Paula Vennells says she finds it “unacceptable” that her colleagues at the time did not fully disclose to her legal advice about the use of Fujitsu expert witness Gareth Jenkins, who the Post Office was advised to stop using as he had failed to disclose bugs in Horizon at a court case.
Jason Beer KC asked whether she thought people were protecting her from “information that you would find difficult to hear.”
He said “the account that you give him is very different from what the documents reveal.”
“This reads badly today” Paula Vennells says of an email shown to her when reports of Horizon problems were being dismissed because, as she puts it, “the vast majority of people operating in the business had not encountered the same issue.”
The note says “our priority is to protect the business and the thousands who operated under the same rules and didn’t get into difficulties.”
[Topic 4 - whether your priority whilst at the PO was to protect the business]
— Nick Wallis (@nickwallis) May 22, 2024
JB says quotes doc below about PV's priority is to protect the business and people having no problems pic.twitter.com/1LRcwZbILB
Jason Beer KC has put it to her that even her apology puts the prosecution scandal down to Horizon IT system, rather than the senior people involved.
He asked whether the message from the Post Office to subpostmasters was “The system works for everyone else. It’s just you that’s the problem, not the system.”
She says she is very sorry if that was the case. We have repeatedly heard that the Post Office helpline told subpostmasters experiencing problems with the Horizon IT system were the only ones it was happening to.
