Post Office live: Paula Vennells 'did not know' her organisation prosecuted people

4.35pm: She was so close to getting through to the finish, but Sir Wyn Williams wants a final question. He asks of the briefing note to the select committee: 'You were being advised to be very precise, circumspect and guarded about what you said. You would agree?'

Vennells: 'Yes.'

Williams: 'That was the effect trying to be created by those creating that document?'

Vennells: 'It could be.'

Williams: 'Why?'

There follows a long pause where Vennells is again brought to tears. After a minute or so, she recovers herself and replies: 'I could be too trusting of people. I took the information I was given and went into a select committee. From what I know now it may be other people knew more than I did and they were trying to direct me to answer in a certain way.'

And with that, we break for the night. We will all be back from 9.45am tomorrow.

4.20pm: The inquiry sees briefing notes prepared for Vennells in advance of her committee appearance, particularly on the issue of remote access. It states that she should volunteer certain answers only 'if pushed'. Vennells maintains she approached the committee with an intention to answer questions as openly and honestly as she could.

'Whatever anybody asked me I would only tell the truth,' she adds.

4pm: Beer says the inquiry has been told it was like the 'wild west' such was the access that Fujitsu had to amend transactions. Vennells says she should have been shown documents at the time which proved this. She also admits that it was decided not to retrieve relevant data that might have exposed remote access as it would cost a 'six-figure sum'.

She says it was 'deeply regrettable' that more information was not shared with her.

3.25pm: A board briefing is touched upon by Beer which again raises the issue of remote access. Vennells says others in the organisation were less concerned about this and she was reassured by head of IT Lesley Sewell that remote access to branch accounts was an emergency measure and only ever used once. Beer says we shall return to this after a short break.

3pm: Mood starting to turn here as groans come out of the public gallery when Vennells says she does not recall her response to another McCormack email (see below). This had made clear there was 'clear and unquestionable evidence of an intermittent bug in Horizon'. 

The Post Office appears to have done little to respond to McCormack. When he continued to contact Vennells and her colleagues, the Post Office ceased correspondence with him. Post Office solicitor Rodric Williams told the communications chief that McCormack was a 'bluffer who keeps expecting us to march to his tune'. Vennells says she doesn't believe McCormack was a bluffer.

Did Vennells not spot a pattern with the many people telling her there had been miscarriages of justice?

'I saw the theme of Horizon coming up,' she says. 'I believed the dots were being joined up by the investigation work in the complaints and mediation schemes. In every case I believed we had looked at it in some detail. I regret that clearly neither of those exposed the issues.'

2.45pm: Inquiry sees an email from Chesterfield MP Toby Perkins. He explains the situation of his constituent Harjinder Butoy, who was convicted on 10 counts of theft and jailed for three and a half years. He was made bankrupt and had his reputation ruined.

Crucially, Perkins flagged up to Vennells that Butoy believed he had been the victim of the faulty Horizon system.

Vennells says she may not even have seen this letter, saying there was no system for making her aware of these types of correspondence and that it would often depend on whether a letter had been left on her PA's desk.

2.25pm: We're back, with discussion about the terms of sub-postmasters' contracts and whether they were required to cover any shortfall on branch accounts. Vennells appeared to say this in correspondence when she was chief executive.

She does not recall where this assumption came from, although Beer points out that as network director from 2007 to 2012 she would have had responsibility for contract managers.

Vennells says: 'I trusted this was a process that had been in place for many years and run by an experienced team.'

1.10pm: Inquiry moves to an email sent in October 2013 from Second Sight's Ron Warmington, where he sent eight examples of cases where shortfalls were wrongly attributed to sub-postmasters and the devastating impact on victims and their families. There were also details included by Warmington of complaints about training and the Horizon helpline, as well as the approach of investigators.

Vennells emailed in reply: 'Apart from finding [the cases] very disturbing (I defy anyone not to) I am now even better informed.'

Beers asks what changed between her saying this and the Post Office shutting down the mediation scheme.

Vennells cries for a third time today and says it was an act of 'compassion'. 

12.25pm: Beer asks whether Vennells ever thought to ask head of security John Scott why there was a team of 100 people in the organisation investigating people for more than five years. This prompts laughter in the room, but Vennells still insists she did not know and assumed prosecutions were brought by external authorities outside the Post Office.

We go to another quick break.

12.10pm: Beer asks Vennells when she knew that the Post Office conducted its own investigations and prosecutions. She says this was not until 2012.

The inquiry then sees notes from a meeting in 2008 where it was said that the Post Office trainee investigators were 'performing solidly'. 'Who did you think was doing the investigating? asks Beer, who says it was 'openly discussed' that the Post Office was conducting its own investigations.

Vennells says that it is a reasonable inference and she should have known and asked more questions. 'When I joined Royal Mail in 2007 it was an organisation in which postmasters were investigated and I now know prosecuted by the organisation. It was a historic reality and it became a continued reality and I simply joined that.'

She continues to say she did not know that Post Office conducted criminal investigations until 2012.

11.50am: Beer points out that Vennells only seems to have clear recollections where they 'exculpate' her from blame. This, he suggests, has been the same for many former Post Office leaders who have appeared at the inquiry.

'Was there a systemic issue that people only looked to the good and forgot the bad?' asks Beer.

Vennells replies: 'No. I give you my word that I will respond in complete truth to this inquiry and have done in my statement.'

11.25am: We're back, and discussing the assertion Vennells made to MPs that the Post Office never lost a prosecution based on Horizon evidence.

She states this belief went back to a board meeting in January 2012 where Susan Crichton said the Post Office effectively had a 100% hit rate. 'That was completely inaccurate in many different ways,' Vennells now tells the inquiry.

'If you are given information by the highest lawyer in the organisation, you take it completely as the truth. You assume that lawyers - and I must be clear I am not implying anything in terms of Susan Crichton - but one assumes that lawyers work to a professional code. The Post Office didn't have sufficient oversight to check.'

The inquiry has previously heard Crichton say she received her information about success rates from in-house solicitor Jarnail Singh.

10.55am: Beer asks if Vennells feels like she was protected by colleagues from knowing too much information about what was really happening. She says this was not the case. But she does point out that former general counsel Susan Crichton had told the inquiry that the practice was not to disclose legal advices to her. These advices should have been shared, she says.

10.35am: Beer takes Vennells to her closing sentence in her witness statement where she says that 'lives were torn apart by being wrongly accused and wrongly prosecuted as a result of the Horizon system'.

Beer asks whether this shows that even after all this time she still believes this was just an IT issue, suggesting it was a 'perpetuation of a culture that ran through the Post Office of failing to take responsibility' for what happened. Vennells says her statement was a 'poor choice of words' and that she understands this scandal was far more complicated than just the Horizon system.

10.15am: Vennells says legal advice from barristers Simon Clarke and Brian Altman KC was commissioned and produced, but never presented in full to the board. Instead she and other directors were only told about the outcomes of these advices. Vennells says there was 'too much reliance' on general counsels at the Post Office to take decisions about what should be shared from legal advices.

'What happened is they were then reproduced into board documents which were shared, but the original advice would have been so much more useful,' she adds.

10am: Vennells' first witness statement is the longest produced by any participant, running to 775 pages. Vennells says she did not see the Simon Clarke KC advice (produced in 2013 giving details of Horizon bugs and attempts to shred minutes of meetings) until 2021. This will prove crucial on the subject of what she knew and what she did in response.

9.45am: Vennells enters the hearing room. An eerie silence as she comes in, with sub-postmasters observing an immaculate silence. Sir Wyn Williams, who is here in person, gives his usual direction about self-incrimination and that she does not have to answer any question where there is a risk that she might incriminate herself.

9am: A mass media gathering outside Aldwych House for perhaps the most anticipated news story of the year. Media outlets had to apply weeks in advance for a golden ticket to sit inside the hearing to hear what Paula Vennells knew about Horizon failings and what she did in response to that knowledge. It promises to be a fascinating three days. While the Post Office scandal is a national story, it has a particular relevance for the legal profession, as we explain here.