Moment shamed Post Office boss Paula Vennells dances to Pixie Lott

This is the second the Post Office boss Paula Vennells danced to Pixie Lott at a employees get together as sub-postmasters had been combating a authorized battle over being wrongly jailed.

The expenses-paid firm occasion befell at a five-star lodge, the place Ms Vennells danced together with her predecessor Alan Cook – who was in cost when 161 sub-postmasters had been wrongfully prosecuted, and 57 jailed.

Also filmed partying was Kevin Gilliland, who was head of retail within the midst of the scandal.

Angela Va Den Bogerd was additionally invited, who was a central determine within the Post Office scandal and an advocate of the defective IT software program. She stop her job in 2020 after the wrongful convictions gained the general public’s consideration.

Data from the Horizon IT system was used to prosecute as much as 983 postmasters between 1999 and 2015, assuming the accounts had been safe.

The revelation that distant entry was attainable throughout a High Court case in 2017 was the start of the route that ultimately led to the Prime Minister asserting a brand new regulation to quash courtroom convictions.

The lives of those that had been wrongly prosecuted had been ruined, with ‘wished: lifeless or alive’ posters put up of their faces and their kids being bullied.

It comes as ministers have ordered the Post Office to probe claims a second IT system may have additionally resulted within the wrongful convictions of sub-postmasters. 

The stunning footage taken on the Post Office Retail Sales Awards confirmed Ms Vennells up on stage dancing and singing alongside to Pixie Lott’s lyrics on the Hilton Hotel.

The singer charged round £25,000 for company gigs on the time, in line with the Mirror. 

Dancing to Kiss the Stars, Ms Vennells – then aged 58 – smiled as she partied in a white costume. It befell on June 10, 2017, which was three months after she supplied proof to the High Court which was labelled ‘inaccurate and deceptive’.

Ms Vennells, who faces accusations of overlaying up the Horizon scandal by refusing to correctly examine faults within the system, is dealing with a large public backlash within the wake of ITV drama Mr Bates Vs The Post Office.

Amid intensifying strain, the 64-year-old mom of two, who was the Post Office’s chief govt between 2012 and 2019, introduced she would hand again her CBE, awarded to her at first of 2019.

The video footage – which was posted on the Post Office web site however later taken down – reveals these in attendance consuming champagne and gouging themselves on a three-course meal.

Seema Misra, a 48-year-old former sub-postmistress who was pregnant when she was wrongly jailed, instructed the Mirror: ‘This is totally shameful. I am unable to consider it – folks misplaced their lives and these individuals are on the market partying. Every time I believe I’ve heard all of it, one thing new emerges, it is disgusting.’

Another wrongly convicted post-master, Mark Kelly, 45, added: ‘This simply additional proves Ms Vennells has no ethical compass.’

The Post Office was already mired within the Horizon IT scandal when its deeply- spiritual chief govt, Reverend Paula Vennells, agreed to participate in a panel dialogue about enterprise ethics.

The speak, attended by City agency executives, was held at London’s Canary Wharf in May 2018. Apparently undeterred by the disaster unfolding on her watch – and definitely making no point out of it – Ms Vennells declared herself ‘happy with the Post Office… a very particular organisation when it comes to its values’.

After explaining how her values got here ‘from the glory of God’, she turned to the topic of creating errors.

‘When we mess up, which we do on daily basis,’ she instructed the viewers, ‘my religion tells me that I could be forgiven, that shortfalls are a wonderfully human factor to do and that I can at all times begin once more; at all times, at all times, at all times, begin once more. You can put issues proper.

‘And for me, I discovered that very liberating as a result of… you may get it improper and you may transfer on.’

But after asserting she would hand again her CBE after public strain, Ms Vennells stated she was ‘actually sorry for the devastation brought on to the sub-postmasters and their households, whose lives had been torn aside by being wrongly accused and wrongly prosecuted because of the Horizon system’.

But, crucially, she stopped wanting admitting accountability for the debacle which noticed greater than 700 sub-postmasters prosecuted for crimes they hadn’t dedicated. Hundreds had been left bankrupt, humiliated or in jail. Among these convicted, 4 dedicated suicide and 33 others have since died with out seeing justice.

It comes as ministers have ordered the Post Office to probe claims {that a} second IT system may be at fault.

A string of former sub-postmasters have instructed the i newspaper they consider Capture, an accounting software program launched in Post Office branches within the Nineteen Nineties, was defective and responsible for monetary discrepancies of their programs.

One, Steve Marston, 67, of Heap Bridge, Greater Manchester, stated Capture noticed him convicted of theft and false accounting in 1998 – earlier than the Horizon fiasco.

Labour MP Kevan Jones, who has advocated for postmasters impacted by the Horizon scandal, stated he knew of ‘5 or 6’ potential victims of Capture. 

Former postmaster Alan Bates just lately hit out on the ‘insanity’ of the Post Office scandal compensation scheme and warned victims had been ‘dying’ ready for redress.

More than 700 sub-postmasters had been prosecuted between 1999 and 2015 after faults with Fujitsu’s Horizon system utilized in Post Office branches made it seem that cash was lacking.

Just 93 convictions have been quashed to date, that means a whole lot of postmasters are unable to entry compensation.

But Prime Minister Rishi Sunak instructed the Commons that the federal government will take drastic motion to ‘proper the wrongs’.

Describing the scandal as ‘one of many biggest miscarriages of justice in our nation’s historical past’, Mr Sunak stated round 750 former postmasters will have the ability to signal easy declarations of innocence to be exonerated en masse.

That will unlock a whole lot of hundreds of thousands of kilos in ‘life-changing’ compensation, probably £600,000 every, which needs to be paid by the top of the 12 months.

When approached for remark by The Mirror, the Post Office declined to touch upon the video.