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Post Office latest: Paula Vennells wanted Post Office prosecutions to continue - lawyer - BBC News Post Office latest: Paula Vennells wanted Post Office prosecutions to continue - lawyer - BBC News
(32 minutes later)
Peter Ruddick Simon Jack
Business reporter Business editor
Chris Aujard was talking about the mediation scheme which opened in 2013. Susan Crichton finished her evidence this morning, before we heard from Chris Aujard.
This scheme was to be run by Second Sight. And the forensic accountants were to focus on this, not any final report on the Horizon IT system as a whole. Taken together with yesterday's session, her account painted a picture of an organisation where discussions were often unrecorded, and processes to make sure serious issues were communicated were inadequate.
If a complaint to the mediation scheme involved Horizon, then the onus was put on the sub-postmaster to prove a technical defect. Crichton admitted that as general counsel she should have made sure the key advice from Simon Clarke – that Fujitsu’s Gareth Jenkins evidence was flawed, and that the Post Office was at risk of failing to retain important documents – was seen by the board.
Why? Well because the interim version of the Second Sight report suggested there were no "systemic errors". Crichton said she felt she was being frozen out and discredited in part, as Paula Vennells suggested, for placing her professional ethics above the interests of the business.
The problem? That report was only interim! And Second Sight were being prevented from completing a final report by...the mediation scheme! It has and will be put to many witnesses in this inquiry that they often did exactly the opposite.
As we have heard, this all became academic anyway when the scheme was closed down. Partly because of a fear over how much it would all cost.
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