KEEP IT OFF THE FRONT PAGE...

Fury in gallery as Vennells 'can't remember taking PR advice not to review prosecutions

- LUCY THORNTON

GROANS, jeers and laughter erupted at the public inquiry into the Post Office IT scandal as Paula Vennells gave her second day of evidence.

The disgraced chief executive denied failing to review suspect prosecutions of sub-postmasters because it would be bad for PR and end up in the papers.

Those in the public gallery at the Horizon Inquiry, which included many wrongly accused victims, scoffed "Oh, come on!" as Ms Vennells said she hadn't put brand image ahead of miscarriages of justice. But the former Post Office boss did admit that 10 years of travesties could have been avoided if a review had been carried out of all false accounting prosecutions.

Vennells, 65, was confronted about a "grossly improper" email sent to her in 2013 by her director of communications, Mark Davies.

It warned: "If we say publicly that we will look at past cases we will open this up very significantly front-page news."