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At a Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry hearing on 17 May 2024, former executive Alisdair Cameron explained that a 2020 document describing Paula Vennells as unable to believe there had been a miscarriage of justice reflected his own view of what she said and how she appeared to him. His testimony was an account of his observations—not an inquiry finding about her private beliefs.
What Cameron said in the 2020 document
Cameron wrote a 2020 “What Went Wrong?” document for then-chief executive Nick Read. It said: “Paula did not believe there had been a miscarriage and could not have got there emotionally.” The inquiry identified the exhibit as POL00175235.
At the hearing, counsel asked what Cameron had based that view on. He said it came from “everything she sort of said at the time.” Recalling his first Board meeting after joining the Post Office in 2015, Cameron said: “She seemed clear in her conviction from the day I joined that nothing had gone wrong and it was very clearly stated in my very first board meeting.”
How Cameron explained his assessment
Cameron testified that, in his observation, Vennells did not later deviate from or particularly doubt that position. Asked whether she was unwavering in her conviction that there had been no miscarriages of justice, he replied: “As far as I was concerned, yes.”
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That qualification matters: Cameron was describing how he interpreted her words and conduct. Vennells left the business in 2019, which also limited the period he could personally observe her. The testimony does not establish her private state of mind independently, and it should not be presented as a finding by the Inquiry Chair.
What changed Cameron’s own understanding
Cameron said that his own view changed after the Common Issues and Horizon Issues judgments and after he learned that earlier trials had been miscarriages of justice and innocent people had been sent to prison. He said: “And the discovery that the earlier trials were miscarriages of justice and that innocent people had been sent to prison are the things that changed.”
At the start of his evidence, he apologized for having accepted without challenge the claim that there had been no miscarriages in earlier prosecutions. His account therefore distinguishes his later understanding of the cases from his earlier assessment of what Vennells believed.
Why the Horizon context matters
The hearing exchange concerned what Cameron understood Vennells to believe; it was not itself a determination of the wider Horizon cases. For context, ITV News reported in 2024 that the Post Office prosecuted more than 700 sub-postmasters between 1999 and 2015 in cases where Horizon made it appear that money was missing at their branches (ITV News, 22 May 2024).
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The 2020 document states Cameron’s assessment in blunt terms. His 2024 testimony supplied its basis: what he recalled Vennells saying and the position he believed she maintained while he worked with her. Neither account, on its own, converts his interpretation into an independently established fact about her private belief.
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