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.”
Zoe Ball is leaving her BBC Radio 2 breakfast show after six years.
The 53-year-old, who recently lost her mother to cancer, will present her last show on Friday, 20 December.
Ball leaves Wogan House with her replacement, Scott Mills. Pic: PA
She said she was leaving to focus on family, but will remain part of the Radio 2 team and will give further details next year.
Announcing the news on her Tuesday show, she said: “After six years of fun times alongside you all on the breakfast show, I’ve decided it’s time to step away from the early alarm call and start a new chapter.
“You know I think the world of you all, listeners, and it truly has been such a privilege to share the mornings with you, to go through life’s little ups and downs, we got through the lockdown together, didn’t we?
“We’ve shared a hell of a lot, the good times, the tough times, there’s been a lot of laughter. And I am going to miss you cats.”
Scott Mills will replace Ball on the breakfast show following her departure next month.
“Zoe and I have been such good friends now for over 25 years and have spent much of that time as part of the same radio family here at Radio 2 and also on Radio 1,” he said.
“She’s done an incredible job on this show over the past six years, and I am beyond excited to be handed the baton.”
Hugging outside the BBC building on the day of the announcement, Ball said she was “really chuffed for my mate and really excited about it”.
Ball was the first female host of both the BBC Radio 1 and Radio 2 breakfast shows, starting at the Radio 1 breakfast show in 1998, and taking over her current Radio 2 role from Chris Evans in 2020 after he left the show.
She took a break from hosting her show over the summer, returning in September.
Ahead of her stint in radio, Ball – who is the daughter of children’s presenter Johnny Ball – co-hosted the BBC’s Saturday morning children’s magazine show Live & Kicking alongside Jamie Theakston for three years from 1996.
She has two children, Woody and Nelly, with her ex-husband, DJ and musician Norman Cook, known professionally as Fatboy Slim.
Ball said in her announcement her last show towards the end of December will be “just in time for Christmas with plenty of fun and shenanigans”.
“While I’m stepping away from the Breakfast Show, I’m not disappearing entirely – I’ll still be a part of the Radio 2 family, with more news in the New Year,” she added.
“I’m excited to embrace my next chapter, including being a mum in the mornings, and I can’t wait to tune in on the school run!”
Helen Thomas, head of Radio 2, said: “Zoe has woken up the nation on Radio 2 with incredible warmth, wit and so much joy since January 2019, and I’d like to thank her for approaching each show with as much vim and vigour as if it were her first. I’m thrilled that she’ll remain an important part of the Radio 2 family.”
Mills, 51, got his first presenting role aged just 16 for a local station in Hampshire, and went on to present in Bristol and Manchester, before joining BBC Radio 1 in 1998.
He’s previously worked as a cover presenter on Radio 2, but this is his first permanent role on the station.
UK
More prisoners are being transferred to less secure jails to tackle overcrowding crisis, Sky News understands
The prison service is starting to recategorise the security risk of offenders to ease capacity pressures, Sky News understands.
It involves lowering or reconsidering the threshold of certain offenders to move them from the closed prison estate (category A to C) to the open estate (category D) because there are more free cell spaces there.
Examples of this could include discounting adjudications – formal hearings when a prisoner is accused of breaking the rules – for certain offenders, so they don’t act as official reasons not to transport them to a lower-security jail.
Prisoners are also categorised according to an Incentives and Earned Privileges (IEP) status. There are different levels – basic, standard and enhanced – based on how they keep to the rules or display a commitment to rehabilitation.
Usually ‘enhanced’ prisoners take part in meaningful activity – employment and training – making them eligible among other factors, to be transferred to the open estate.
Insiders suggest this system in England and Wales is being rejigged so that greater numbers of ‘standard’ prisoners can transfer, whereas before it would more typically be those with ‘enhanced’ status.
Open prisons have minimal security and allow eligible prisoners to spend time on day release away from the prison on license conditions to carry out work or education.
The aim is to help reintegrate them back into society once they leave. As offenders near the end of their sentence, they are housed in open prisons.
Many of those released as part of the early release scheme in October after serving 40% of their sentence were freed from open prisons.
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Overcrowding in UK prisons
They were the second tranche of offenders freed as part of this scheme, and had been sentenced to five years or more.
Despite early release measures, prisons are still battling a chronic overcrowding crisis. The male estate is almost full, operating at around 97% capacity.
Read more from Sky News:
Find out what it’s really like inside prison?
Prison recalls soar as justice system struggles
Campaigners demand IPP sentences are scrapped
Sky News understands there continue to be particular pinch points across the country.
Southwest England struggled over the weekend with three space-related ‘lockouts’ – which means prisoners are held in police suites or transferred to other jails because there is no space.
One inmate is believed to have been transported from Exeter to Cardiff.
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “The new government inherited a prison system on the point of collapse. We took the necessary action to stop our prisons from overflowing and to protect the public.
“This is not a new scheme. Only less-serious offenders who meet a strict criteria are eligible, and the Prison Service can exclude anyone who can’t be managed safely in a category D prison.”
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