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Post Office inquiry live: Paula Vennells denies shielding board from 'dirty laundry' - BBC News Post Office inquiry live: Paula Vennells denies shielding board from 'dirty laundry' - BBC News
(32 minutes later)
Beer is asking Vennells if she blamed Susan Crichton for the Second Sight review. Sam Hancock
"If the project hadn't worked out, as had been originally planned, she had some accountability for that part of it," she says. Reporting from the inquiry
"I didn't blame Susan, that wasn't my style." Whenever Alan Bates' name is mentioned in the inquiry room - particularly when it involves letters or emails he's sent - people's ears prick up.
Vennells says the board had asked her if Crichton was the right person leading it going forward, adding that she believes she expressed her view that Crichton was. Shortly before the inquiry closed up, we were shown an email from 2012 that Bates sent to George Thomson, former head of the National Federation of Sub-Postmasters union, about the upcoming Second Sight investigation into issues with Horizon. It's here:
We're now seeing a file note from August 2013 on reflections Vennells had made following a meeting with Crichton at a Costa Coffee. We've also been shown that the email was then forwarded by Thomson to the Post Office's Nick Beal - with Vennells lopped in - calling Bates' words "rubbish".
"Susan was very, very angry. She yelled at me. She thinks this has damaged her reputation," Beer reads from the file note. "I will tell him Horizon is secure and robust and to go away," Thomson adds in his forwarding of the email to Beal. I note some low-level gasps in the room.
Vennells' reflections mentioned that Crichton had raised that Alice Perkins, the Post Office chairman from 2011 to 2015, had made mistakes. In the midst of giving her thoughts on the email to the inquiry, Beer suggests it's in fact Thomson's email that's "rubbish".
She said in the file note she'd told Crichton that "we probably all had". Amid laughs and scoffs from the audience, Vennells says that, with hindsight, she agrees.
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