Vennells booed in court for email that cases 'bored' her

Wrongly convicted subpostmasters booed former Post Office boss Paula Vennells when it was revealed she had dismissed their stories of injustice as "hype and human interest", saying she was more bored than outraged by them.

- JANE DALTON

The dramatic scenes occurred on the third day of her evidence to the Horizon IT scandal inquiry, during which the ex-chief executive apologised to a leading campaigner - who was accused of stealing £36,000 - for being rude to her.

Subpostmasters in the public gallery at the London hearing groaned when Ms Vennells said she did not remember whether she took the advice of a public relations expert not to review five to 10 years' worth of past prosecutions.

Ms Vennells, who ran the organisation from 2012 to 2019, said during her evidence there were no words that would make the "sorrow and what people have gone through any better".

And she admitted she had no one to blame but herself for what happened.

More than 700 subpostmasters were prosecuted by the Post Office and given criminal convictions between 1999 and 2015 when Fujitsu's faulty Horizon IT system made it appear as though money was going missing at their branches.

When the BBC's The One Show featured subpostmasters fighting to clear their names in 2014, Ms Vennells told colleagues she was "more bored than outraged" at hearing about their cases, the inquiry was told, prompting boos.

An email from December 2014 was revealed in which the former chief executive claimed former subpostmistress and leading campaigner Jo Hamilton "lacked passion and admitted false accounting on TV".