Paula Vennells

God has made me a byword to everyone, a man in whose face people spit.

Job 17:6

Paula Vennells is a Christian minister who was the chief executive of the Post Office during the period when it was most vigorously denying any wrong doing regarding the prosecutions of hundreds of its own sub-post masters (the ordinary people who run the local post offices). In the face of public outcry against the injustice perpetrated by the Post Office – it has been described as the “most widespread miscarriage of justice … in British legal history”¹ – she has expressed her sorrow² for the suffering of those wrongfully treated by the Post Office and has returned the CBE she was awarded when she left the Post Office in 2019. This surely falls far short of what is required.

The chief executive of an organisation is responsible for the actions of the organisation. This is part of the raison d’etre of the office and a major reason why they are substantially rewarded. The chief executive shares in the glory of the organisation but also its shame. Paula Vennells was rewarded and honoured for turning the Post Office from loss to profit. She shared in its glory. But this was before the true extent of the injustices perpetrated by the Post Office were known. With the exposure of those gross injustices the Post Office is rightly shamed. Paula Vennells shares in that shame. But so far she has not owned that shame nor owned the fault.  It maybe that, privately, she feels it, but that is not enough. She has to publicly own and confess it.

But, she is also a Christian minister who, it is said, was at one time even considered for the Bishopric of London.  As a minister of God she is held to a higher standard than others (see e.g. the letter of James 3:1  in the Bible). It maybe that part of her silence is due to legal advice not to say anything in case she incriminate herself. The Court of Appeal described the actions of the Post Office as “so egregious as to make the prosecution of any of the “Horizon cases” an affront to the conscience of the court”³ . But she is accountable to a higher court than any mere human judge and she must do what is right before Him. Publicly confessing that she failed, as the CEO, to ensure that the Post Office acted in a just manner and apologising to those who have suffered as a consequence is the first step of repentance and of putting herself right with God and with all those who have suffered through her failure. This is regardless of the details of how well she understood what was going on, whether her subordinates deceived or misled her, or any other internal matter. It is as the CEO of the organisation that she has to respond.

To be a byword is not a good thing in the biblical Old Testament.  It is the sign of God’s judgement on a wayward and unrepentant Israel and Job applies it personally to himself as he mourns the condition he finds himself in. Paula Vennels has, sadly, become a byword for corporate injustice on an enormous scale. She will be referred to and studied in business management courses, in theological courses, in Christian leadership courses, as an example of what not to do as a leader.  She can, however, still affect the final chapter of this tale by what she does before she testifies to the public inquiry.