Paula Vennells cries as she admits ‘mistakes’

Ms Vennells has told the inquiry how she trusted information from the “highest lawyer in the organisation” but accepted it was “clearly completely inaccurate”.

The inquiry was shown minutes from a meeting attended by Ms Vennells and Susan Crichton, then the Post Office’s most senior in-house lawyer.

The document stated that Ms Crichton had told attendees that “the subpostmasters were challenging the integrity of the Horizon system.

“However, the system had been audited by RMG Internal Audit with the reports reviewed by Deloittes. The audit report was very positive.”

Ms Vennells said she couldn’t remember Ms Crichton making this statement but agreed with Mr Beer KC when he said it suggested prosecutions had a “hundred per cent hit rate”.

She added: “Clearly that was completely inaccurate in many different ways as you drew attention to before the break.”

Ms Vennells went on to say she wouldn’t have believed it was “false information”, adding: “If you’re given information by the highest lawyers in the organisation, you take it completely as the truth. 

“Because you assume that lawyers – and I must be clear I’m not implying anything here at all in terms of Susan Crichton – but one assumes that lawyers work to a professional code … The Post Office didn’t, I think with hindsight, have sufficient oversight to check whether that was or wasn’t the case. 

“So if that statement was made at a board meeting – if any statement was made at a board meeting – the board would take it as fact and truth.”