The inquiry into the Post Office scandal said it will “urgently” analyze dozens of new documents it received from former chief executive Paula Vennells.
The inquiry heard his legal team carried out further searches ahead of his appearance next week and found 50 additional documents which had not previously been shared.
A spokesperson for the inquiry told Sky News: “Inquiry lead lawyer Jason Beer KC confirmed this morning that the document was received by the inquiry at 11.17pm last night.
“The inquiry expects to receive further documents from Ms Vennells today, which will be reviewed urgently.”
Beer has previously raised concerns about the need to receive documents quickly – and reminded witnesses he will “not hesitate” to call them back to the inquest if necessary.
Came like Mrs.Alisdair Cameron’s former colleague, the former chief financial officer of the Post Office, was asked on Friday what he knew about the scandal.
He began his session with an apology to the affected subpostmasters.
Cameron was also asked about a document he wrote titled “what went wrong” in November 2020 for current chief executive Nick Read.
The former senior executive wrote: “We should have been dealing with these issues 10 years ago.
“However, I do not believe that an earlier settlement was practically possible because the serious claimants believed there had been a miscarriage of justice and demanded recognition and an apology as much as they wanted money.
“Paula didn’t believe there had been a miscarriage and couldn’t have gotten there emotionally.
“She seemed clear in her conviction, from the day I joined, that nothing had gone wrong and that was clearly stated at my first board meeting. She never, in my observation, deviated from that or seemed to particularly doubt it.”
Beer asked: “So she was unshakable in her conviction that there were no miscarriages of justice?”
Cameron responded: “As far as I’m concerned, yes.”
He said he concluded that the Postal Service had a “victim mentality” and that its defense of faulty accounting software was a “waste of public money.”
See more information:
Former IT boss ‘blocked Vennells’ number’
Correios advisor said it was a ‘corporate cover-up’
Former postmaster accused of ‘lying’ during investigation
Cameron also noted that the company was criticized for being “overly dependent on Horizon when we knew its weaknesses” and that the subpostmasters’ original lawsuits were a “deliberate miscarriage of justice.”
The final criticism was that the company should have “apologized and moved on years ago” and that its defense led to a “waste of public money and a delay in justice”.
In the 2020 document, which was presented to the inquiry, Cameron wrote: “At the heart of it all, the original sin of the Post Office – and this may go back a long time – is this: our culture, self-centered and defensive, has prevented us from dealing with postmasters in a straightforward and acceptable manner.”
Subpostmaster cases may be ‘contaminated’
More than 700 subpostmasters were processed by the Post Office and handed down criminal convictions between 1999 and 2015 because Fujitsu’s faulty Horizon system made it appear that its branches were short of cash.
Hundreds of sub-postmasters are still awaiting full compensation, despite the government announcing that those whose convictions were overturned are eligible for £600,000 payments.
This story originally appeared on News.sky.com read the full story
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