Ex-Post Office boss Paula Vennells followed a “grossly improper” suggestion to not review all subpostmaster prosecutions after her communications chief said it would end up “front page news”, the Horizon IT inquiry has heard.
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 decided to review 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 of mainly subpostmasters, groaned loudly after Ms Vennells said she did not remember if she took the “advice of the PR guy” to review past prosecutions.
After chairman 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.”
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21 сен 2024
