Tearful Vennells admits not telling MPs the truthpublished at 11:26 British Summer Time 22 May

11:26 BST 22 May

Emma Simpson
Business correspondent, at the inquiry

We’ve learnt a lot so far this morning. For instance, Paula Vennells says didn’t see the Clarke advice until after she left the post office.

This was a bombshell piece of legal advice from barrister Simon Clarke warning the Post Office in 2013 about problems with past prosecutions. It was a turning point in this scandal.

But she says the info wasn’t shared with her or the board. That’s damning. Her defence is she was too trusting, and information didn’t come her way, appearing to blame her lawyers.

She also blames Fujitsu IT experts for not telling her about bugs. But she’s not having an easy time of it, trying to defend what she said to MPs and colleagues about prosecutions, breaking down in tears when acknowledging what she told them about prosecutions in one meeting wasn’t true.

Some of her emails are coming back to haunt her now.

Sam Hancock
Reporting from the inquiry

As the morning goes on, laughs from people watching on are becoming more common - particularly when Paula Vennells paints any kind of picture about her time as CEO of the Post Office.

When she claimed a little earlier that she was sometimes criticised at team events for being "too curious", there were laughs. Similarly, when she said she was "too trusting", there were more than a few laughs.

When she repeatedly described emails we were being shown as "badly worded", there were laughs.

And just before, Vennells said she ran a campaign during her time as CEO called "bad news is good news" so people could tell her the hard things that a boss needs to know.

The response in the room? You guessed it, a lot more laughs.

A rare moment of levity at the inquiry as its chair, Sir Wyn Williams, suddenly complains that he is being "attacked by drips".

It appears the hearing room may have sprung a leak - it has been raining almost constantly in London for 24 hours - so Sir Wyn asks counsel Jason Beer KC if now is a good time for the mid-morning break.

So they break - to some laughter - meaning we'll back with more evidence from ex-Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells shortly.

You can of course watch the inquiry live stream by pressing Play in the big picture at the top of this page.

Inquiry counsel Jason Beer KC rattles through a list of sub-postmasters and postmistresses who had been acquitted after being accused of stealing money from the Post Office - all of whom had blamed Horizon for the accounting shortfalls.

Why were you telling parliamentarians that every prosecution involving Horizon had been successful and found in favour of the Post Office? he asks.

Vennells breaks down in tears.

She says: "I fully accept now that the Post Office knew that, I completely accept it. Personally I didn't know it and I'm incredibly sorry it happened to those people and so many others."

Beer asks Vennells if it's true she did not believe there had been any miscarriages of justice by the time she left the Post Office in April 2019.

The former chief executive says she was told at the time there had been no evidence found of any problems with the Horizon accounting system which was used across the Post Office's branch network.

Beer asks about a witness statement from one of her advisors, who told the inquiry Vennells was not prepared emotionally to believe miscarriages of justice had taken place.

Vennells denies this, citing her instructions in 2016 that one of her team needed to look into claims that Post Office investigators had mishandled the Seema Misra case.

Pressed if claims she was convinced nothing had gone wrong until after she left the Post Office are accurate, Vennells says they are "completely wrong".

Jason Beer KC shows an email exchange from August 2015 between Vennells and other Post Office executives, in which she wrote that her "priority is to protect the business and the thousands who operated under the same rules and didn't get into difficulties".

Beer says that Vennells and the Post Office were aware at the time of at least three bugs that had impacted on Post Office branch balances in different ways.

So why did you again send the message that because many branches did not raise an issue, those complaining backed up the Post Office's stance that their problems weren't Horizon related, he asks.

Vennells repeats that she is sorry, and that "this reads badly".

She says she thought at the time that those who had complained were a minority.

Why did you concentrate on the people who Horizon was working for, rather than those for whom it wasn't? Beer interjects.

"We were concentrating on those who had raised issues individually," Vennells replies.

"That's not your priority according to this," Beer says.

Vennells fumbles with her responses, before eventually saying "that wasn't how I intended it to be read".

Beer starts going over what Vennells thinks went wrong at the Post Office while she was CEO.

He reads out part of her witness statement where she acknowledges sub-postmasters' "lives were torn apart by being wrongly accused and wrongly prosecuted as a result of the Horizon system".

Focusing on that specific phrasing blaming the accounting software, counsel to the inquiry asks if Vennells still thinks it was the computer system, as opposed to the "conduct, competence and ethics" of Post Office staff, that was most to blame.

Vennells says "no, not at all" and apologises if that wasn't clear in the statement, adding she meant all issues resulting from faults with Horizon.

Pressed over whether that is true, she repeats that she did not intend to convey this was entirely an IT problem.

Beer then asks if the statement was demonstrative of a culture within the company of "failing to take responsibility" for its decision to use its power to conduct criminal prosecutions people.

Vennells says that isn't the case and agrees that the "tragedy we're facing today is much, much broader than an IT system".

Jason Beer KC is now reading from Paula Vennells' witness statement.

He reads to the inquiry her view that with the benefit of hindsight there were many things that should've been done differently.

After reminding her that she has provided a 775-page witness statement that took seven months to write, he asks: "Could you not have reflected on what you should've done differently in the witness statement?"

Vennells apologises again, admitting Beer is right: "Yes, I could've put more into it and I'm sorry if it wasn't helpful."

When Vennells says she would be "more than happy to submit more", Beer wants to know why she did not do that. "Were you adopting a wait-and-see approach?" he asks.

"No, not at all, that's not the way I work," Vennells denies, saying: "It was simply a matter of time. The inquiry asked me over 600 questions, I went through hundreds of thousands of documents."

She says her memory was not very good at the beginning of this process but "it's improved as I've gone through".

Peter Ruddick
Business reporter

"I think you knew". A simple, yet damning, four word statement revealed in a text message to Paula Vennells from her former colleague Moya Greene.

It is something sub-postmasters have long claimed: that the former CEO knew, when she was at the organisation, about the issues with Horizon and prosecutions.

However, to hear that is - or was at one point - the view of the former boss of Royal Mail Group is truly extraordinary.

Jason Beer KC asks how Paula Vennells did not know about bugs in the Post Office's Horizon accounting system.

Vennells replies that this may have been because Fujitsu didn't share as much information as it should have done, because of the management structure, or because of lack of "corporate memory".

"One of the biggest lessons for governance in this is when I joined Post Office in 2007 there was no corporate memory of the inception of the Horizon system," she says.

"How come we've been able to find it out?" interjects Beer. "You say corporate memory didn't exist. All the documents were there," he says.

"You're right and I didn't," Vennells replies. But she adds that "if you don't know something exists, it's difficult to ask questions about it".

Beer says even Royal Mail Group chief executive Moya Greene doesn't believe you.

"That's what this particular text says. Whether Moya still feels the same, I'm not sure and you would have to ask her," Vennells replies.

Sam Hancock
Reporting from the inquiry

We've just been shown some texts between Paula Vennells and the former boss of Royal Mail, Moya Greene, who inquiry counsel Jason Beer points out used to be a supporter of hers.

The correspondence is from earlier this year and it shows Greene saying she "can't now support" the former Post Office CEO. She says doing so "all these years" has been to her "own detriment".

Greene accuses Vennells of historically knowing about the issues with Horizon and when she replies with a denial - saying "that isn't the case" - Greene asks: "How could you not have known?"

The reaction in the room to this exchange is one of bemusement, more than anything else. It's a very personal exchange that, going into it, Vennells seems to have thought was a text conversation between two long-time former colleagues - friends even.

People laugh as the texts are read out and, in some cases, whisper to the person next to them.

Image source, Post Office inquiry

Vennells is asked over whether she could be criticised for seeing problems as being beyond her control as an "alibi", which she firmly denies.

She tells Beer that she took a very active role in managing the Post Office, laying out a series of different examples of her work - including that was sometimes seen as being "too curious and stepping into other people's territory".

Vennells has said criticism of pre-2012 Post Office prosecutions from one of the company's senior lawyers was not shared with her.

She was referring to the work of Brian Altman - a top barrister who was paid by the Post Office to review sub-postmasters’ convictions.

Altman himself has been accused of being aware of a "tainted witness" but failing to investigate, which he denied at the inquiry on 8 May.

"That advice was never shared with her or the executive board, she says, adding:

"Had we seen it, we may well have asked very, very different questions."

Vennells goes on to say there was too much reliance on these legal reports, which were only shared in summary with executives.

Vennells is speaking now about how complaints by sub-postmasters were dealt with at the Post Office.

"One of the biggest challenges is realising how much went on at an individual postmaster level," she says.

When a bug affected several Post Offices, it was raised as a complaint, she says. But if a single postmaster made several calls to a service centre, it wouldn't have been picked up.

She says this is a very important lesson for the organisation, and adds that it should have been possible to have data showing how many times a postmaster complained about something.

"Isn't all this really obvious?" interjects Jason Beer.

"It is, and it wasn't in place, and it should have been," Vennells replies.

Jason Beer KC asks if Paula Vennells believes there was an almost 12-year conspiracy at the Post Office to deny giving her information and documents but to provide false reassurances instead.

"I don't believe that was the case. I have no sense there was any conspiracy at all," Vennells answers.

She adds that she has been disappointed "listening to evidence at inquiry where I've learned people knew more than they knew at the time or I knew of".

"My deep sorrow is that people, me included, made mistakes and didn't hear or see things."

After denying knowledge of any conspiracies, she adds:

This is the full apology made by Paula Vennells just before questioning began at the Post Office Inquiry:

Sam Hancock
Reporting from the inquiry

Some of us in the room were saying before Paula Vennells came out that an apology was likely. And yet what she just said somehow still felt like a bit of a shock.

Turning her chair to face everyone watching today - including a number of former sub-postmasters and postmistresses - she said she was sorry for everything they and their families had "suffered" and was glad she could say so in person.

Vennells said she had listened to all the personal statements of those touched by the scandal and had been "very affected" by them. She said she'd answer all questions truthfully today, and acknowledged this would at times be difficult, but asked for some "understanding".

I noted a couple of headshakes in the crowd but very little else - it was a moment where the silence was really very palpable.

There are people in this room who were sent to prison on the basis of convictions brought by the Post Office, which have since been overturned. That must've been a very big moment for them, whether they accept Vennells' apology or not.

Vennells is pressed over several assurances in her witness statements that she had never been warned about various bugs and issues with the Horizon accounting system.

She tells inquiry counsel Jason Beer KC that on reflection she was "too trusting" but insists she did "probe and asks questions".

The former Post Office CEO says she has been going over the evidence to try to "plug gaps" in her memory of what she did see.

Beer then goes over multiple different known issues with the system designed by Japanese IT firm Fujitsu over several years included in her witness statement, to which Vennells agrees she had not been told about them.

Image source, Post Office inquiry

Vennells continues her apology, saying she also apologises to Alan Bates, Ron Warmington and Ian Henderson from Second Sight and to Lord Arbuthnot.

"I, and those I worked with, made their work so much harder and I am very, very sorry for that," she says.

Her third apology, she says, is for what she is going to say today: "I will answer the questions truthfully, and I am very aware that they will be difficult to listen to."

Paula Vennells starts by apologising:

"I would like to say how sorry I am for all the subpostmasters and their families who have suffered as a result of all that the inquiry has been looking into for so long."

She continues: "I have listened to all the statements and have been very affected by it. I am very very sorry".