Paula Vennells, under questioning from a lawyer acting on behalf of a number of subpostmasters, insisted she “loved” the Post Office before growing visibly upset and pausing to compose herself.
On her third day of evidence to the Horizon IT Inquiry, the former Post Office boss said she “believed” she was asking the right questions about the Horizon system but accepted she “may not have” as she was not an IT expert.
Sam Stein KC said: “Ms Vennells, you’re not stupid. You studied French, Russian, business as a degree. You then worked for well-known companies in the UK – Whitbread, Argos, others.
“You rose through the ranks of the Post Office to become its CEO. You were pushing forward under network transformation. You’ve been quoted as saying that you want and you see a future of the Post Office opening up more branches, 30,000 branches in the future.
“That was you, Ms Vennells, at the time. A vision you were expressing to everyone that asked about what you could see for the future. And yet here, all of these facts were adding up to there being a real problem, a really difficult problem to chew over, right the way through 2013.
“And you failed didn’t you? You failed to get into this, on your account, you failed to ask the right questions. You couldn’t be bothered, could you Ms Vennells? The risk was too great. Looking under that rock, you’re going to find a problem, it’s going to devastate the Post Office. Ruin it. And you couldn’t let that happen, could you Ms Vennells?”
The former chief executive said “I loved the Post Office”, after which she grew emotional and paused to compose herself.
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