Sam Hancock
Reporting from the inquiry

It's fair to say there's a lot going on in here.

Some rows in front of me, counsel to the inquiry Jason Beer walked in and placed some papers at the spot from where he has been grilling many former Post Office bosses and advisers.

To my right, former sub-postmistress Seema Misra has just hugged her lawyer and had a quick conversation with him before today's proceedings get under way. Remember, she was wrongly jailed while she was pregnant.

And to my left, where there's a door marked "staff only" - it's where people giving evidence are brought in and out of the inquiry room - Paula Vennells has just walked in.

Having been sworn in, inquiry chair Sir Wyn Williams reads Vennells a warning about potential self-incrimination.

Former Post Office boss Paula Vennells is being sworn in to give evidence on the first day of her three-day appearance at the public inquiry.

Stay with us as we bring you what she has to say - remember, this is the first time in a decade that she has spoken publicly about the Horizon IT scandal.

You can watch live by pressing Play above.

Image source, PA Media

Former sub-postmaster Seema Misra, was jailed after being accused of stealing £74,000, has called on Paula Vennells to tell the truth.

Asked if she believed what the inquiry has heard was truthful Misra said she did not believe so.

Misra, who ran a Post Office in West Byfleet, Surrey, was pregnant when she was sent to prison in 2010.

She told the BBC News channel she wanted to understand why Vennells had not done more when Post Office chief executive to fix the wrongful prosecution of sub-postmasters.

On Vennells telling MPs in 2015 she'd seen no evidence of any miscarriage of justice, Misra said:

Sam Hancock
Reporting from the inquiry

Paula Vennells - the former Post Office chief executive who earlier this year returned her CBE over the furore that was sparked by ITV's drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office - is already here at Aldwych House.

She made her way through a press scrum to get inside the inquiry building and is likely now going through some last-minute preparation with her legal team before being sworn in.

The level of interest in the first of Vennells’ three days of evidence is clear from the number of people here - it’s absolutely packed. I've been to the inquiry quite a few times now and I've never seen it this busy.

Among the crowd of people watching today are a number of former sub-postmasters and postmistresses - I can see Janet Skinner, Lee Castleton and Seema Misra as I type this post.

This might be the first time Vennells has given evidence to the inquiry herself, but we’ve heard plenty about her from other former employees.

Most recently, former Post Office IT head Lesley Sewell said she blocked Vennells’ number after the ex-chief executive sought help to avoid an independent inquiry.

In April, former top in-house lawyer Chris Aujard said Vennells ignored calls from her top team to halt sub-postmaster prosecutions.

We also saw an email in which her husband suggested using the word “anomaly” or “exception” to refer to faults with the Horizon system, as they are both “less emotive” than the word “bug”. An inquiry lawyer branded this "absolutely Orwellian".

We’ll find out over the next three days whether Vennells will now be asked about any of these things directly.

Emma Simpson
Business correspondent, at the inquiry

We’re in the hearing room early and it’s already filling up.

Real sense of anticipation here, waiting for Paula Vennells to appear.

Sub-postmasters just hope she’s going to give them some answers. Janet Skinner told me she felt quite nervous for her.

Image source, PA Media

This phase of the inquiry has seen some senior Post Office executives grilled by lawyers about the Horizon scandal. Here are some of the things we learned:

• Top lawyer Brian Altman KC, who was paid by the Post Office to review sub-postmasters’ convictions knew about a "tainted witness" but failed to investigate, report it to the police or disclose it to defendants, the inquiry heard
• Former senior Post Office lawyer Jarnail Singh denied that he knew about bugs in the Horizon system, which inquiry counsel Jason Beer said was a "big fat lie"
• Former PR boss Mark Davies conceded that it was possible to access the Horizon IT system remotely
• Earlier, former executive Angela van den Bogerd said executives did not "cover up" the knowledge that the computers of sub-postmasters could be accessed remotely
• Another important figure is Gareth Jenkins, a former senior Fujitsu engineer who made a false statement to court about the flawed Post Office IT system, which helped wrongly jail pregnant postmistress Seema Misra

Image source, PA Media

Former sub-postmaster Lee Castleton tells the BBC that he is looking forward to hearing from Paula Vennells at the inquiry shortly.

Speaking to Radio 4's Today programme, he says that hearing from the former Post Office CEO is important to enable people affected to move on.

Asked if her demeanour while appearing matters to him, Castleton says he isn't looking for an apology from Vennells, but to lay out her side of the story.

"I think the days have gone a long, long time ago that it makes any difference to me personally... I'm just looking forward to the truth."

Earlier this year, ITV dramatised what is now commonly termed the ‘Post Office scandal’. The series began airing on 1 January with Vennells one of the key figures portrayed within the four-part series.

Actress Lia Williams played her role within the drama.

Other television series that Williams has appeared in include The Crown and she was also nominated for the BAFTA Awards in 2005 for her role in May 33rd.

Former Post Office CEO Paula Vennells arrived at Aldwych House this morning to a swarm of photographers and press.

Watch the moment she arrived at the inquiry in the clip above.

Image source, PA Media

Paula Vennells’ name is three letters shorter than it used to be.

She was awarded a CBE for services to the Post Office and to charity in the 2019 New Years Honours list.

This was immediately controversial to some, since hundreds of sub-postmasters had already launched legal action against the Post Office at the time. Amid mounting pressure, Vennells said she’d hand her CBE back in January 2024.

Then, in February, the Cabinet Office said she had been formally stripped of her CBE for “bringing the honours system into disrepute”.

The timing of this was no mystery.

Vennells announced she’d return her CBE less than a week after Mr Bates vs The Post Office finished airing on ITV, and one day after a petition, which called for the honour to be forfeited, reached one million signatures.

It was a bit of a scramble at Aldwych House in London for the arrival of Paula Vennells, who had to be escorted from her car by police officers.

She was greeted by crowds of journalists shouting questions and photographers taking pictures of the former Post Office CEO when she got there this morning.

Image source, EPA

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Reuters

Image source, PA Media

Image source, Getty Images

More than 900 sub-postmasters were wrongly prosecuted for stealing because of incorrect information from a computer system called Horizon.

The Post Office itself took many cases to court, prosecuting 700 people between 1999 and 2015. Another 283 cases were brought by other bodies, including the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

Many sub-postmasters went to prison for false accounting and theft, and several were financially ruined.

In 2017, a group of 555 sub-postmasters took legal action against the Post Office. In 2019, it agreed to pay them £58m in compensation, but much of the money went on legal fees.

A draft report uncovered by the BBC showed the Post Office spent £100m fighting the group in court despite knowing its defence was untrue.

The Post Office said it would be "inappropriate" to comment on the report.

Although campaigners won the right for their cases to be reconsidered, only 102 convictions had been overturned by March 2024. The Criminal Cases Review Commission said the scandal was "the most widespread miscarriage of justice", it had seen.

The Metropolitan Police is also investigating the Post Office over potential fraud offences.

Emma Simpson
Business correspondent

When did she know accounts could be accessed remotely?

The Post Office always claimed sub-postmasters' branch accounts could not be remotely accessed without their knowledge. Once it became known that Fujitsu, the company responsible for the Horizon system, was able to do this, it undermined every prosecution case and civil claim the Post Office had brought.

Did she lie to Parliament in 2015?

Paula Vennells went on to tell MPs on the business select committee in 2015 that she had seen no evidence of any miscarriages of justice. But two years earlier barrister Simon Clarke warned the Post Office there were problems with past prosecutions. He said this was because they’d relied on evidence from Gareth Jenkins, the Fujitsu IT engineer who failed to disclose to the courts that he knew about bugs in the system.

Was anyone pulling her strings?

There’s one key bit of context to all this. The Post Office is owned by the government, which has a representative on its board. There’s an awful lot we don’t know about what went on between ministers, top civil servants and the decision making during her leadership, a crucial phase when the alleged cover-up was in full swing.

• Read more here

Image source, PA Media

Paula Vennells, 65, was the Post Office’s chief executive between 2012 and 2019, earning a total of £5.1m while leading the organisation.

Prior to joining the Post Office in 2007 as a group network director she had served as an ordained priest. In 2017 she was interviewed for the position of Bishop of London.

After leaving the Post Office, she was a non-executive board member at the Cabinet Office for a year and also became chairman of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust.

She left this post at the end of 2020 citing personal reasons for doing so. In 2021, she relinquished her clerical duties although she remains an ordained priest today.

She also handed back her CBE earlier this year following a public petition that called for her to be stripped of the honour.

The biggest day of the inquiry so farpublished at 08:21 British Summer Time 22 May

08:21 BST 22 May

Emma Simpson
Business correspondent

It’s the biggest day so far for this long running inquiry.

Paula Vennells was Post Office CEO from 2012 to 2019. Hundreds of sub-postmasters had already been prosecuted by the time she was promoted to the top job.

But under her leadership, the Post Office continued to deny the Horizon IT system was to blame, despite all the mounting evidence. Victims have long believed there was a cover up, which prolonged the scandal for many years.

Vennells has previously said she was truly sorry for the devastation caused to the sub-postmasters and their families and that she was focussed on fully supporting and co-operating with the Inquiry. Her main witness statement runs to nearly 900 pages including the index of all the documents that have been put to her to comment on.

She’ll be grilled for three days, the longest run of questions any witness has faced so far.

Neil Hudgell, the lawyer who represents many wronged sub-postmasters says this week’s evidence is of “monumental significance” to his clients.

They just want finally to hear the truth and many of them are travelling hundreds of miles to be here. There are 180 or so seats in the hearing room itself and the overflow area. But there are unlikely to be any spare chairs here today.

Emily McGarvey
Live editor

Image source, Reuters

Paula Vennells, the former Chief Executive of the Post Office, will today begin giving three days of evidence at the public inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal.

It's the first time she will have publicly spoken about her role in the scandal for nearly a decade.

Vennells was promoted to CEO in 2012. By then hundreds of sub postmasters had already been prosecuted, but under her seven years of leadership the Post Office continued to deny the Horizon IT system was to blame, despite all the internal evidence piling up.

So, it promises to be an interesting day at the inquiry - stay with us as we bring you all the lines and analysis.