Paula Vennells Post Office inquiry live today: Ex-CEO breaks down ...

Fujitsu Europe’s then-chief executive described the core of Horizon like “Fort Knox” or an “aircraft flight recorder” when discussing remote access, Paula Vennells said in her first witness statement.

Ms Vennells and Duncan Tait, Fujitsu Europe’s then-CEO, concurred it was “implausible” that Post Office branch accounts could be altered remotely, Ms Vennells said when detailing her understanding of remote access as of July 3 2013.

She said she asked Mr Tait if a Fujitsu colleague could alter branch accounts remotely, and said his response was no and “we concurred it was an implausible scenario”.

She added: “Why would a Fujitsu colleague try to hack into a branch’s accounts? We couldn’t find any suitable explanation - there was no way they could benefit financially from such an action. The only possible reason would be a malicious act by a disgruntled employee.

“Duncan described the core of Horizon like a black box, ie., similar to an aircraft flight recorder; he said that even if someone wanted to, it was not possible to alter or break it.

“I had heard the black box description before. He described how secure the system was - that even if someone had the motivation, it just wasn’t possible - Horizon was like Fort Knox. I found it reassuring that the CEO of Fujitsu confirmed that there was no cause for concern and that the system could not be tampered with.”

Paula Vennells has said she does not know why she was not shown a 2013 report warning that Post Office systems were “not fit for purpose in a modern retail and financial environment” – and said she is not sure she even knew that company Detica were carrying it out.

Ms Vennells said: “I find it very strange that it wasn’t brought to me, not just to my attention, but to the attention of everybody else who had responsibilities in terms of the running of the Post Office.”

Asked whether it was a serious failure by Lesley Sewell, Chris Aujard and Angela van den Bogerd – who all appear to have had access to the document – not to inform her, Ms Vennells said: “I find it very strange that it wasn’t brought to my – and it isn’t just to my attention, it’s the attention of everybody else who had responsibilities in terms of the running of the Post Office.

Pressed on whether she had “any clue why they would want to keep you, the executive, and the board, out of this information”, she said: “No I don’t. And I don’t recall either that they were colleagues that I would have suspected were witholding something from the board, or myself.

“I don’t understand why the report didn’t progress.”

Former subpostmaster Janet Skinner – who was sentenced to nine months in prison in 2007 for false accounting – expressed sympathy for Paula Vennells in giving evidence to a room of people with “eyes full of hatred”.

“I’ll be honest I felt quite emotional this morning,” Ms Skinner told the PA news agency. “I actually felt emotional for her because she is up there and she has got all these eyes there that are just full of hatred towards her and that must be such an overwhelming, horrible, intense feeling.”

But she said Ms Vennells “has brought it all on herself” before continuing: “This is her time on that stand to now put her side of the story out there. Everybody has chucked mud at her, it’s time for her to open up and be quite open and honest about who was at the forefront of it all.”

Paula Vennells has been pressed once again by lead counsel Richard Beer KC on how she had not realised the Post Office had a vast team prosecuting subpostmasters when speaking to former head of security John Scott after the Second Sight report.

Mr Beer said: “When you spoke to John Scott about this, did you not say: ‘I’ve been in the organisation five or six years now, I didn’t know you had a team of 100 people that were investigating up and down the country subpostmasters and sending them to prison’.”

He added: “Dozens of prosecutions occurred when you were network director, dozens of prosecutions occurred when you were managing director – collectively hundreds of prosecutions went on, conducted by the Post Office, having been investigated by the Post Office – and you didn’t know about it until 2012.

“So when you spoke to [former head of security] John Scott, did you not say: ‘how’s this all been going on? Who’s been managing you? Why doesn’t the board know about this?’”

Ms Vennells replied that at the time she spoke to Mr Scott “all that had changed” because “we had stopped prosecutions, his team had been substantially reduced in number and we were looking into the complaints made by the subpostmasters”.

The inquiry’s chair Sir Wyn Williams has stepped in to quiz Paula Vennells over her claims not to have realised the Post Office prosecuted its own staff until 2012 – despite joining the organisation in 2007.

Ms Vennells told the inquiry “it was an accepted reality, it was a status quo that I joined and accepted”, adding: “I shouldn’t have done.”

This prompted Sir Wyn to interject: “Isn’t an accepted reality an acknowledgement of an awareness of the reality? Mr Beer’s pressing you on how it could possibly be that you weren’t aware of the use of a function which was highly unusual for a private company.”

She replied: “I agree, Sir Wyn. The way that Mr Beer describes it is that it was a function that one didn’t hear about. We knew about cases being prosecuted, and I can’t remember – the Post Office board met infrequently – whether there were significant litigation reports that came to the Post Office board before I became chief executive.

“I can’t remember, but I think everybody’s understanding – mine included – was that where prosecutions were conducted, they were conducted by external authorities.”

But Sir Wyn noted: “There was at least one case two years before 2012 – Mrs Misra’s case – which attracted great deal of publicity. It does seem extremely surprising that it didn’t filter through at that point that it was actually the Post Office that was prosecuting, not the CPS.”

Ms Vennells said: “I agree. I haven’t seen anything in the documentation that points to the fact that one would have known that”, prompting Sir Wyn to interject: “I don’t think I need documentation to infer that this might be a point of discussion among senior people.”

Ms Vennells said: “I apologise. My point about documentation was whether there was anything that would have prompted my memory. I have no recollection of being involved in conversations about Mrs Misra’s case ... there were not, as far as I know, discussions about the fact it was Post Office who had investigated and brought the prosecution.”

Paula Vennells has insisted she did not know until 2012 that the Post Office conducted its own private criminal investigations.

Asked about notes from a meeting in 2008 which shows trainee investigators and the sums reclaimed from postmasters were discussed, Ms Vennells said it would be a reasonable inference to draw from the document that the Post Office was personally recouping money from its own staff – but insisted she had not taken that from the meeting herself.

She added: “I should have known and I should have asked more questions, and I and others who also didn't know should have dug much more deeply into this.”

Ms Vennells said she was “surprised” to learn in 2012 that the Post Office prosecuted its own staff, and said she recalled no discussion of that in the years she had served on the Post Office’s risk and compliance committee.

Asked whether she was preoccupied with the need to protect the Post Office’s reputation and brand, Ms Vennells said: “Yes but not to the extent over putting that over and above the suffering of subpostmasters.”

Pressed on whether she knew they were suffering, she said: “That’s a difficult question to answer because the answer is yes and no. I understood clearly if people were being prosecuted that was a very difficult thing and the reason we put in place the review with Second Sight and complaint and mediation scheme was to look into that.

“I wasn’t personally aware at the time because I wasn’t involved in the prosecutions. But I would like to say that whenever I spoke about the Post Office brand, it was a brand that was only ever built up through Post Offices, and it was a very strong belief of mine which I mentioned at conferences and meetings that Post Office Ltd as a corporate entity, there was no reason to build that as a brand.

“The reason customers came to Post Office and people chose to work for it was because of the wonderful work that was done in Post Offices across the country and still is every day. And that was the brand I was talking about.”

“So brand was absolutely important but in the sense of the local Post Offices.”

The inquiry has heard that Paula Vennells was not responsible for signing off on the Post Office spending £300,000 in costs pursuing £26,000 debt claimed to be owed by subpostmaster Lee Castleton.

The main hearing took place in 2006 an the main judgement was handed down in January 2007, the same month Ms Vennells joined the Post Office.

Paula Vennells has denied “trying to get on the front foot” after asking in an email in 2013 about “what the process is” if someone “mentions the Post Office in a potential suicide case”.

Noting that she knew Martin Griffiths’ family believed he had taken his own life because it had been ruined by the Post Office, lead counsel Martin Beer KC said: “You had just been told about his death, and you were trying to get on the front foot here, weren’t you.”

Ms Vennells replied: “No. No, Mr Beer that was not the case.”

She added: “What I was trying to do quite simply was to get the wider picture and to understand particularly the very difficult challenges that Mr Bates had levelled at Post Office colleagues.”

Paula Vennells has been accused of asking her team to “dig into” the records of Martin Griffiths, a subpostmaster who attempted suicide on 23 September 2013 and died in hospital weeks later.

Post Office inquiry counsel Jason Beer KC presented Ms Vennells with an email in which she said she had “heard but have yet to see a formal report that there were previous mental health issues… and potentially family issues”.

He asked: “Were you asking your team here to dig into Mr Griffiths’ health records to look for information or evidence that he took his life because of mental issues or family issues?”

Ms Vennells said: “I simply should not have said it. I should not have used these words.”