Vennells admits following 'grossly improper' advice

JOSH PAYNE

Ex-Post Office boss Paula Vennells followed a "grossly improper" suggestion to not review all subpostmaster prosecutions after a PR adviser said it would end up "front page news”, the Horizon IT inquiry heard yesterday. The probe was shown an email exchange between Ms Vennells and then director of communications Mark Davies in July 2013 in which she said she would “take your steer” after he said looking at all past cases would be “in media terms… very high profile”.

Ms Vennells agreed that, had the Post Office reviewed all prosecutions of false accounting, it “may well have” avoided the “lost decade” until miscarriages of justice involving subpostmasters were discovered. The public gallery at the inquiry, made up mainly of subpostmasters, groaned loudly after Ms Vennells said she did not remember if she took the “advice of the PR guy” not to review past prosecutions.

After chair Sir Wyn Williams intervened, Ms Vennells continued: “As I tried to say before, what we were working to at this stage was numbers of cases going through a scheme, and a scheme that was going to be opened up to anybody who wanted to come forward.

“I understand how this reads, but I don’t recall making any conscious decision not to go back and put in place a review of all past criminal cases.”

After Ms Vennells asked him for his thoughts on whether the business should look at cases going back five to 10 years, Mr Davies said: “If we say publicly that we will look at past cases – and whatever we say to JA (Lord Arbuthnot) or JFSA (Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance) will be public – whether from recent history or going further back, we will open this up very significantly, into front page news.