106: A Washed Up Government

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Page 94, the Private Eye podcast.

Hello and welcome to another episode of Page 94.

My name is Andrew Hunter Murray, and I'm here in the Private Eye office with Helen Lewis, Adam McQueen, and special guest Richard Brooks.

We are going to be talking about the post office.

Richard has been at the post office inquiry, where the former chief executive Paula Vennels has been giving evidence.

But first of all, we're going to be talking, of course, about the fact we are about to have a general election.

Hugely exciting, and it's going to be the focus of a special episode we record in a couple of weeks, which is going to be answering your election questions.

So, if you would like to have your burning election question answered by the team here, all you need to do is email it to podcast at private-i.co.uk.

Please send in your questions.

We'd love to read them, and we'd love to answer them as effectively as we can.

So, the election's been called.

This is very exciting.

Everyone's been

thrilled, don't you?

I do.

I sound as excited as Rishi Sunak did when he was announcing it.

We are now entering a very exciting period, a period of purdah, a period of heightened sensitivity at the top of the civil service, where you have to be very careful about what you're saying and whether people are making political statements on government property and all this kind of stuff.

And we've entered the washing up period, which is very insensitive, isn't it?

Saying to Rishi Sunak, basically, you're washed up.

But this is where you have to pass or chuck all the legislation that you had on the books.

And a lot of people have been saying for some time there isn't very much actually in the pipeline.

Pipeline's a bit anemic and a bit trickly at the moment.

One of the things which has been junked is slaps.

Yeah, which I've been writing about in the last couple of issues of Private Eye.

So this was a really, really weird bill.

This was a government-backed bill, but it wasn't a government bill.

It was brought by a backbencher, a Labour MP for Capilly, Wayne David.

But given the full backing of the Justice Secretary, I should explain at the outset for people who haven't been reading Private Eye enough recently what slaps are.

They are strategic lawsuits against public participation.

They are, and if this isn't a theme for the podcast, I don't know what, large and powerful people with lots of money bullying people through the courts through legal action.

We've written a lot about cases where journalists, particularly writing about Russian oligarchs, have been dragged through the courts and hit with kind of repeated libel and privacy and data protection claims, and essentially just like the full kind of law fare, as it's sometimes called, against them to try and stop them writing about people who don't want to be written about.

So, this was some legislation that was hopefully going to put an end to that.

It was looking a bit iffy because this new society popped up called the Society of Media Lawyers, who were headed up by a load of people from our favorite company, Carter Fuck.

But not just them, quite a few others as well.

Thompson Heath, they were in there, Russell Brand's favourite lawyers, amongst many.

Mish Condoraya were in there as well, people like Withers and Kingsley Napley.

I know when you said withers, I just had Smithers.

Yes.

Pretty much the picture.

Yeah, all signing up to this Society of Media Lawyers, which exists for one thing only.

They don't just get together for cheese and nibbles.

Essentially, they get together to try to convince the government that there is no such thing as slaps.

It's not even really a case of just trying to kind of temper the legislation that's going through.

It's basically saying there is no evidential basis for this whatsoever.

There is no such thing as a slaps thing, and please could we carry on taking lots and lots of money from Russian oligarchs?

Is that because slap is quite a broad array of different legal tools that people use?

Is that it?

It's about arguing.

I mean, in order to legislate against something, you have to define exactly what it is.

So it's attempting to sort of lobby at every point and say, well, no, it isn't, no, it isn't, no, it isn't.

And the point that they got to after after some sustained lobbying

was that there is an acceptable amount of harassment which is allowed in every legal case, which is quite a weird concept.

But then actually, in a way, if you are being sued, you know, you potentially are going to lose everything.

That is kind of harassment, isn't it?

I mean, I've got to say, more than one legal letter even could be counted as harassment.

So, I mean, that's that weird thing in laws that you have to, you do have to find a definition that is watertight and works.

So there is a case for a lot of lobbying in that.

So there was a bill to stop slaps happening.

There was a bill.

We wrote in the last edition of the eye that it was looking like it was going to be watered down beyond all recognition and that the latest move by the Society of Media Lawyers was to put in an enormous freedom of information request to the Department of Justice, which was aimed at finding their evidential basis for saying that slaps existed at all.

So it basically attempted to wipe the whole thing off.

We said it would be disastrous if this whole thing were to be wiped off the statute book before it could get anywhere near it.

Well guess what's happened now?

Rashi went out in the rain and announced last Wednesday there was going to be a general election.

The wash-up period actually has started and finished.

It had two days.

It was Thursday and Friday last week.

What?

The slaps bill was not amongst the things that were hastily considered by the House of Commons and the House of Lords, and it is gone.

Oh, no.

But sorry, that sounded sarcastic.

That was a genuine one.

That's a genuine one.

I never know how it works with things surviving into the next government.

I mean, have Labour indicated that they're get out the paddles?

This is that weird situation because it was being brought by a Labour-backbencher anyway.

There is now, I think, sustained lobbying from the other side going on to try to to make this a manifesto commitment from Labour.

And it did have cross-fossils support this.

No one likes Russian oligarchs bullying people, and no one really likes rich lawyers very much.

So, you know, it's got some appeal right across the house, this one.

And also, particularly disliking the prospect of being sued into oblivion, of course, are the media.

We're not exactly a disinterested party in this.

And if Keir Starmer wants to stay in with lots and lots of media proprietors and editors, it probably wouldn't be a bad move to have something like this in your manifesto.

So the hope is, assuming, as the polls would seem to indicate, that Keir Stahmer is our next prime minister, it might come back as an actual properly government-backed and a promoted bit of legislation.

So keep your fingers crossed for that one.

While we're getting the washing up done, I had a look at everything that had been nixed and everything that was rushed through last Thursday and Friday.

So here's a little quiz, just to see if you've been definitely paying attention.

I also looked at this list of feeling really comfortable.

Oh, okay.

I shouldn't have admitted that.

Adam, you've done the reading.

Helen, you've done the reading.

Richard?

No.

You've been listening to Paul of Emils and passing by the Hankies occasionally.

Okay.

That was an election.

He hadn't noticed.

He's like that Japanese soldier coming out of the forest study.

I'm washed up.

Okay.

Here's an easy one to start with.

Smoking ban.

You can just say,

it's R.I.P.

R.I.P.

And the really sad thing about that is that the Tories put out an ad that said all the things that they'd done, and one of them was like, ended smoking among young people.

And update regarding that, no, they haven't.

They didn't.

They dropped that.

Even though I think Labour would have voted for it, I think they just thought, no.

I think that's got to be one where there's a chance of it coming back, though, hasn't it?

Because Labour have said they backed that part.

They say it now.

Maybe.

Sex offenders to be banned from changing their names.

Gone.

It's gone.

It's gone.

It was actually quite a good idea.

That's a very good idea.

I'm surprised it wasn't time for it.

Yeah.

Yeah, there we go.

A football governing body.

Gone.

Gone.

It's gone.

Do you know what I know has got through, though?

There's one about the leasehold tenure of the Royal Zoological Society, which governs London Zoo.

And I was very pleased to see that the future of the penguins is assured.

That snuck under the wire.

They're not afraid to pass the big important stuff.

A ban on pet abduction.

That's in.

That stayed in.

How was that not illegal already?

Anyway, we can.

Well,

funny thing, it was illegal already.

It was already theft, but now there's an extra offence

of pet theft.

Yes, if you are caught detaining a dog, you can get up to five years in prison.

God.

How long do you have to detain it for?

I think you can't just rub some sausage on your trousers and get it to follow you for a bit.

Right, because I met my sister's cat.

Are we to have no fun?

I met my sister's cat at the weekend, Trevor.

And I'll be honest with you, he didn't look that thrill when I picked him up, but technically, I may have been done for that.

You may yet.

You might have just squeaked in before the law was passed.

You never know.

A ban on extra fees being added at online checkouts.

I feel like that's a good law that I would support, and therefore I imagine it's gone and is dead.

No, it's in.

That's been passed.

Yep.

The sentencing bill, whole life sentences for the worst murderers.

Gone through.

It's gone.

It's actually just gone.

It's gone.

Yep.

Well, actually, that's where the unknown room in prisons anyway, so that's probably about a good thing, isn't it?

And last one, the British Nationality Irish Citizens Bill, making it easier for Irish nationals to apply for British citizenship.

Gone through.

It's gone through.

That's right.

Very confident, I think, of us to pass that saying, look,

you're going to want to come here.

We'd better make it easier.

Okay, well, everyone did very well then.

This is exactly the same time that we're saying, but please don't send any of the migrants you've got back.

Don't ask me to be consistent, Adam.

Right.

But when I say me, I mean the government.

You're their representative here.

All right, I think everyone did marvellously.

Oh, one more thing that is passing: the ban, the crucial ban on foreign governments owning British newspapers.

Also known as the Daily Telegraph bill.

I genuinely found that very informative.

It was stimulating, wasn't it?

Yeah, I think everyone won there, unlike it's going to happen on the 4th of July, when someone's going to win.

And someone won't.

Someone won't.

And it has been, I think, a kind of fairly fascinating start to the campaign so far.

Adam, I'm really interested in what you think about the way the papers are dealing with it, because I would say that the Conservative supporting papers are kind of going through the stages of grief.

And they're currently, I would say, somewhere about bargaining.

Maybe it's going okay, maybe the polls are narrow.

Yeah, it was really interesting on Thursday morning seeing sort of people like Sarah Vone try and say, No, actually, you know, standing there like a drowned rat in the rain and droning on was a really statesmanlike moment.

It was really impressive for Rishi.

He's the man for us.

They've thrown them a bit of red meat now, haven't they?

Because they came in with the national service proposal over the weekend, and suddenly every right-leaning economist was able to write about how they hate teenagers.

I think that was, I saw the takes on that, and it was quite good.

We got to the meta-take of actually, you lefties don't understand how popular this policy is.

So, I think that gave everybody a very safe column for Monday.

Well, it came at the same time, didn't it, as Labour saying they were going to extend the franchise to 16 and 17-year-olds.

So, it's kind of the line, I guess, would be these people are far too feckless and stupid and hormonal to possibly vote, but we should put them in the army and send them off to fight Russia.

My favourite bit was a bit: we should let them do search and rescue brackets, but not on mountains.

Where?

Are they scared of heights?

We can't let them do dangerous search and rescue, so

yeah.

Those were the two options that Sunak highlighted: you're either going to be maybe delivering prescriptions to the elderly, plugging gaps in social care, basically, or you're going to be doing search and rescue.

It did feel like a very but not on mountains.

But not on mountains.

But it felt like a very odd pair to select.

I mean, just for the record, I think volunteering is a really good idea.

And I had to do a bit, sort of, I had to do a bit as part of my last years in school.

It came out of the middle of the day.

I think we've been having a problem with the concept of volunteering, haven't we?

Because volunteering in natural service isn't something.

And you just said I had to do volunteering.

Well, sorry, there was an element of, I did this thing called the baccalaureate, so you had to do 50 hours of service.

And I really enjoyed it.

Definitely showed me a side of my home city, which I'd never seen before.

Didn't do you any harm.

It didn't do me any harm.

And now I'd like to inflict it on everyone else.

But as in volunteering, social cohesion, these are reasonable things to aim for and promote.

But I think maybe what people are criticising it is you're taking money from the levelling up fund and it might not work that way.

And also, when you look at the sort of bargain we're offering people of that age, you can't just step in and say, right, have the national service, have the, you know, do the dirty work, but oh, a few years later, you know, you're no chance of a house or anything like that.

This is a bit of red meat to throw to the pensioners.

I think it's great.

National service never did us any harm.

You weren't actually old enough to do it in almost all cases, and you didn't live through the blitz either, even though you're convinced that you did.

It's much more about that.

You don't put the headline national service on it unless you're going for a certain audience, do you?

But I think we should redefine that and the pension's quadruple lock as grey meat.

I think that would be a more honest way of describing this policy.

There is a point to doing policies that do more appeal to older generations.

Like any government's going to do that.

One of Labour's big attack lines has been: Jeremy Hunt claimed he wanted to one day scrap national insurance, that puts your pension at risk.

So Labour have also got involved in the kind of pension-y type stuff.

And they're not going to come out fighting against the triple lock plus, quadruple lock, whatever we want to call it.

But you're right, the problem with it as a policy is not whether it's popular or unpopular, that's slightly irrelevant.

The problem is whether or not it's a deliverable policy.

And I think we have entered the bit of the election where the Tories, again, because they think they're going to lose, don't care if the sums add up and don't think they'll be allowed to implement stuff.

So they're just quite excited just to say things out loud.

I did a little bit of fantasy casting off the back of the National Service announcement.

Okay, I'm just going to start you off.

Rishi Sunak, Captain Mannering.

There are a few other pike, he's so pike.

He's much more of a pike, I'm sorry.

He's so pike.

Okay.

With his little scarf on because his mum doesn't want him to get cold.

I think he has to

be a bit more.

He's a bit of a walker on the spidy side.

I was thinking Grant Shaps, horse.

Grant Shaps's walker.

I was thinking Michael's hunt.

Sergeant Wilson, a Bane, supercilious.

Michael Gove.

Michael Gove.

I had Cameron.

Gosh, it's a bit damning, isn't it?

That so many of them fit into the side.

Michael Gove is the vicar.

I'm sorry.

He absolutely is.

Just picture the vicar.

He's Michael Gove.

Okay, who's the air raid warden?

Petty authoritarian Braverman?

Okay.

Jen Rick?

Genrik.

For our listeners under the age of 30, of whom they are Legion, we actually say we are talking about Dad's Army here.

Oh, yeah, sorry.

Dad's army clips clips are available on TikTok, I expect.

Okay, fine.

You can fill in your own clips from.

I'm struggling now to think of a TV show that Kavan and Stacey.

Oh, comedy.

Mrs.

Brown's boys.

I'm afraid all of these started in the early noughties.

Yeah, you need like men like Mobine or something like that.

And this is a problem with BBC comedy commissioning, which we can't do now, but we'll deal with later.

Okay, thank you.

But they would have you believe that Keir's a bit of a God-free, wouldn't they?

Oh, because they said he was incredibly old.

Sleepy Keir.

Yes, very bizarre attack line on a 61-year-old.

Tell you who's past it.

61-year-olds.

That's very true.

Who is Fraser, my favourite character?

Who's running around saying we're doomed?

I think all other

backdown chicken.

Steve Baker, if we could get him between paragliding and fast catamaran sailing to put on a Scottish accent, that could be helpful.

But unfortunately, he's on holiday.

Excellent.

Okay, the other cultural reference that might shake off the last remaining under-30 listeners for this podcast.

Well, something that someone said to me the other day is, is Sunak genuinely doing the producers with the selection campaign?

As in, is he really trying trying to throw it?

Has he bet everything on losing?

He probably isn't in control of the weather, so we can let the rain go.

But going to the Titanic quarter in Belfast.

Very funny.

Literally, two issues after we put the Titanic on the front cover with jokes about him.

I can't think of it.

It would be what a good hedge fund manager would do.

Because, you know, he would be hedging his bets.

He put a bet on losing, he wins.

If he wins, he wins.

He's got 50 million on the Tories going under 200 seats.

someone said that to me except the reference they use was Brewster's Millions, which I would implore people to watch.

Great film.

Probably now, I think, 1970s or 80s about a man who has to try and spend a huge amount of money in a very short amount of time.

He's shorting Britain like he shorted his trousers.

Superb.

Shake your tall privilege, Adam.

Good thing for Brewster and Brewster's Millions to do, just announce an impractical Rwanda deportation scheme.

He'd have burned through the millions in no time at all.

Be fast.

And then call the election before it actually starts.

Sorry, what?

So to have your flagship policy, put all of that political capital into finally getting it through the commons and then just go, actually, you're going to have the election before the flights even start.

But you know what?

You can't fail if you never even started to try.

Ah, but what about the bet with Piers Morgan?

He's decided not to play that because that guy went voluntarily in return for three grand.

So he came technically, technically, someone has gone to Rwanda.

When you say that guy, one person was flown to Rand, just in case people haven't seen that story, one man was flown to Rwanda.

He was paid to fly to Rwanda, wasn't he?

Took three grand.

He wasn't an asylum seeker.

He wasn't.

The whole idea is that you by asylum seekers are having their claims

processed in Rwanda.

That was not this man's situation at all.

Was he just wanting to go to Rwanda?

He's just always wanted to see Rwanda.

They found someone in the check-in to the flight.

So you want three grand.

It's a bit like business class, but we give you three grand.

But does that so that counts and yeah, and this

man went voluntarily in return for three grand.

He wasn't sort of sentenced to go in the way the policy is supposed to be kind of punitive.

Right.

But that means he doesn't have to give Piers Morgan his money.

Sunak doesn't have to give Piers Morgan his money.

Not this random bloke who's now got three grand in his pocket.

He's probably

got the whole of that massive apartment complex that Suella Braverman went out and cackled her way around all to himself.

He's having a lovely time.

I was just, I mean, of all the things that Sunak has done that have made me think, why aren't you better at politics?

Deciding to have a bet on the lives of really marginal people who are worth a millionth or a billionth of what he is.

I mean, fine to say you want to be tough on immigration, but to sort of treat it that casually, that was the moment where I just thought, oh, your instincts are just fundamentally bad.

And you're also kind of conformist.

You know that clip that's been going around about that interviewer trying to who from the 80s asking Margaret Thatcher to jump because she always asks all her subjects to jump.

And Thatcher just looks at me and goes, I don't see why anyone would do that.

Why would I do that?

You can't make me do that.

And it's a really important qualification for a politician.

And like, not to repeat an interviewer's words back to them is a classic one they all fail on, right?

That was the moment when he sat there and just Piers Morgan smiled at him, and therefore he just wanted to please Piers Morgan.

I thought, no,

but you've characterised this election, Helen, as a surprise election for the

Conservatives.

The Conservatives.

Yeah, I mean, their master plan in order to hide it from all the back benches meant that there is on record a minister saying that they didn't want to implement national service and it was a bad idea and the army didn't like it from only a couple of months ago.

They've had a huge selection problem because they're so behind on selections.

And fundamentally, finding candidates for seats you expect to lose is: would you like to give up six weeks of your life to be miserable for no reward?

Quite a tough proposition, I would suggest.

Whereas Labours have creamed through their selections, handing them out slightly nepotistically and don't really seem to feel that they're on the hop at all.

They've been kind of match fit and ready.

Whereas the Conservatives, who are, you know, the one thing that a Prime Minister is now in control of, now we've repealed the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, is like being able to spring the surprise on people.

It's like stepping on on a rake.

You're not supposed to surprise yourself.

Well, it came the week after Labour and the whole shadow cabinet had had a great big pre-election launch where they launched these six pledges.

I mean, doing that the very week after Labour have basically had a campaign launch anyway.

Very convenient.

It must have a logic to it, but it's quite hard to see.

Yeah, and I think it resolves some of Labour's problems as well, because, I mean, I've said this before on the podcast, the problem is that neither of the side sums add up for next year.

Rachel Reeves is now at the same no additional tax rises.

You can't imagine what the scale of cuts to public services that would be required to make that work.

But there's with only six weeks, they can sort of go, well, we'd love to put out a full manifesto, but alas, some of these questions will have to be answered after.

She's standing on a platform with a slogan, just change.

Yeah.

Maybe that's just all that she's prepared to spend on these public services.

I'm enjoying it, though.

I have to say, already, a great Lib Dem photo opera campaign.

Ed Davey and Tim Farron went on and Windermere to talk about sewage.

Ed Davey nominally fell off his paddle board.

So talk about sewage by throwing themselves into sewage, which is real commitment to the cause.

That's the lib dem way.

They will put themselves on the line.

I think, yeah, you know, you've already had the SNP leader John Swinney defending Mr.

11 Grand iPad roaming charges.

He's one of the SNP MPs.

Yeah, Michael Matheson, whose children ran up 11 grand of roaming charges on the iPad in Morocco and he tried to claim it on expenses.

Apparently, according to John Swinney, the process against him, the disciplinary process, has been very unfair and rigged.

Okay.

I mean, he put 11 11 grand on expenses and then claimed it was a business expense and then coughed to it.

Anyway, but it's all I'm enjoying it enormously.

You're having a whale of fun.

I'm having a time in my life.

I was going to say, that's the deepest Ed Davies been in the shit since the post office scandal.

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So now we go from a lot of people who are about to be losing their jobs to a lot of people who did unjustly lose their jobs as postmasters and postmistresses in the ongoing post office scandal.

Richard Brooks, you have been at the inquiry where Paula Venels, the former chief executive of the post office, has been giving evidence.

I can't recall.

I'm afraid, Mr.

Murray.

You've been.

I'd like to be able to help you, but it was several days ago.

Yes.

Give me the Zeitgeist Tapes version of this because, like, I think most of Britain is politically engaged, I kind of got diverted away from watching it by all the election stuff.

So, I know Paula Vennels was up and that she was embarrassed, but I can't give you a lot more than that.

What else actually happened?

Well, she was lucky, really, with the election timing

because she did deserve quite a bit more coverage than she got.

She ran the post office

from,

well, she was a senior figure from 2007 up until 2019 when she was forced to resign.

And she presided over a period characterised really by a massive cover-up.

And what we learnt about last week was exactly how she led that cover-up.

I mean, she's not the only one deeply culpable in this, but she was the chief executive.

You wouldn't have thought so from some of her answers.

You know, she didn't know almost anything that was important about the Horizon IT system.

She didn't know, for example, that her own organization prosecuted sub-postmasters.

She thought it was done by the Crown Prosecution Service, like all other prosecutions, until 2012.

So basically, that's when they were actually doing the 50-plus prosecutions per year.

So, you know, she didn't even know about that.

She didn't know about any bugs in the system, despite the fact that everybody in Fujitsu and Post Office knew about them.

So the inquiry really was a sort of, you know, it.

It must have been a terrible shock to her, all this stuff coming out, you know, that she didn't know anything about.

It must have been awful.

It was so awful that she hung around for another seven years, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

And she was quite upset about it at times.

Oh, no.

The tears flowed.

No sign of her reaching for an onion from a bag and appealing it.

You know, these were genuine tears.

Not that there was much sympathy in the room.

You know, it was full of former sub-postmasters, lots of victims who were remarkably, in fact, they were congratulated a couple of times by the judge, Sir William Williams, for their restraint in how they'd sort of responded to what Paula Venus had to say.

You know, there wasn't too much jeering, but there was lots of hollow laughter and groans when she said things like, you know, how much she cared about some postmasters and how much she loved the post office and so on.

But, you know, as one of the KCs examining her, Ed Henry, put it, she preached compassion but didn't practice it.

That sort of characterised her tenure.

Can I ask a question, a sort of basic question, about these inquiries?

Because I know they're judge-led, and the room is full of lawyers, representatives of the sections of the inquiry, and whoever's giving evidence.

Does it follow the legal model of a cross-examination?

Or rather, is there anyone speaking in their defence?

Or is it simply they're asked questions by the lawyers who are conducting the inquiry?

First of all, they put in a witness statement.

In Paul Lavenov's case, hundreds of pages of self-exculpation.

That was a word that was put about quite a bit in the hearing.

And then the witnesses are questioned by counsel to the inquiry who's more objective I guess and then that's followed by counsel acting for sub-postmasters who tend to put the boot in quite a bit.

And there is the opportunity actually, you sort of blink and you miss it, but there is the opportunity for a lawyer on behalf of the witness, in this case Paula Vennels, to ask questions, but that wasn't taken.

Okay.

Did she have a lawyer?

She had a legal team with her in the room?

Yeah, yeah, or certainly, you know,

in the side room.

Yeah.

So why don't people take it?

Why don't people take that opportunity?

Or is it just seen as not something you really do?

I mean, she said everything she has to say in a witness statement, I think.

You know, what could she have been asked in her defence?

You know, did you really not know, Paula?

Right.

There wasn't really a lot she could offer apart from.

There is a tactic in criminal trials that if y' defence lawyers try and keep their clients off the stand for as long as possible, they don't want them asked too many questions, so not prolonging it themselves, basically.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm thinking actually I'm thinking back to the phone hacking trial here, which I sat in the in Old Bailey for for eight months and actually we we got an extended peroration uh at the hands of uh Rebecca Brooks' defence lawyer and it we went into her struggles with IVF and the failure of her first marriage and and all of her regrets about every it was about three days before we even got onto anything to do with phone hacking, so and and public sympathy there was probably about at the same levels as it as it is with Paula Vanel's now.

Yeah, there were times when it was tempting to feel some sympathy because you know this was a very public humiliation really.

Although, as one of the barristers put it, you're now experiencing a little bit of what some of the sub-postmasters experienced over the years.

How does it feel?

You know, and that must have been very, very tough.

That's how I felt watching it.

I thought this is a very interesting kind of human psychology, is that seeing one person as the focus of all that attention from everybody hating them is quite hard to watch.

You have to have quite a sort of sliver of ice in your heart to not feel a bit sorry for her.

And then I had exactly the same thought as you did, which is, yes, but you're not in prison having been ensured that you've done something wrong when you haven't.

And you do have to say, I'm afraid we do have to put people through this process in order that hopefully fewer people will do stuff like this again in future.

Yeah, and also

her evidence wasn't particularly credible.

It appeared very slanted.

So, you know, as one of the barristers pointed out, there were endless examples where she clearly remembered things that helped her.

But when it came to conversations or anything else that wasn't helpful, she couldn't remember it.

So it was very one-sided.

So it's difficult to have sympathy when you're watching someone defend themselves in that way without being completely open.

If she were being completely open, then I think you would have sympathy.

But of course,

nobody at this inquiry wants to be very open because there's the threat of criminal proceedings hanging hanging in the background.

Right, well that's the next question.

Who's going to prison?

Who's ending up in prison?

Well,

if the Met police have their way,

or if they justify the number of officers that we learn they're putting on the case now, you know, quite a few people.

Which is, I read this morning, 80 detectives are being set on this.

They're sort of applying to set up a special unit, which once the inquiry is finished will start looking at the prospects of prosecution.

Is that right?

Yeah, that's what they've said.

Yeah, that's what they told The Guardian, isn't it?

They obviously believe, listening to the evidence, you know, that there's something to go at beyond the people who, simply the people who appeared in the criminal trials.

You know, we know that witnesses who lied at criminal trials in which people were convicted, you know, we know that they're in serious trouble, we know that they're already being investigated.

But the question is how far up the chain it goes, that that level of culpability, you know, if you there's clearly at best a lot of blind eye turning to the evidence and allowing prosecutions to go ahead.

Now, at what point point that becomes active enough to constitute criminal conduct, I'm not sure.

I guess that's what the police are looking at.

But this is going to go on for years, you know, another decade or so.

The one bit that stuck with me was Paula Vennels' email about the one-show coverage of it was Joe Hamilton, wasn't it?

And she said she wasn't very passionate, and it was really good that our side kind of got out there.

And I think, was it the council described it as

Paula Venels' tone as being kind of gleeful?

It was kind of like, ha ha ha, RPR push is working, rather than, oh, you know, soberly dealing with this undoubtedly real problem.

Yeah, that was one of the occasions on which, you know, they pointed out the mask was slipping.

She put up this sort of caring, responsible front, but on occasion, it came through exactly what the attitude was, and that was one of them.

You know, in response to that programme, which was at the end of 2014, she sent this email to her colleagues, including a PR advisor who was like a main confidant, it seems, saying that she was more bored than outraged.

So there was a certain arrogance about it.

She said that Joe Hamilton, who's a great campaigner on this issue and wrongly prosecuted sub-postmistress,

she said that she lacked passion, and it was good to see her actually admit on camera false accounting.

She'd been forced to falsely account by the incredible, incredibly oppressive behaviour of the post office, of course.

So there was this almost bullying tone and attitude and you could see, you know, even as late as 2019, while the

litigation instigated by Alan Bates was going through, you could see that they were still dismissive of the sub-postmasters, you know, and the press coverage.

This went to government as well.

And what I'm really interested in is the next stage of the inquiry where we will hear a lot more from the board and the government officials who were driving in a way the way the post office behaved.

That's what I was going to ask.

There's obviously the possibility of lots of individual prosecutions.

Is there any possibility of some sort of corporate prosecution?

Yeah, I think in the financial sector, you see it a bit.

I think Barclays were prosecuted.

You get it in corporate manslaughter cases where the boss is directly responsible for maybe appalling health and safety standards or something like that.

You know, and here there are potential offences like perverting the course of justice.

People lost their lives.

Probably the most harrowing thing we heard last week was about Martin Griffiths, a sub-postmaster from Cheshire, who took his own life after being bankrupted and hounded and

even fined or forced to pay up for some of the losses from an armed robbery following on from his

Horizon IT problems.

And the reaction to his death was absolutely appalling.

You know, the emails went out from Paula Venels.

She emailed colleagues saying, I understand that he had some mental health problems and maybe some family issues.

Yeah, suicide never has any one cause, which is true, which is

what Samaritans say.

But it was a bit of let's dig around in this guy's past to find something else we can pin this on.

It was a pure fishing expedition because she was asked, well, where had you heard about these mental health issues?

And she didn't know.

She didn't have a clue.

So, you know, it just was, as one of the barristers put it, an attempt to get on the front foot in this case.

Because it was exactly around the time that an independent forensic investigating firm called Second Sight had come in, they'd found bugs.

It was pretty clear what was going on.

So the whole cover-up really had to kick in at this point.

It was also around the time that Royal Mail was being privatised.

And of course, a lot of the problems went back to the period in which Post Office was owned by Royal Mail.

So they wanted to keep keep a lid on those.

And there was a very interesting exchange where Paula Venels had managed to extract any mention of the Horizon IT problems from the Royal Mail prospectus.

And she wrote this sort of brown-nosing email to her boss, who's the chairwoman at the time, Alice Perkins, saying, oh, I've earned my keep this year.

Is that not, I mean, that's withholding information for investors.

I mean, that sounds so cool.

I'm a layman, but that sounds to me like fraud.

The jury will decide,

but you couldn't say.

Yeah, I mean, her explanation was that it's in the IT risks section of the prospectus, and there isn't an IT risk.

There are no bugs in the system, but she already knew there were bugs in the system.

She'd just been told this by these second-sight investigators.

I mean, even if she didn't know before then, which everybody did.

So this mention was taken out on a false prospectus.

And it went through, the privatisation went through untroubled.

Another opportunity was missed to pick up on this problem,

which was in keeping with a lot of a history of missed opportunities.

There were all sorts of chances.

Ed Henry, this barrister I mentioned, he opened his examination of Paula Veynels with a sort of tirade saying

there were so many forks in the road and you always took the wrong one.

And it was true.

There were chance after chance to address the issue, to get it to the surface, to limit the damage.

And they were all taken because they didn't want to admit any damage.

And in the process, of course, just kind of multiplied it, you know, so that we are where we are now and we have thousands of victims.

Richard, can I ask about a couple of the other people who've been giving evidence?

So obviously the focus has been Paula Vannels in the last week because she's been the one giving evidence.

But there have been so many other people, senior executives, giving evidence.

Jane McLeod, she's interesting.

Yeah, she hasn't been giving evidence from her.

Exactly.

We haven't heard from her because.

Who is she?

Well,

she is the chief counsel, which is a kind of

American term for top lawyer.

She was from 2015 to 2019, a really critical time.

That's essentially the period of the litigation against Alan Bates, when, despite knowing all the problems with Horizon, they pretended there wasn't.

They put sub-postmasters on the witness stand in very stressful situations, accusing them of not telling the truth when, of course, they were.

In a very, very aggressive litigation, which cost millions for the taxpayer.

A judge called them oppressive, said they were like Victorian factory owners,

could not have been more heavily criticised.

They tried to chuck out a judge who found against them on the grounds that he was biased

and got that knock back.

I mean, it was the most extraordinary, aggressive,

well, I mean, I guess it's the kind of legal conduct that we're familiar with, but to see it in this situation where so many innocent victims were at the butt of it, in a way, was really shocking.

And she was the chief lawyer during that period, so she has a huge number of questions to answer.

But

she is Australian.

Has she given herself the legal advice that it would be a bad idea to appear in front of them?

Is that her maybe her best piece of legal advice was to herself?

She's actually jumped the gun and transported herself to the Antipodes, isn't that right, Rich?

Yes,

Well, yeah, yeah.

She went in, I think in 2020, she went back to Australia.

She is Australian, but she'd spent a large part of her career here.

So that's what we won't be hearing from her.

And she can't be

compelled to come back.

No, it may be a criminal matter, but the judge said, look, it's just so difficult to enforce that.

And there's another guy as well.

When we wrote our first piece about the post office in 2011, we immediately got a response from a chap called Mike Young, who was the operations director, saying, oh no, Horizon is robust.

And it came up at the hearing actually, the drafting of this email, which was shared around various senior post office people.

He said, no, no, Horizon is robust, never had a problem, da da da.

And he knew full well that there were lots of problems.

But he's not appearing either.

I mean, he's a very important figure.

He's not appearing, apparently because they couldn't track him down.

Which, of course, has prompted everybody watching to.

Okay, he's

searching.

Send Slipper of the Yard out after him.

A quick look on LinkedIn seems to have located it.

So I'm not sure how

great the investigators there were.

So many people seem to have been involved and seem to have had very clear knowledge of problems with the IT

or have been communicating internally for years and years about this.

Yes.

So there's plenty more to come.

Where does the investigation go next?

The inquiry?

It goes up the chain.

So we get the chairwoman of the board until 2015.

That's Alice Perkins.

Then we get the chairman since then, Tim Parker.

Alice Perkins as in Mrs.

Jack Straw.

Yeah, Jack Straw's

the only person in Britain who would go, oh, Mrs.

Bagstraw.

I think Mr.

Jack Straw probably would.

Yeah, okay, fair enough.

Two of you.

There are other straw-related connections there.

They have this network of PR people who all worked for Straw or Perkins.

So there was a real sort of almost family affair operating within the Post Office on the communications front.

And the PR drove the actions of the Post Office.

It was PR first, legal correctness second.

And people from a very dry-sounding, but I think absolutely crucial part of government, the shareholder executive.

as it was called at the time, it's now called UK Government Investments.

A great bunch of lands.

Well,

they were set up by Gordon Brown to steward and look after the government's shares, the shares it owned in things like the Post Office and Channel 4 and other things.

And that's an interesting bit of history.

I think that is partly responsible for this very commercial approach that the government was taking all the way through this process.

This approach from inside government was very firmly to keep a lid on all this, even when it was really obvious in 2018, 2019, that there were massive problems, that there were thousands of people being hurt here.

Is this why?

This was one of the final things I wanted to ask.

Is this why we keep having these multi-decade inquiries, which go on for such a long time, they're litigated so much in advance.

You then end up with 50,000 pages of evidence, you know, four years of witness stand statements, then three years after it's ended, you get a report.

I mean, it just, it feels like a really, really, really bad way of righting wrongs that have been done.

Why is it so slow?

Well, I think when you have government ministers who want to keep costs down, you have officials who will really do whatever they're told, you have lawyers who are prepared to sort of leave their professional ethics at the door and do whatever the management wants, you can keep things buried for a long, long time.

And what starts off as a relatively small problem, if you're not prepared to admit the small problem and come clean, all you do is build up a bigger and bigger and bigger problem, and that's what you have with post office, with the contaminated blood, you know, and others.

You know, perhaps that's the lesson from it.

Come clean early on.

Right.

Confess that.

Yeah, but Judge Dredd.

But I think Judge Drebb would make shorter work of this inquiry than.

Sorry, I don't mean to impute Sir William with

his little helmet in front of his laser.

Okay, that's it for this episode of page 94.

Thank you very much for listening.

If you would like to hear more stories about the post office, you can read them in the magazine available at private-night.co.uk or in all good shops and newsstands and in fact all bad shops and newsstands go to the website subscribe it's a wonderful magazine you'll be busy reading it until the next episode of this podcast this episode as always was produced by matt hill of rethink audio and we'll see you next time bye now fall's a time to plan ahead and ensure your brand shows up in ways that matter for imprints promotional products work as hard as you do and make a lasting impression.

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