The account of the Post Office’s former chief executive about what she knew during key years of the firm’s scandal is not believed by the former CEO of Royal Mail, the inquiry into the injustice has heard.

Paula Vennells has been giving evidence as part of a three-day appearance at the inquiry into the impact of faulty Horizon accounting software, which led to the prosecution of more than 700 sub-postmasters.

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In addition to the wrongful convictions for theft and false accounting, many more sub-postmaster victims generated large debts, lost homes, livelihoods and reputations and suffered ill health. Some died by suicide.

Widely not believed

The inquiry heard that Dame Moya Greene, the former Royal Mail CEO whom Ms Vennells worked alongside for many years, texted Ms Vennells in January of this year to express her disbelief at the wrongdoing denials.

Ms Vennells has long maintained – and reiterated on Wednesday – that she was unaware of the extent of flaws with Fujitsu’s Horizon software.

Sub-postmasters listening to the inquiry in the Fenny Compton village hall in Warwickshire, where dozens of sub-postmasters met for the first time in 2009 as they began their fight for justice, also said they did not believe Ms Vennells.

“She is blatantly, utterly lying, and it’s got to stop,” former sub-postmaster Sally Stringer told Sky News.

Dame Moya texted Ms Vennells after the airing of the ITV drama Mr Bates Vs The Post Office, which reinvigorated interest in the scandal, saying: “When it was clear the system was at fault, the Post Office should have raised a red flag. Stopped all proceedings. Given people back their money, and then tried to compensate them from the ruin this caused in their lives.”

When Ms Vennells replied that she agreed, Ms Greene said: “I don’t know what to say. I think you knew”.

“I want to believe you. I asked you twice. I suggested you get an independent review reporting to you. I was afraid you were being lied to. You said the system had already been reviewed multiple times. How could you not have known?” her text said.

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Why she says she didn’t know

The question of how it was that she couldn’t have known was taken up the the inquiry’s lead barrister Jason Beer KC.

Ms Vennells core argument emerged early in questioning: she said she wasn’t informed of bugs because of the way information flowed within the organisation. She accepted that as CEO she was in charge of how information was communicated.

“I was too trusting,” she said.

Emotional testimony

Ms Vennells broke down in tears numerous times during her evidence, the first of which was when Mr Beer read out details of sub-postmasters who were not convicted, as juries accepted there were flaws with Horizon.

The inquiry had just been presented with evidence of Ms Vennells telling MPs in 2012, “Every case taken to prosecution has found in favour of the post office. There hasn’t been a case investigated where the horizon system has been found to be at fault”.

This belief, Ms Vennells said, was “a representation of the information that I was given” rather than proof of an unwavering belief that nothing had gone wrong.

‘Wait and see’ accusation

Criticism came from Mr Beer over the fulsomemess of Ms Vennells cumulative 798-page witness statement.

He asked if she was adopting a “wait and see” approach: “Let’s see what comes out in evidence. See what I’ve got to admit and then I’ll admit that?”

“Given you provided a 775-page witness statement that took seven months to write, could you not have reflected on what you should have done fully and differently within the witness statement?” he added.

Ms Vennells’ statement said that with the benefit of hindsight, there were “many things” she should have “done differently”, but she would wait for the inquiry to conclude to expand on that detail.

But she denied adopting a “wait and see” approach.

Rather, “It was simply a matter of time,” she said. “The inquiry asked me, I think, over 600 questions to 200 or 300 with subquestions in each. I went through probably hundreds of thousands of documents.”

Evidence to Parliament in 2015

A major question going into the inquiry was how Ms Vennells was able to tell Parliament in 2015 there was “no evidence” of “miscarriages of justice”.

On Wednesday morning, Ms Vennells said that was what she had been told “multiple times” by Fujitsu – that nothing had been found in Horizon.

Comic relief

Back in the village hall in Fenny Compton there were moments of laughter when Mr Beer asked Ms Vennells if she was “the unluckiest CEO in the United Kingdom?”

His question was asked “In the light of the information that you tell us in your witness statement you weren’t given… the documents that you tell us in your witness statement that you didn’t see. And in the light of the assurances that you tell us about in your witness statement that you were given by Post Office staff”.

‘Exculpatory’ remembering

Another line of questioning from Mr Beer was that Ms Vennells had a better memory of events and records that made her and the Post Office look good and a worse recollection of things that made her and her organisation look bad.

“Why is it that in your witness statement, when you refer to a recollection of a conversation that’s unminuted, undocumented, not referred to in any email there are always things that exculpate you that reduce your blameworthiness?” he asked.

That wasn’t her approach, Ms Vennells said.

Signing off a £300,000 legal bill to go after a £25,000 loss?

Sub-postmasters and those following the scandal likely will be listening out to see if Ms Vennells approved the legal bill to prosecute Lee Castleton, who was featured as a victim in the ITV drama.

Earlier this month former managing director Alan Cook told the inquiry Ms Vennells approved legal costs of £300,000 to prosecute Mr Castleton for a supposed £25,000 shortfall when she was a network director at the Post Office.

The rate of price rises has dropped to 2.3% in April – the lowest in nearly three years and just above the Bank of England’s target, according to official data.

Inflation is at a low not seen since July 2021, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.

A month earlier, in the year up to March, the figure was 3.2%.

It’s now just above the 2% target set by the Bank of England and central banks across the world and will likely encourage the rate-setters to lower interest rates and make borrowing cheaper as a result.

A goal of 2% is set by central banks, whose job it is to ensure inflation sticks at that level, as it’s judged high enough so consumers avoid putting off purchases for fear of goods becoming cheaper and low enough that there’s price certainty.

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Wylfa in North Wales is the preferred site for a major new nuclear power development, the government has announced.

Ministers are beginning talks with international energy firms to explore building the UK’s third mega-nuclear power station at the Anglesey site, according to the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ).

The department said the gigawatt nuclear power plant could provide enough clean power for six million homes for 60 years.

Britain has a target of generating a quarter of all electricity – around 24GW – from home-grown nuclear power by 2050.

The aim is part of the government’s plan to enhance energy security and deliver on net zero.

Currently, the UK generates about 15% of its electricity needs from nuclear capacity.

The Wylfa project could be similar in scale to Hinkley in Somerset and Sizewell in Suffolk, with hopes it would bring thousands of jobs and investment to the area.

Labour has accused the government of “dither and delay” on new nuclear at Wylfa, after Japanese giant Hitachi pulled out of a previous project there in 2019 because of rising costs.

Wylfa’s twin reactor Magnox nuclear power station, which went online in 1971, stopped generating power at the end of 2015 and has been decommissioned.

Energy Security Secretary Claire Coutinho said: “Anglesey has a proud nuclear history and it is only right that, once again, it can play a central role in boosting the UK’s energy security.

“Wylfa would not only bring clean, reliable power to millions of homes – it could create thousands of well-paid jobs and bring investment to the whole of North Wales.”

The UK is working to expand nuclear power through traditional large-scale plants as well as small modular reactors (SMRs), which supporters hope will be quicker and cheaper to construct.

Great British Nuclear aims to announce winning bidders in the tendering process to build SMRs by the end of this year.

But this is later than the spring timetable the government set last October for announcing the successful companies.

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Tom Greatrex, chief executive of the Nuclear Industry Association, said the government is “absolutely right” to pursue more large-scale nuclear alongside the SMR programme.

He said: “Wylfa is the best site in Europe for a big nuclear project: It has an existing grid connection, the hard bedrock ideal for a nuclear power station, superior cooling water access, and some work to clear the site for large-scale construction was already done by the previous developer.”

Labour’s shadow energy minister Alan Whitehead said: “We welcome the government finally moving forward with a nuclear project identified by the last Labour government.

“But this should be the bare minimum – and celebrating a tentative step forward in 2024 on a project that should have been moving in 2010 tells you everything about this tired, snail’s-pace government.”