Inquiry to “Urgently” Review New Documents from Former Post Office CEO
The ongoing inquiry into the Post Office scandal has announced that it will be “urgently” reviewing new documents received from former chief executive Paula Vennells. Vennells, who is set to appear before the inquiry next week, had her legal team conduct additional searches and discovered 50 documents that had not been previously shared.
According to a spokesperson for the inquiry, lead counsel Jason Beer KC confirmed that the documents were received at 11:17pm last night. The inquiry is also expecting to receive further documents from Vennells today, which will be reviewed with urgency.
Beer had previously raised concerns about the timely submission of necessary documents and has reminded witnesses that he will not hesitate to call them back to the inquiry if needed.
This development comes as Vennells’ former colleague, Alisdair Cameron, the Post Office’s former chief financial officer, faced questioning on Friday regarding his knowledge of the scandal. Before beginning his session, Cameron issued an apology to the sub-postmasters affected by the scandal.
During his questioning, Cameron was also asked about a document he had written titled “what went wrong” in November 2020 for current chief executive Nick Read. In the document, Cameron acknowledged that the Post Office should have addressed the issues a decade earlier, but believed that an earlier settlement was not possible due to the serious claimants’ demands for recognition and an apology, in addition to monetary compensation.
Cameron also stated that Vennells had maintained her belief that there were no miscarriages of justice, and that she had been clear on this since his first board meeting. He noted that the Post Office had a “victim mentality” and that defending the faulty accounting software was a “waste of public money.”
He further criticized the company for being “over-reliant” on the Horizon system and its weaknesses, as well as the fact that the original prosecutions of sub-postmasters were a “deliberate miscarriage of justice.” He concluded by stating that the Post Office should have apologized and moved on years ago, and that their defense had prolonged the pursuit of justice and resulted in a waste of public funds.
In a 2020 document presented to the inquiry, Cameron wrote that the “original sin” of the Post Office was its self-absorbed and defensive culture, which prevented them from dealing with sub-postmasters in a straightforward and acceptable manner.
The Post Office has faced intense scrutiny for the more than 700 sub-postmasters who were prosecuted and handed criminal convictions between 1999 and 2015 due to the faulty Horizon system provided by Fujitsu. Despite the government’s announcement of £600,000 payouts for those who had their convictions overturned, many sub-postmasters are still awaiting full compensation.
