Former Post Office boss Paula Vennells, 60
Postmasters have branded the former Post Office boss who led the legal fight against 550 of its staff ‘heartless and shameful’ after she refused to apologise.
Paula Vennells, 60, has never admitted that errors in an IT system were to blame for millions of pounds appearing to go missing from post offices.
She left the company earlier this year, after earning £4.5million in pay and bonuses during her time as chief executive, and was handed a CBE for services to the Post Office.
Earlier this month, the Post Office capitulated in a series of high court trials and handed sub-postmasters £58million in compensation.
Some had been jailed, made bankrupt or hounded out of their jobs as fraudsters because glitches in the Horizon computer system caused shortfalls in their accounts. One man committed suicide amid the stress of being chased for the ‘missing’ money.
Mrs Vennells was the Post Office network director from 2007, and chief executive from 2012 to 2019.
Mrs Vennells left the company earlier this year, after earning £4.5million in pay and bonuses during her time as chief executive
Daily Mail headline from December 13
When asked at her home on Friday whether she would like to apologise, she said ‘No’, adding that she found the question ‘unacceptable’.
Postmasters at the centre of the Horizon scandal have reacted with fury. Jayne Caveen’s postmaster brother Martin Griffiths, 59, was being hounded for money before he took his life in September 2013.
She said: ‘Words fail me. This woman has driven people to suicide. That was an opportunity to say that mistakes have been made, and we’re sorry.
Mother-of-two Seema Misra, 44, ran the post office in West Byfleet, Surrey, before she was jailed for 15 months when she was eight weeks’ pregnant. She is pictured above in an earlier TV interview
‘I’m really angry and bitter about it. It’s shameful she’s been in denial all these years. It’s heartless.’ Janet Skinner, 49, a mother-of-two given a nine-month jail sentence after being falsely accused of an accounting error by the Post Office, said: ‘Paula Vennells needs to be held accountable. She’s destroyed so many lives and reaped profits off our sorrow.’
Andy Furey, of the Communications Workers’ Union, said: ‘The way Paula Vennells has behaved is atrocious.
‘She’s got no remorse or empathy towards people who are clearly innocent. She should have her gongs taken away and be put in front of a parliamentary inquiry to find out what’s gone wrong here.’
Noel Thomas (pictured) was among more than 550 sub-postmasters who brought a group legal action against the Post Office
The £58million settlement was a victory for the Daily Mail, which has repeatedly highlighted the scandal and campaigned to save village post offices.
Mrs Vennells, who is also an ordained priest, was head of the Post Office during the prosecution of 45 postmasters for false accounting or theft, according to information released under freedom of information laws.
Under her leadership, the Post Office took the decision to fight postmasters’ claims in court, spending an estimated £32million of taxpayers’ money on legal fees.
For years she and her senior team stubbornly insisted the computers never lied, calling the software ‘robust’. This was despite independent investigators saying, in 2015, that there was ‘only limited evidence’ for charges of theft. The Criminal Cases Review Commission is examining 34 convictions.
A High Court judgment handed down earlier this month ruled that it was possible for bugs and errors to cause shortfalls in the Post Office accounts.
Daily Mail headline from December 12
Mr Justice Fraser also questioned the veracity of evidence given by the Post Office’s IT experts under oath in the trials.
Mrs Vennells has enjoyed the fruits of her job at the Post Office. She lives in a large detached family home – with a long tree-lined drive, a large garden and a lake – in a Bedfordshire village where house prices average £600,000.
She is now a non-executive director for the Cabinet Office and retailers Dunelm and Morrisons, and she chairs the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust.