They presided over one of the worst miscarriages of justice in British history, in which up to 960 sub-postmasters had their lives ruined after they were wrongly accused of pilfering, fraud and false accounting.
Staff were plunged into a Kafka-esque nightmare after money seemed to vanish from their tills.
They were pilloried even though the shortfalls were the result of faults in the Post Office’s IT system Horizon.
Staff were plunged into a Kafka-esque nightmare after money seemed to vanish from their tills
Now MPs are calling for Post Office bosses to face criminal prosecutions. The first settlement with sub-postmasters in December resulted in a payout totalling £58million after a lengthy court case. Yet as the scandal unfolded Post Office bosses accumulated wealth, honours and a series of prestigious directorships.
Why did they allow the scandal to carry on unfolding in front of their eyes? Here are four bosses with serious questions to answer.
The Preacher
Name: Paula Vennells
Age: 61
Role: Former chief executive
Tenure: 2012-2019
Post Office earnings: £4.9m
The priest and mother of two sons joined the Post Office as network director in 2007 before becoming chief executive in 2012.
By the time she left in 2019, there had been a disastrous High Court battle against sub-postmasters and a series of missed chances to sort out the problem.
She landed plum jobs as chairman of he Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and adviser to the Cabinet Office.
Mrs Vennells was also made a CBE for ‘services to charity and the Post Office’.
As a non-executive director at supermarket giant Morrisons, she is paid £89,000-a-year for two or three meetings a month.
In September 2019 she was appointed director of homeware retailer Dunelm – adding another £51,000-a-year.
She lives in a plush detached house near Kempston, Bedfordshire. with husband John, 64, who was a director of a chemical engineering consultancy.
As a non-executive director at supermarket giant Morrisons, she is paid £89,000-a-year for two or three meetings a month
Mrs Vennells came from what she described as ‘working class Manchester’ with a father who worked at an engineering firm and a bookkeeper mother.
She excelled at the private Manchester High School for Girls and went on to read Russian and French at Bradford University. After a stint as an interpreter, she embarked on a business career with stints at Unilever, Whitbread, L’Oréal, Dixons and Argos before joining the Post Office in 2007.
She said it appealed to her sense of public duty and gave her an opportunity to ‘give back’. Mrs Vennells waxed lyrical about how her Christian faith was a driving force.
Despite the sub-postmasters scandal, she has won some plaudits for modernising branches and bringing the Post Office back into profit from heavy losses, reducing its reliance on the taxpayer.
But her record on the scandal threatens to overshadow all that. On her watch, former sub-postmaster Martin Griffiths, 59, took his life while being hounded for money by the Post Office.
And the prosecutions continued right up until 2015 – long after widespread doubts about the guilt of staff had surfaced. The pursuit of her own workers persisted throughout her reign despite a mounting body of evidence that the IT system was flawed. In 2011 an official audit report by Ernst and Young, which was sent to Post Office directors, said it ‘has again identified weaknesses’ in the Horizon IT system.
The Post Office did set up a mediation scheme in 2013 to try to make amends, but it failed and MPs labelled it a ‘sham’.
Then independent investigators, hired in the same year, found ‘phantom’ losses could have been caused by the IT system.
However, two years later Mrs Vennells told a committee of MPs she continued to ‘have confidence in the Horizon system’.
And in 2017 she approved the decision to fight sub-postmasters who claimed they had been wrongly accused in the High Court. After a series of defeats, her successor settled for £58million last December.
Tory peer Lord Arbuthnot, who has campaigned in Parliament on behalf of sub-postmasters for several years, said the whole Post Office board should take responsibility but ‘it starts with Paula Vennells’.
There have been some consequences for her. In 2018-19 her bonus was cut by £35,000 to £179,000 because of the litigation and its impact on the business. She was dumped from the Cabinet Office in March and ministers have written to the NHS watchdog, the Care Quality Commission, to ask if she is a ‘fit and proper’ person to head five hospitals.
It took until December 2019 before she apologised.
But for Mr Griffiths’ sister, Jayne Caveen, this was ‘too little too late’.
In response Mrs Vennells said: ‘It was and remains a source of great regret to me that these colleagues and their families were affected over so many years.
‘I am truly sorry we were unable to find both a solution and a resolution outside of litigation and for the distress this caused.’
The Politician’s Wife
Name: Alice Perkins
Age: 71
Role: Former chairman
Tenure: 2011-2015
Earnings: £100,000 a year
Alice Perkins, a paid up member of the New Labour aristocracy of the Tony Blair era, was the £100,000 a year chair of the Post Office from 2011 until 2015.
She is the second wife of ex-Labour home secretary Jack Straw. They have two adult children. Born and brought up in wealthy Hampstead, north London, she graduated from Oxford in Modern History.
Although the problems with Horizon date back to before she joined, she was in charge when alarm bells over the plight of the sub-postmasters were ringing.
Alice Perkins, a paid up member of the New Labour aristocracy of the Tony Blair era, was the £100,000 a year chair of the Post Office from 2011 until 2015
She held a meeting in May 2012 where concerns were raised about sub-postmasters. As chairman, she was in a position to have demanded the growing scandal be dealt with properly and to halt any attempts to gloss over it.
But instead, she was focused on hiving off the Post Office from the Royal Mail. On her departure, she claimed the Post Office was ‘more capable and confident’ than when she joined. The sub-postmasters who suffered so much may beg to differ. Miss Perkins could not be reached for comment.
Prince of Darkness
Name: Tim Parker
Age: 64
Job: Post Office chairman
Tenure: October 2015-present
Post Office earnings: £245,000
In City circles, he is known as the Prince of Darkness for the gusto with which he embarks on job cuts, writes Lucy White.
Tim Parker, 64, the current chairman of the Post Office, presided over a restructuring at Clarks Shoes after becoming its chief executive in 1996, during which time 20 factories were closed.
Eight years later he became boss of the AA, where he reportedly showed up in a Porsche to sack factory workers.
Tim Parker, 64, (left) the current chairman of the Post Office, presided over a restructuring at Clarks Shoes after becoming its chief executive in 1996, during which time 20 factories were closed.
Two years into his chairmanship of the Post Office, in 2017, he supported his chief executive in fighting 550 of his former staff through the civil courts using an aggressive legal strategy.
That he remains in post as a new chief executive, Nick Read, seeks to repair the Post Office’s reputation has raised eyebrows amongst Horizon campaigners.
The father of four, said to be worth £247million in the 2018 Sunday Times Rich List, said he was attracted to the Post Office by its ‘strong social purpose’. On joining in 2015, he claimed he only needed to work a day and a half per week to turn around the loss-making outfit.
He negotiated a £75,000 annual pay package and for at least the past two years has donated his Post Office fees to charity. He saw them reduced to £19,200 last year as he cut his hours further.
The businessman went to the £7,000 per term Abingdon School for boys and Oxford University, and was briefly First Deputy Mayor of London under Boris Johnson in 2008.
The Post Office has set up a compensation scheme for sub-postmasters.
… and the Dame
Name: Dame Moya Greene
Age: 65
Role: Chief executive, Royal Mail
Tenure: 2010-2018
Post Office earnings: £11.5million
Canadian-born Moya Greene was in charge of the Royal Mail for eight years.
Although Royal Mail, which delivers letters and parcels, is now separate from the Post Office – which runs the network of branches and services – her reign included a two-year period when both were part of the same empire.
When Dame Moya was in control of the Post Office, the scandal over the sub-postmasters had been bubbling for several years.
In 2009, just before she arrived, a group of former sub-postmasters told their story in trade magazine Computer Weekly and cases began to appear in local papers. The BBC reported on one female sub-postmaster, Seema Misra, 44, from Surrey, was pregnant when she was jailed for 15 months in 2010 for stealing £74,000.
This week, Dame Moya and her chairman were accused of continuing to prosecute postmasters after directors were told Horizon could be to blame for shortfalls in branch accounts.
When Dame Moya was in control of the Post Office, the scandal over the sub-postmasters had been bubbling for several years
Warnings included the official audit report by Ernst and Young from 2011, which identified weaknesses in the Horizon system that could ‘lead to… unauthorised or erroneous transactions’.
But Dame Moya accepted assurances from the bosses of the Post Office that the handling of the cases was all above board.
In hindsight, had she insisted on a full investigation, the misery might have been halted years earlier.
A year later in 2014, when Paula Vennells still maintained there were no faults in the Horizon system, Dame Moya was named the Sunday Times Business Person of the Year.
Dame Moya, who has an adult daughter from her first marriage, wed Dr Roger Springall in 2014 and lives in Fulham, west London.
After being approached by the Mail, she made no comment. When approached for comment ahead of publication Horizon’s architect, Fujitsu, said it was conducting a ‘thorough review’.
Church is urged to de-frock Post Office priestess
The Church of England was last night under pressure to de-frock the part-time priest who was at the heart of the Post Office IT scandal.
As a church minister, former Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells provides guidance to her congregation.
But postmasters, including a church warden, yesterday claimed she had not shown the same ‘moral standards’ during her tenure at the Post Office. Between 1999 and 2015, hundreds of postmasters were sacked, made bankrupt or wrongly convicted after cash appeared to vanish from their tills.
But it was later ruled that shortfalls in the accounts of branches were the result of flaws in the Post Office’s IT system called Horizon.
Mrs Vennells, 61, ran the company between 2012 and 2019, and questions are being raised as to whether she knew about the flaws at the time and, if so, to what extent. They resulted in hundreds of postmasters being driven into court in a fight that cost the taxpayer £90million.
Mrs Vennells went on to land plum roles as an adviser to the Government and chairman of a London NHS trust. The married mother-of-two, who was paid £4.9million during her Post Office tenure, was also made a CBE. She apologised to postmasters in December as a result of coverage in the Mail. Now churchgoers and postmasters have written to the Bishop of St Albans calling for Mrs Vennells to be de-frocked from her ministry in Bedfordshire.
Tom Hedges, a church warden and former postmaster, who received a suspended sentence after being accused of stealing £20,000 in 2010, said: ‘It was an absolute nightmare. As Christians, we should always try to forgive, but the apology she gave was couched in a way that did not ring true to me. I really think the bishop should stop her ministry.’
Andy Furey, of the Communications Workers Union, which represents some postmasters, said: ‘Our members will find it hypocritical that, in her role as a priest, she is still trusted with providing guidance to her congregation, when she did not apply those moral standards when dealing with the victims and their families.’
The Bishop of St Albans, Dr Alan Smith, said: ‘My view, taken following legal advice, is that I cannot simply impute to Mrs Vennells all of the failures found to have been committed by Post Office Ltd.’
There is also growing pressure at the heart of Government for Mrs Vennells to be removed from her role as chairman of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. A senior minister said: ‘It’s outrageous. It just looks like rewards for failure.’
In March Mrs Vennells was dumped as an adviser to the Cabinet Office amid fears the scandal was becoming toxic for No 10. Last week MPs called for Post Office bosses to face criminal prosecutions.
Mrs Vennells is accused of ignoring a 2013 report which found ‘phantom’ losses in postmasters’ accounts could have been caused by the IT system. In 2017 she decided to fight 550 postmasters in civil courts, which cost £32million in legal fees. In December the Post Office settled for £58million. Separately the cases of 47 postmasters convicted of theft, false accounting and fraud have been sent to the Court of Appeal, and 14 more are under review. A further 900 cases could follow.