A secret audio recording obtained by ITV News has revealed Post Office boss Paula Vennells was told directly about problems with the Horizon system and warned not to cover them up. In a meeting with independent investigators from Second Sight on July 2, 2013, Ms Vennells was made aware of allegations that sub-postmaster branch accounts could be accessed remotely. This is something the Post Office had denied for years. She was also told by investigators that the company’s position in denying Horizon faults was both “dangerous” and "stupid", according to the recording. Report by Czubalam. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00 Just to let you know, Paula has now joined us with Cordis.
00:03 Hi Ian.
00:04 Hi Paula.
00:05 Hi Paula.
00:06 Hi Rob.
00:07 The last thing you want is a spot review response that says categorically there was no access to live data from Bracknell.
00:17 If in a week's time some bloody whistleblower pipes up to say, well actually I was working on the second floor and we routinely did X.
00:26 What might be interpreted in the press as weasel wording is extremely dangerous.
00:33 We're not just asking whether people in that basement had access to live systems, even if your answer is they did have access to what they called a live system but it wasn't live,
00:45 which itself we're having to word carefully to make it sound other than stupid.
00:50 When you say they didn't have access to the Ryzen system but actually they were passing entries to live data but you didn't ask that.
00:58 That is really dangerous ground.
01:02 So another action from yesterday is to check who has access throughout that whole Bracknell building.
01:09 So we've taken that away just to look at.
01:13 Was that Paula Venno's on the meeting?
01:16 Yes.
01:17 Okay, well I'm glad we didn't pull any punches then.
01:19 Yes, exactly.
01:20 So all that stuff has come out.
01:23 They are going to have to really wrestle with this aren't they?