Thread by @nickwallis

And still Paula Vennells fails to answer the question - how did she fail so badly? What did she know?

Here are a series of posts I have written about her role in the scandal to date.

The ballad of Paula Vennells - before the first High Court verdict:

postofficetrial.com/2019/02/the-ba…

Vennells leaves the Post Office in the middle of the High Court action.

May 2019 - "And with that - she was gone":

postofficetrial.com/2019/05/and-wi…

The Panorama episode where Ms Vennells refused to answer any questions on her role in the scandal:

bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00…

A fisking of Vennells written answers to the BEIS Select Committee inquiry:

“Paula Vennells breaks her silence”

postofficetrial.com/2020/06/paula-…

(incidentally here is a fisking of current PO CEO Nick Read’s response to the BEIS Select Committee:

“Nick Read’s selective awareness” - postofficetrial.com/2020/06/nick-r…)

(and here is a fisking of Fujitsu’s response to the same inquiry:

“Fujitsu tries to dodge the blame bus” - postofficetrial.com/2020/06/fujits…)

Here is my take on Paula Vennells role in the executive cover-up which took place in 2013:

"The Post Office cover up, part 1: How and when it happened” - postofficetrial.com/2020/07/the-po…

And here is my rogue’s gallery of the other PO execs involved in the 2013 cover-up - including the interim General Counsel Chris Aujard, who was seemingly parachuted in to do a special job:

postofficetrial.com/2020/07/the-po…

Ms Vennells has consistently dodged all media requests for interviews throughout her tenure as PO CEO - despite trousering £5m of taxpayers money for running a publicly-owned company. And she is still refusing to talk to journalists, telling them it would be “inappropriate”...

… to be held to account when she’s preparing to give evidence to a government inquiry. My view is that if you run a big company you should make yourself accountable and available when things go badly wrong. Especially when that company is publicly owned. Ms Vennells...

… clearly takes a different view and her paymasters at the government let her do so.

One leaving the Post Office, Ms Vennells got a CBE and slid into the warm embrace of the establishment, taking up a Cabinet Office post and chairmanship of a large NHS Trust….

… The Bishop of St Albans washed his hands of doing anything about her and as recently as December, the Chairman of Morrisons wrote to one of the now unconvicted Postmasters saying that he had “learnt through my career to take people as I find them” and that Paula Vennells...

… “brought a strong moral compass to the table”.

I take people as I find them, but I also ask them questions and do my research.

It is the constant willingness of the establishment to close ranks WITHOUT asking questions of the people around them...

… or just accepting their answers at face value which leads to problems being ignored, prolonging the agony for the victims.

Even the government belatedly realised Vennells was toxic. Here is a letter from the BEIS minister last year asking why she was still chair of a large NHS Trust:

postofficetrial.com/2020/10/exclus…

@threadreaderapp unroll pls