Post Office Inquiry: If Paula Vennells’s first day was about ignorance, then day two made ignorance look like bliss
If Paula Vennells’s first day in the witness stand was memorable for her tears and self-justifications at facing public scrutiny for the first time in nine years, the second was less dramatic but more substantial.
During her seven years as chief executive, hundreds of sub-postmasters were sent to jail based on flawed evidence thrown up by the Post Office’s Horizon IT system.
Ms Vennells’s defence is that despite her experience – she was in senior roles for five years before taking the top job – she just did not know.
She spent much of day one establishing just how complete her ignorance was.
Post Office inquiry: Day 2 of evidence from former CEO – As it happened
Ms Vennells was in tears during her first day of evidence
She didn’t know there were bugs in the Horizon system before she became CEO. She didn’t know that branch accounts could be accessed remotely.
She didn’t even know the Post Office carried out its own prosecutions, a power it has held since the days when Dick Turpin was a greater threat to the bottom line than sub-postmasters.
Day two was largely concerned with what she did when she finally did find out what was going on, and it made ignorance look like bliss.
Over more than six hours of questioning, a picture emerged of an obsession with spin, public relations, media management, and the Post Office’s reputation being placed over and above concern for sub-postmasters.
Former Post Office boss Paula Vennells arrives for her second day of giving evidence to the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry. Pic: PA
It was most clearly exposed in correspondence between Ms Vennells and the then Post Office communications director Mark Davies.
It concerned her suggestion in 2013 that the Post Office conduct a review of all false accounting cases over the previous five to 10 years.
That plan was never pursued, and inquiry counsel Jason Beer asked if that amounted to “a lost decade until miscarriages of justice were discovered?”
“It may well have done,” she agreed. “It may well have done.”
Post Office Horizon IT scandal inquiry counsel Jason Beer KC
That begged the question, why didn’t it happen, and part of the answer came in an email from Mr Davies offering his view.
“If we say publicly that we will look at last cases… whether from recent history or going further back, we will open this up very significantly into front page news. In media terms it becomes very mainstream, very high-profile,” he wrote.
“To what extent did what Mr Davies advice here affect your decision-making?” she was asked.
“I would never – it was simply not the way I worked,” she said.
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Mr Beer then produced her reply to Mr Davies: “You were right to call this out. And I will take your steer, no issue,” she wrote.
“There are two main objectives, the most urgent being to manage the media, the second to make sure that we do address the concerns of JA [James Arbuthnot] and Alan Bates.”
Read more:
Former chief exec ‘agreed with PR advisor’
Key questions ex-Post Office boss must answer
‘I’ve got no sympathy for her’, Mr Bates says
“You did take the advice of the PR guy, didn’t you?” Mr Beer asked.
Her response, that she really didn’t remember, was drowned out by groans of derision from the sub-postmasters in the room, prompting chair Sir Wyn Williams to call for order.
Failure to remember is a consistent theme of Ms Vennells’s evidence, perhaps peaking with this, when asked about a 2013 board meeting: “My recollection,” she said, “is that I don’t recall.”
In 2019, nine men were jailed for raping and abusing two teenage girls living in a children’s home in Bradford.
One of the victims, Fiona Goddard, says more than 50 men raped her.
When the government began to talk about offering councils money for local inquiries, Fiona hoped Bradford would be one of the first to take up the offer. But there didn’t seem to be much enthusiasm.
The council was quick to point out that there had already been an independent case review into Fiona’s case, along with four other victims.
This, then, was Fiona’s first reasoning for wanting a national inquiry: The council felt it had done all that needed to be done. Fiona didn’t.
The Independent review, published in July 2021, found that while in the children’s home, Fiona “went missing almost on a daily basis”. The police attitude was that she could look after herself – she was “street-wise”.
There was “agreement by all agencies that Fiona was either at risk of Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) or actively being sexually abused and exploited”. But “this was not addressed by any single agency”.
And “when Fiona became pregnant at the age of 15, there was little curiosity or enquiry who the father was”.
So, obvious failings were discovered.
The predictable response was that lessons had been learned and new processes put in place. But no one seemed to be held accountable.
Grooming gangs timeline: What happened, what inquiries there were and how Starmer was involved
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Grooming gangs: What happened?
Ms Goddard told Sky News: “In my serious case review she [Jane Booth, the independent chair] found seven incidences at least, in them records that she found, of them not reporting sexual abuse or rape or assault, from as young as eight years old, and one of the incidences I literally turned up covered in blood and they didn’t report it.
“That is not just misunderstanding a crime, that is making intentional decisions not to report the sexual abuse of a child.”
She adds: “Let’s not forget, these people still work within social services and the police force.”
Not only did this Independent review not satisfy Fiona, but it also didn’t begin to reflect the levels and scale of abuse Fiona had experienced outside of Bradford.
‘I literally turned up covered in blood and they didn’t report it,’ Fiona says
Asked where she was trafficked to, Fiona rattles off a list of cities.
“Blackburn, Rotherham, Rochdale, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Oldham – never Telford, I’d never even heard of Telford until it all came out if I’m honest – Nottingham, Oxford.”
Then she remembers she didn’t go to Oxford – men from Oxford came to her – but the point is made.
Local enquiries can’t possibly begin to explore the networks of men who traffic women, often down routes of drug trafficking being done by the same gangs.
Bradford Council told Sky News it contributed to the national Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) and published more than 70 reports where child sexual exploitation was discussed and has implemented findings from the independent local review which included Fiona’s case.
Fiona believes there are numerous connections leading back to Bradford – but victims from each city often believe their abusers are at the centre of it.
We’ve spoken to grooming victims across the country, and in 2022, a case was reopened in Humberside after a Sky News investigation, where we found diary entries, texts, photos, and school reports all indicating that teenage victims had been abused.
Read more on this story:
Telford child abuse victims speak out
What we know about grooming gangs, from the data
The women who blew whistle on Rotherham
One of them was “Anna”, who also wants a national inquiry. She believes there is a national pattern of police forces not believing victims or even criminalising them instead.
Obtaining her own police records using a Subject Access Request (SAR), Anna found officers’ attitudes towards her were similar to what we heard with Fiona in Bradford, blaming her abuse and injuries on “lifestyle choices of her own”.
Anna said: “Every time I look at my Subject Access Request, I still think it’s shocking.
“It was the same sort of terminology – lifestyle choices, liar, attention seeker, and the majority of it was negative.
“It was really rare that I’d come across something where they were actually listening or they were concerned.”
Humberside Police told us: “As the investigation is active, it is imperative we protect its integrity; as such are unable to comment on aspects of the investigation as this could impact or jeopardise any criminal or judicial proceedings.”
But it is years now since Anna first reported her abuse, and she believes the police have left it too late to gather evidence.
She told Sky News: “I think it’s either happening everywhere, or young people have been taken everywhere.
“I think the attitudes of the professionals, the police, social services, from what I’ve heard and seen, they seem very similar in every area.”
The government-commissioned rapid review by Baroness Casey is due to be published next week and is expected to call for a national inquiry into grooming gangs.
Like Anna and Fiona, many victims will welcome Sir Keir Starmer’s early response accepting the recommendation.
They will want the inquiry to probe into the operations of the perpetrators – who they are and how they are connected.
But they will also want clear accountability of the people and organisations who failed to act when they reported their abuse – and an understanding of why, so often, authorities fail to protect these vulnerable girls.
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