception of Alice Perkins (aka Mrs Jack Straw), it seems that we are going to have to wait until after the General Election to get the chance to see who might be believable from the assortment of politicians and government servants due to appear later in this sordid saga.

https://www.postofficehorizoninquiry.org.uk/phase-5-and-6-timetable

Thank you, I already had it 'pinned' on my PO File.

I'm sure you noticed that 'time' in front of the inquiry seems to equate to the more the interest the inquiry inspector and his team has on the individual - Vennells had three days, Singh had two, Jenkins is down four four (I feel slightly sorry for him to some extent because it seems he received no training to be a witness and had his evidenced 'marked' in Perkins 'parlance' to say what the PO wanted him to say (or rather say nothing about what the didn't want him to say!).  My sympathy is limited though as he must have known at some point over the last decade that he had been played and if he had anything about it he would have made that known somehow - maybe he did?  He certainly was open and honest to Second Sight).

Perkins is down for two days and that must revolve about what and why she did what she did with Crichton - did she know in advance about the Clarke Advice?

The other interesting one is that Andrew Parsons is scheduled for two days also -

A lawyer acting for the Post Office advised the organisation in an email not to leave a ‘paper trail’ as reports started coming in that the Horizon system was faulty.

The Post Office Inquiry yesterday saw correspondence between Andrew Parsons, a partner at Womble Bond Dickinson, Post Office general counsel Susan Crichton and head of corporate finance Charles Colquhoun in 2013.

Responding to a draft letter for the Post Office’s insurance broker about the IT system, Parsons said the letter ‘does nothing more than put POL’s insurers on notice of the Horizon issues’.

His response continued: ‘My own hesitation is whether this is strictly necessary to do. From a PR perspective it would look bad if this got into the public domain – sign of guilt/concern from the board.’

Parsons suggested the Post Office ‘hold fire’ on notifying insurers there may be issues with Horizon and recommended ‘tweaking’ the letter to say that the press had reported on potential issues with Horizon, rather than that financial discrepancies had occurred with the system.

Parsons later emailed saying that the risk of notification was that it would ‘look bad for POL if it ever became public knowledge that POL notified its insurers’. He recommended that the Post Office speak to its insurers rather than send a formal written notice ‘so as not to leave a paper trail’.
https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/solicitor-advising-post-office-warned-about-leaving-paper-trail/5119330.article

He's the one who corresponded with Rodric Williams who in turn kept it from Altman...

An email from solicitor Andrew Parsons, from Post Office-instructed law firm Womble Bond Dickinson, to Post Office lawyer Rodric Williams in July 2013 said Mr Altman was “very live to the political dimension”.

The counsel to the inquiry then questioned Mr Altman on why he failed to disclose Mr Jenkins’s withholding of bugs in the Horizon system.

Mr Beer asked: “What was done to inform past defendants and those in ongoing cases that Mr Jenkins had wrongly withheld knowledge about bugs in the Horizon system?”

Mr Altman said: “I know what you’re driving at, Mr Beer, and it’s something in recent weeks which I have thought about and it’s something that should have been disclosed to appropriate people.”

The counsel to the inquiry continued: “Is the answer then that nothing was done to inform convicted defendants or in any ongoing cases, that Mr Jenkins had wrongly withheld his own knowledge of bugs in the Horizon system?”

Mr Altman said: “I think, unhappily, that has to be the case.

“Again, with the benefit of hindsight, and having thought an awful lot about this, it’s something that should have been considered for disclosure and disclosed in appropriate cases, no question.”

Mr Beer added: “And should have been considered for disclosure by you, Mr Altman?”

The witness said: “Yes, I’m accepting that.”

Questioned on what criminal offences Mr Jenkins may have committed “based on the facts as you knew them by the time you were advising in October 2013”, Mr Altman mentioned two alleged offences – perjury and perverting the course of justice.

He said: “I’m not prepared to speculate about that… because if you’re thinking about perjury, perjury requires certain conditions, which nothing I had seen suggested might be present, and perverting the course of justice and having a tendency to pervert the course of justice with the requisite intent is a particular offence, and I was not prepared to speculate, nor am I now, as to whether he was dishonest or just incompetent.”

Mr Altman went on to say Mr Jenkins had “possibly” committed perjury.

Asked why no consideration was given to including the fact that Mr Jenkins may have committed criminal offences in his advice, Mr Altman said: “It wouldn’t have crossed my mind that any police investigation or any consideration of whether he had committed offences was anything a) I was asked to do or b) would have volunteered.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/post-office-horizon-attorney-general-andrew-parsons-government-b2541621.html


Also did you notice that the Chair cancelled the inquiry sittings for the day of the election and the day after it?

There were four half day witness sittings - so I suggest they were not major players in all this as such - but all four (who have of course submitted witness statements) were  former Shareholder Executive / UK Government Investments Official's.

It's interesting (or at least I think so) that Richard Callard (the one linked with Perkins and Vennells re the Royal Mail prospectus) who is also a Shareholder Executive / UK Government Investments Official's. is down for a full day - which suggests to me the the other four were not part of a day one cover-up by TPTB from 1998 onwards and leaning more to my view that the government 'interest' stems from the time of the High Court action (started 2016) or sometime shortly before it.