Post Office Inquiry LIVE: Former Royal Mail chief told Paula Vennells ‘I can’t support you now’ in brutal text exchange as shamed ex-CEO repeatedly apologises and cries TWICE during her evidence

To follow along with the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry and to hear Paula Vennells’ comments, watch below.

It’s after lunch and Ms Vennells appears to be struggling to answer questions posed by Jason Beer KC as he challenges her on whether sub-postmasters were expected to ‘make good’ on their shortfalls.

The inquiry is shown a letter from one sub-postmaster who complained directly to Ms Vennells after he was told he would have to rectify unexplained financial losses at his branch.

Mr Beer asks: ‘Where did you get the understanding from that sub-postmasters had to make good the losses?’

Ms Vennels takes a long pause before she replies: ‘I’m not sure I had that understanding.’

She is then asked by Mr Beer what her understanding was in September 2013. Ms Vennell again pauses for what appears to be an age before answering: ‘I’m not sure that I can recall now what I knew the contract said at the time.’

Speaking about Ms Vennells’ evidence, Lee Castleton said: ‘She’s got a huge opportunity to get what she sees as the truth out there.

‘I think it’s a huge stage for her, I think the paperwork is fantastic, to see what was being written at the time it’s really, really important for us to see that. And what she remembers really is kind of a background for me, the actual verbal evidence is not really that important.’

Asked about Ms Vennells breaking down in tears, he added: ‘She’ll never shed as many as I have, I’m afraid, or my family, or the rest of the victims or the wider group.

‘Not that I have no empathy for that because I do, I understand completely.

‘I’d imagine a lot of it’s nerves too and doing her best. I think she’s got a need or want to do the right thing.’

Mark Kelly, 45, who was a subpostmaster in Swansea from 2003 to 2006, said: ‘The apology I think was quite well-rehearsed, the speech of the apology and also the response to the questions.

‘The reason why I think the apology was more like a PR apology was because all these years she could have made an apology like that.

‘Why did she have to wait until today to do that?’

Jess Kaur, 52, an ex-postmistress in Walsall who was wrongly accused in 2009 of stealing £11,000, said: ‘I was just thinking to myself when she started crying that we were crying like that at the time.

‘It was nice to see her tears, but at the same time she’s got a lot to answer for. She just needs to tell the truth.’

Seema Misra said she believes there is still a ‘cover up and denial’ after Paula Vennells gave evidence.

Ms Misra, who ran a Post Office in West Byfleet, Surrey, was jailed in 2010 after being accused of stealing £74,000. She was pregnant at the time.

She said: ‘It’s a cover up and denial, it’s still a cover up, that’s what my take is.

‘Was she emotional due to the scandal or the warnings she had been given before?

‘They still don’t accept it, how on earth did authorities in high positions not know how the company works?’

Before the inquiry resumes, we can bring you one line from earlier when Paula Vennells received direct correspondence from subpostmasters having issues with the computer system from 2012.

Ms Vennells sent an email after receiving word from subpostmaster Pervez Nakvi about Horizon issues in February 2012, in which the former Post Office chief executive said: ‘It is very frustrating to receive mails like this. Pervez is right to raise it.

‘It is my understanding that Horizon is reliable…but if trusted individuals like Pervez are now not feeling that is the case are we monitoring the right metrics?’

Asked if it was relevant that they were a trusted individual, she said: ‘I responded to all complaints in the exact same way. It would not have made a difference whether I knew the subpostmaster or not.’

Pressed on whether all complaints raised by subpostmasters would call for investigation, Ms Vennells said: ‘I would hope so. I’m sure there are cases where that was not the case but I would have tried to.’

While we’re waiting for Ms Vennells to resume giving evidence this afternoon, here’s MailOnline’s report of her appearance at the Post Office Inquiry.

Click below to read more:

The Post Office inquiry has adjourned until 2.15pm when Ms Vennells will continue to answer questions.

As we are now more than half way through the first day of Ms Vennells’ evidence to the inquiry, let’s recap what you need to know.

• Paula Vennells breaks down twice under questioning from Jason Beer KC when grilled over whether she misled MPs in 2015 and when asked about the death of Martin Griffiths, a sub-postmaster who took his own life in 2013
• Ms Vennells admits she had no idea the Post Office investigated its own staff despite working for the company for 12 years and serving as its CEO for seven of them
• She began her evidence by apologising to  sub-postmasters and their families for the suffering they have endured as well as personal apologies to Alan Bates and Lord Arbuthnot who campaigned on  behalf of innocent victims
• The inquiry was shown a brutal text exchange between Ms Vennells and Royal Mail’s former CEO Dame Moya Greene who told her ‘I can’t support you now’ amid suspicions Ms Vennells was aware of Horizon errors.
• The former CEO denied there was a conspiracy at the Post Office to deny her information and cover up the Horizon scandal. She said: ‘I have no sense that there was any conspiracy at all.’

We will continue to provide updates throughout the afternoon.

Ms Vennells appeared to become emotional as she discussed reading details of complaints from eight subpostmasters in 2013, which she described as ‘very disturbing’.

The complaints included faults with Horizon, problems with mis-balancing, shortfalls being wrongly attributed to subpostmasters, wrongful convictions, and complaints about Horizon training and its helpline.

Ms Vennells said: ‘All cases were by their nature disturbing…’

She then paused for several seconds to compose herself, before adding: ‘There were questions in the organisation at a board and executive level, about whether this was a distraction of management time.

‘When I read these reports, it seemed to me that this was an important distraction of management time.’

Paula Vennells has said she did not see a report which found Post Office systems were not fit for purpose.

The report by Detica, a consulting division of BAE systems, was produced in 2013.

Ms Vennells agreed that it ‘ought’ to have been brought to her attention by either Lesley Sewell, Chris Aujard or Angela van den Bogerd.

Counsel to the inquiry Jason Beer KC said: ‘This is essentially marking some of Second Sight’s homework and agreeing with it, isn’t it?

Ms Vennells responded: ‘It is, yes.’

Asked why the report was kept from her, she said: ‘I was not under the impression that people were intentionally withholding information from me.

‘This is a report that should have gone not just to me, because the chief executive doesn’t take every decision in the business, it should have gone to the group executive, and discussions had as to what could have been implemented or not.’

Paula Vennells has insisted she was not aware of documents which suggested Horizon had more than 600 bugs in its IT system.

In her witness statement, Vennells said there were a large number of defects that were corrected by Fujitsu without the Post Office’s knowledge.

But asked how she came to the number of more than 600, Vennells said she couldn’t remember.

Asked by Jason Beer KC if she knew about documents dated in 2013, Vennells said: ‘I don’t believe so, no’.

‘It’s a recent understanding of the numbers, not that one I had at the time,’ she adds.

Former Post Office boss Paula Vennells said she did not agree with a sentiment expressed by former managing director Alan Cook when he sent an email she was copied into referring to “subbies with their hands in the till”.

Counsel to the inquiry Jason Beer KC asked: ‘Was that a sentiment that you agreed with?’

Ms Vennells responded: ‘No, I never used the word subbies, I thought it was completely the wrong word.’

Mr Beer then said: ‘What about the more important thing about them having their hands in the till?’

After a ripple of laughter from those watching proceedings in the hearing room, Ms Vennells replied: ‘I beg your pardon, I wasn’t avoiding answering that question – neither – either calling them subbies or having their hands in the till.’

Paula Vennells said she should have known earlier into her tenure at the Post Office that the company was conducting criminal investigations into, and recovering money from, its own staff.

Shown minutes of a risk and compliance committee meeting in March 2008 at the Horizon IT inquiry, she agreed it was ‘reasonable’ to infer from the documents that it was ‘openly discussed’ in the meeting that the Post Office was conducting investigations of its own staff and recovering money from them.

Counsel to the inquiry Jason Beer KC asked: ‘Why is it that you say it was not until 2012 that you appreciated that the Post Office was conducting criminal investigations?’

Ms Vennells replied: ‘Because that inference I may have drawn in that meeting is not the same as what I learned in 2012 – which is we were doing a very different level of investigation in terms of professional codes and criminal investigations.

‘The only acceptable answer (to what is being asked) is that I should have known and I should have asked more questions, and I and others who also did not know should have dug much more deeply into this.’

The inquiry has taken its break.

Inquiry chairman Sir Wyn said it was ‘extremely surprising’ that news ‘did not filter through’ to Ms Vennells and others about the prosecution of Seema Misra by the Post Office in 2010.

Ms Misra was convicted of theft and false accounting after nearly £75,000 disappeared from the accounts in West Byfleet, Surrey, where she was a subpostmistress.

Ms Vennells said: ‘I have no recollection of being involved in Mrs Misra’s case.

‘There were not, as far as I know, discussions about the fact that it was the Post Office who had investigated and brought the prosecution.

‘The assumption was that it was brought by external authorities.’

She said she was unaware of the ‘fearsome reputation’ of the Post Office’s own investigations team, which sought to build evidence against staff.

Ms Vennells said she had no idea when she joined the company in 2007 that the Post Office was investigating its own staff, taking them to court, and trying to recover money from them.

She said: ‘I didn’t understand that the Post Office was bringing its own criminal investigations.‘Investigations can be taken at all sorts of different levels.

‘I certainly didn’t read into this that the Post Office was conducting criminal investigations to the level that I later understood.’

She said she did not appreciate the situation fully until 2012, when she became chief executive.

Accusations of blame by Alan Bates after Martin Griffiths’s death were ‘unhelpful’, Paula Vennells said.

An email from Mr Bates criticising the Post Office after Mr Griffiths’s death was shown, to which Ms Vennells said the campaigner was ‘rightly very, very angry about this’, but his language about her colleagues ‘was extreme’.

Jason Beer KC asked: ‘You say in your statement that ‘this was a time of great distress for Mr Griffiths’s family, and I felt the accusations of blame were unhelpful’… is that right that you felt that Mr Bates’s accusations of blame were unhelpful?’

Ms Vennells responded: ‘I think at this stage some of those accusations of blame were unhelpful, yes, because the Post Office needed to respond to this properly and at that stage, I had no understanding as to what had gone on.’

Father-of-two Martin Griffiths, 59, took his own life in 2013 after he was falsely suspected of stealing money from a Post Office in Ellesmere Port, where he had worked for around 20 years.

Mr Griffiths was one of hundreds of postmasters who were suspected of false accounting and theft, with some fired or wrongfully convicted, after amounts appeared to vanish from their tills.

It later emerged that shortfalls in the accounts of local branches were the result of flaws in the Post Office’s IT system, Horizon.

Ms Vennells said tasking her team with looking into Mr Griffiths’ situation was because she wanted to find out about allegations the Post Office was responsible for his death, and not to ‘get on the front foot’.

She said: ‘What I was trying to do, quite simply, was to get the wider picture and … to understand particularly the very difficult challenges that Mr Bates had levelled at some Post Office colleagues.’

Ms Vennells has shed more tears after being asked about the case of Martin Griffiths, who took his own life after being pursued by the Post Office for alleged shortfalls of £60,000.

The former Post Office Chief stated: ‘If you are given information by the highest lawyer in the organisation, you take it completely as the truth.’

Sky News has spoken to former sub-postmasters who have gathered at Fenny Compton village hall ahead of Ms Vennells’ evidence.

The village hall is where dozens of sub-postmasters and mistresses met for the first time in 2009 and featured in the ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office.

Sally Stringer said: ‘I just hoped today would be a day she tells the truth, but she’s not. She is blatantly, utterly lying, and it’s got to stop. The tears – she can put that on as much as she likes because it doesn’t rest with me.’

While Teju Adedayo added: ‘I am actually sitting here fuming and I don’t think whatever she is saying, I’m accepting it. I demand a public apology on behalf of every one of us.’

It has been a busy morning at the Post Office Inquiry as Ms Vennells answered questions about the Horizon scandal in what could be the start of three days of evidence.Here are the key points from her evidence this morning:

• Former Post Office boss Paula Vennells began her evidence by apologising to subpostmasters and their families. She told the Horizon inquiry: ‘I would just like to say, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to do this, how sorry I am for all that subpostmasters and their families and others have suffered as a result of all of the matters that the inquiry is looking into.’
• Ms Vennells admitted she was “too trusting” as she was asked if she was the ‘unluckiest CEO in the United Kingdom’. She replied: ‘As the inquiry has heard, there was information I wasn’t given and others didn’t receive as well.’
• The former CEO denied there was a conspiracy at the Post Office to deny her information and cover up the Horizon scandal. She said: ‘I have no sense that there was any conspiracy at all.’
• Royal Mail’s former CEO Dame Moya Greene told Vennells ‘I can’t support you now’ in text messages which also show that she suspected Vennells knew about Horizon errors.
• Ms Vennells wept and reached for a tissue as she was confronted with evidence she gave to MPs which said criminal cases always found in favour of the Post Office, despite cases of subpostmasers being acquitted.

Meanwhile, a group of former sub-postmasters have joined together at Fenny Compton, where Alan Bates first chose to gather people who had been falsely accused.

They have travelled all over the UK to share their thoughts and experiences.

Due to drips of water coming through the ceiling, the inquiry has decided to take a break.

Ms Vennells wept and reached for a tissue as she was confronted with evidence she gave to MPs which said criminal cases always found in favour of the Post Office, despite cases of subpostmasers being acquitted.

Inquiry lawyer Mr Beer said: ‘Why were you telling Parliamentarians every prosecution involving the Horizon system had been successful and had found in favour of the Post Office?’

Ms Vennells, becoming tearful, said: ‘I fully accept now – excuse me…

‘The Post Office knew that (not every case was won).

‘Personally, I didn’t know that and I’m incredibly sorry that that happened to those people, and to so many others.’

There were murmurs within the inquiry room as Ms Vennells broke down briefly.

Paula Vennells was challenged over what she knew about Horizon and how it affected prosecutions for sub-postmasters.

She said: ‘This is a situation that is so complex, it is a question I have asked myself as well. I have learned some things that I did not know as a result of the inquiry and I imagine that we will go through some of the detail of that. I wish I had known.’

Asked by KC Beer why the Post Office’s priority was ‘to protect the people who aren’t complaining about the Horizon’ in a series of documents, Vennells said: ‘That wasn’t how I intended it to be read.’

Ms Vennells denied continuing to blame the Horizon system for the failures in her witness statement which said ‘lives were torn apart by being wrongly accused and wrongly prosecuted as a result of the Horizon system’.

Mr Beer asked: ‘Even after all the inquiry has revealed and the thousands of documents you’ve read, do you continue to think that the issue was with the computer system, the Horizon system, as opposed to the conduct, competence and ethics of those within the Post Office?’

Ms Vennells replied: ‘No not at all, and apologies if that is not clear.

‘What I meant to say is as a result of all of the matters relating to Horizon.’

She denied Mr Beer’s suggestion that the comment in her witness statement, submitted less than two months ago but read for the first time in public today, was ‘a perpetuation of a culture that ran through the Post Office of failing to take responsibility for the use of powers that it elected to use, and indeed use robustly, and instead blame the IT’.

Ms Vennells replied: ‘No, it isn’t that at all.

‘The tragedy we are dealing with today is the result of something much, much broader than an IT system.’

The Post Office inquiry was shown a text message exchange in which Dame Moya Greene, former CEO of Royal Mail Group accused Paula Vennells of knowing about Horizon errors.

Ms Greene said: ‘I don’t know what to say. I think you knew.’

Ms Vennells replied: ‘No Moya, that isn’t the case.’

Ms Greene said: ‘I want to believe you. I asked you twice. I suggested you get an independent review reporting to you. I was afraid you were being lied to.

‘You said the system had already been reviewed multiple times. How could you have not known?

‘I have supported you all these years to my own detriment. I can’t support you now.’

Asked by KC Beer why didn’t you assist us by setting out in her 775-page witness statemen what your reflectoins were, Ms Vennells replied: ‘It was simply a matter of time, the inqiuiry asked me over 600 questions.

‘My memory was not very good at the start of this process.’

Ms Vennells said ‘one of the biggest challenges’ has been ‘realising how much went on at an individual postmaster level’.

Giving evidence to the Horizon IT inquiry, she said: ‘One of the biggest challenges as I have been going through all of this documentation is realising how much went on at an individual postmaster level. When a bug affected a large number of post offices… they were raised.

‘But if a single subpostmaster made a call X number of times to a service centre, it wouldn’t have been picked up and I think from a governance point of view there is a very important lesson around the issue of the institution and the individual.

‘How does somebody as a chief executive of an institution that is large and complex have sight to what happens to an individual if they are affected by a bug?’

Asked if she did not believe there was a conspiracy to deny her information but rather that issues came out of the way the company was organised and structured, Ms Vennells said: ‘I think in the majority of cases yes that is true.’

Asked who was responsible for organising and structuring the company, she said: ‘As CEO you are accountable for everything. You have experts to report to you.’

There was a small ripple of laughter as Ms Vennells said she was sometimes criticised in team development events ‘for being too curious’.

She told the inquiry: ‘I asked questions, I oversaw the strategy which would have introduced changes where we felt it was appropriate to the organisation.

‘I probed, I worked in a structured way and an informal way.’

Counsel to the inquiry Jason Beer KC asked: ‘Was there a conspiracy at the Post Office, which lasted for nearly 12 years, involving a wide range of people, differing over time, to deny you information and to deny you documents and to falsely give you reassurance?’

Ms Vennells replied: ‘No, I don’t believe that was the case.’

She went on: ‘I have been disappointed particularly more recently listening to evidence of the inquiry where I think I remember people knew more than perhaps either they remembered at the time or I knew of at the time.

‘I have no sense that there was any conspiracy at all. My deep sorrow in this is that I think that individuals, myself included, made mistakes, didn’t see things, didn’t hear things.

‘I may be wrong but that wasn’t the impression that I had at the time, I have more questions now but a conspiracy feels too far fetched.’

Paula Vennells has said she was ‘too trusting’ as she was asked if she was the ‘unluckiest CEO in the United Kingdom’.

Counsel to the inquiry Jason Beer KC said: ‘Do you think you are the unluckiest CEO in the United Kingdom?’

Ms Vennells replied: ‘As the inquiry has heard, there was information I wasn’t given and others didn’t receive as well.

‘One of my reflections of all of this – I was too trusting.

‘I did probe and I did ask questions and I’m disappointed where information wasn’t shared and it has been a very important time for me… to plug some of those gaps.’

At the start of her evidence, Ms Vennells was asked a series of questions about her 775-page witness statement.

On the final page it includes the following words: ‘I finish this statement by repeating my apologies to the subpostmasters and their families and to all who suffered so much from this terrible miscarriage of justice.

‘I am truly sorry and will so for the rest of my life’

Former Post Office boss Paula Vennells has issued a grovelling three-pronged apology as she came face to face with the victims of the Horizon false accounting scandal today.

The 65-year-old businesswoman said she was ‘very, very sorry’ as she took to the witness box.

‘I would just like to say and I’m grateful for the opportunity to do this in person, how sorry I am for all that sub-postmasters and their families and others have suffered,’ she said.

‘I followed and listened to all of the impact statements and I was very affected by them.’

The former Post Office boss has sworn to tell the truth as she begins answering questoins from Jason Beer KC.

• 1999: The Horizon IT system from Fujitsu starts being rolled out to Post Office branches, replacing traditional paper-based accounting methods.
• 2003: Sub-postmaster Alan Bates had his contract terminated by the Post Office after he refused to accept liability for £1,200 of losses in his branch in Llandudno, North Wales.
• 2004: The branch in Bridlington, East Yorkshire, run by Lee Castleton, showed a shortfall of £23,000 over a 12-week period. Mr Castleton repeatedly asked the Post Office for help, but was sacked and sued for refusing to repay the cash. He was made bankrupt after a two-year legal battle, ordered to pay more than £300,000 for the company’s legal bill.
• 2006: Jo Hamilton, sub-postmaster at South Warnborough, Hampshire, was sacked over financial discrepancies. She re-mortgaged her house twice to fill the shortfall and was charged with theft of £36,000. She later admitted a lesser charge of false accounting to avoid jail.
• 2009: Computer Weekly magazine told the story of seven postmasters who had experienced unexplained losses. The Justice for Sub-postmasters Alliance (JFSA) was formed.
• 2010: Mr Bates, from JFSA, writes to minister Sir Ed Davey about the flawed Horizon system and urges him to intervene. His warnings were dismissed.
• 2012: With MPs raising concerns about convictions and the Horizon system, the Post Office launches an external review, with forensic accountants Second Sight appointed to investigate.

• 2013: An interim report by Second Sight reveals serious concerns and defects in the IT system. The Daily Mail reveals dozens of postmasters may have been wrongly taken to court and jailed.
• 2015: It is revealed the Post Office failed to properly investigate why money was missing and concluded computer failures may have been to blame. The Post Office finally stops prosecuting sub-postmasters but 700 end up being convicted.
• 2017: A group legal action is launched against the Post Office by 555 sub-postmasters.
• 2019: The High Court case ends in a £43million settlement but much of the cash was swallowed up in legal fees and victims received around £20,000 each. Post Office chief Paula Vennells awarded a CBE in New Year’s honours.
• 2020: The Post Office agrees not to oppose 44 sub-postmasters’ appeals against conviction.
• 2021: A public inquiry begins and is ongoing. The Court of Appeal quashes a further 39 convictions.
• 2022: The Government announces a new compensation scheme.
• 2023: Every postal worker wrongly convicted for Horizon offences will receive £600,000 compensation.
• 2024: Mr Bates vs The Post Office first aired on ITV1 on New Year’s Day.

With her evidence scheduled over three days, Vennells is expected to be questioned over a range of subjects concerning her leadership of the Post Office over seven years.

Here are just some that may arise from the inquiry this week:

• When did she know about remote access to accounts?

The Post Office had maintained that sub-postmasters’ branch accounts could not be remotely accessed without their knowledge, which formed the basis for prosecutions for theft and false accounting.

However, it has since emerged the Post Office was aware in 2010 about secret ‘back door’ access and that Vennells told colleagues in 2015 she needed to say it wasn’t possible in a memo.

Questions will thus centre on what she knew and when.

• Did she lie to Parliament?

In 2015, Vennells told MPs on the business select committee she had seen no evidence of any miscarriages of justice.

But the Post Office was warned two years previously there were problems with past prosecutions which relied on evidence from Gareth Jenkins, the Fujitsu IT engineer who failed to disclose to the courts that he knew about bugs in the Horizon system.

• What action did she take?

Ms Vennells was under pressure to modernise the Post Office and make it profitable with the Horizon IT system seen as too important to be scrapped.

With forensic accountants Second Sight appointed in 2012 to look into complaints, questions are likely to asked on actions Ms Vennells took in the wake of growing concern.

Nick Wallis, author of the Great Post Office Scandal, said he believed Ms Vennells wanted to avoid bad information. ‘I think she relied on Post Office loyalists and highly paid legal advisers to tell her the truth she wanted to hear,’ he said.

Former subpostmaster Seema Misra, pictured below, has called on Paula Vennells to ‘speak truth’.

Ms Misra, who ran a Post Office in West Byfleet, Surrey, was jailed in 2010 after being accused of stealing £74,000. She was pregnant at the time.

Asked what she would say to Ms Vennells, Ms Misra said: ‘Please, for god’s sake, speak truth.

‘That’s what we all deserve, we’ve been fighting such a long time… we want to know exactly what happened.’

She said she ‘of course’ feels strongly about what Ms Vennells is going to tell the inquiry, adding: ‘We’ve heard her name so many times.’

Ms Misra said that no matter what happens, ‘we won’t give up’.

Former subpostmaster Lee Castleton said he is ‘really looking forward’ to hearing Paula Vennells’ evidence to the Horizon IT inquiry.

Mr Castleton, from Bridlington, East Yorkshire, was found to have a £25,000 shortfall at his branch in 2004. He was made bankrupt after he lost his legal battle with the Post Office.

Speaking outside Aldwych House, he said: ‘I’m really looking forward to listen to what she has to say.

‘It’s a good platform for her to finally speak. She’s not been able to, for whatever reason, speak for all these years. I think it’s important that she is listened to and heard and then we can all judge that.’

He said he was hoping to hear ‘the truth’.

‘Let’s hear what, why and when, and who – who was involved in those decisions, why those decisions were made,’ he continued. ‘And let’s listen to the other side of what we’ve heard already, which is the impact of those decisions, to hear what the reasons for those decisions were.’

Asked what message he would send to Ms Vennells if he could, Mr Castleton added: ‘This is your chance to put it out there. The world’s listening, if you like. Do what you feel is right.’

Despite standing in the pouring rain, protestors donning banners were still seen outside Aldwych House today.

Some of the signs read: ‘SOS: Support our Sub-postmasters’. while another exclaimed: ‘Justice For Sub-postmasters’.

Paula Vennels was the shamed former boss of the Post Office from 2012 to 2019 – a time in which hundreds of sub-postmasters wrongly prosecuted after faulty software said money was missing from branch accounts.

During her tenure as chief executive, the 65-year-old ordained priest oversaw huge financial struggles forcing the closure of thousands of Post Office branches nationwide.

She also commissioned a private investigation to investigate the supposed account shortfalls which concluded that there were no accounting or IT issues.

After a group of staff brought their case against the Post Office to the High Court in 2017, she eventually stepped down from her role in 2019.

She is now one of the most recognisable faces of the scandal despite having not spoken publicly about it since 2015.

Police officers had previously asked media to ensure there was a clear path for Paula Vennells to enter the building.

But she was surrounded by press as she exited a car a short way from the venue and was eventually escorted by police.

The former Post Office boss has arrived at the inquiry which is being held at Aldwych House in London.

The 65-year-old was met by a scrummage of photographers and reporters as she got out of a car shortly before 8am.

Welcome to MailOnline’s live coverage of today’s Post Office inquiry as former chief executive Paula Vennells gives evidence.

It will mark the first public remarks from Ms Vennells over the Horizon IT scandal in almost a decade with many questions surrounding her role in what is described as the worst miscarriage of justice in British history.

We will bring you the latest developments on what promises to be a huge day at the Post Office Inquiry.