- Charges against two photographers for Splash News have been dismissed
- A trial alleging that former Post Office chief Paula Vennells was electronically stalked was discontinued
- A Magistrate heard that a tracking device was placed on a car but that the prosecution case did not meet a criminal threshold
- The court heard that Ms Vennells had suffered extensive media intrusion and abuse for her role in the Horizon scandal “in total” but not because of the photographers
Charges against two press photographers for the Splash News agency, who were accused of intrusive surveillance, have been dismissed.
The case against Matthew Sprake and Andrew Stone was discontinued for failing to meet a criminal standard of conduct more than a year after they were arrested.
They were charged under anti-stalking legislation after a digital tracking device was found on a car belonging to former Post Office Chief Executive Paula Vennells in January 2024. However, last week Luton Magistrates’ court found that there was no case to answer.
But District Judge Margaret Dodd did hear evidence from Ms Vennells in which she separately criticised the award-winning ITV docudrama Mr Bates vs The Post Office, saying it led her to be threatened with a petrol attack on her home and to received hate mail suggesting she kill herself following a “manipulated” and “inaccurate” portrayal of her.
Ms Vennells, who presided over the cover-up of one of Britain’s biggest miscarriages of justice, in which 39 sub-postmasters were wrongly convicted of stealing as a result of the flawed Horizon IT system, said she was a victim of “unnecessary” and “salacious” media interest following “fabrication” in series broadcast in January 2024.
“The documentary presented me as central to the whole Horizon issue which had been going on for 30 years,” said Ms Vennells, who was the Post Office boss for almost 10 years between October 2009 and April 2019.
The 66-year-old, who gave evidence to a public inquiry for three days in 2024 and handed back her CBE as a result of the scandal, told Luton Magistrates’ Court last week the acclaimed television programme had led press and broadcasters to camp outside her farmhouse in Bedfordshire for four months.
Ms Vennells said: “The drama portrayed me as central and I became a figure of public hatred. I frequently received messages and hate mail on my phone, through the door; friends were approached [by journalists].
“It was difficult. We were held in our home. I had already issued a statement to say I would cooperate with the inquiry.”
Giving evidence from behind a screen on 17 February in the opening of a case against two photographers brought under anti-stalking legislation, which was later dismissed as a non-criminal matter, Ms Vennells broke down in tears as she spoke of the malicious communications she received from unknown parties, she said as a result of the show.
Ms Vennells said: “One message spoke of putting petrol through the letterbox… I am an ordained minister – one showed me hanging from the cross.
“Some had language I choose not to repeat. People saying I should be dead, that I should be in prison. This all came after [Mr Bates vs The Post Office]. This generated a huge amount of salacious interest.”
Accepting that the Post Office scandal, which was connected to a number of suicides, was a matter “of national importance”, Ms Vennells nonetheless criticised the production, in which she was portrayed by actress Lia Williams.
“I found it concerning that a lot of it was inaccurate,” Ms Vennells said. “I did not participate in it in any way. I had made it my priority to support the inquiry.
“I found the ITV drama concerning because it portrayed me as a drama. It was not real life – it was fabrication.”
Ms Vennells added that she had “no problem” with sub-postmasters seeking compensation and their “rights to justice” but that the “manipulated” television narrative had miscast her role in the scandal, which she disagreed with.
“Yes – it is a misrepresentation; it had been going on for 25-plus years,” Ms Vennells said.
Byline has independently asked ITV for comment but had received none as this article was published.
Later Ms Vennells told District Judge Margaret Dodd that she accepted the “press have work to do” and said she had been the subject of “some press interest” since 2019 before the programme put a renewed focus on her.
Following this, in around March 2024, Ms Vennells made a “general complaint” to the press complaints handler IPSO about invasive media interest, which she said saw journalists and broadcast media camped semi-permanently on a knoll of grass at the top of a private road leading to her property.
The court heard that the heavy presence of television and press cameras and journalists was persistent to the point that Ms Vennells and her husband took to entering and leaving their property through a hole in their hedge allowing access to a neighbouring business park, where they had started parking their car so it would be, Ms Vennells said, “completely out of sight”.
Ms Vennells was speaking as the opening witness in a case brought by the Crown Prosecution Service and Bedfordshire Police against two photographers for press agency Splash News, which is part of the American Shutterstock empire, the picture library giant which in January announced a $3.7bn merger with Getty to become the world’s largest stock images company.
The court heard that one of the photographers, Matthew Sprake had not been expecting to cover the Horizon case at Ms Vennell’s property that day, but did so because his colleague was absent attending a funeral. Mr Sprake said he had was responding at short notice to information about the location of Ms Vennells’ car disclosed, he believed, by someone from one of the TV crews stationed at Ms Vennells’ home.
“Had she gone to the post office for example it would have been the front page of any newspaper,” said Mr Sprake in comments to Bedfordshire Police read out to the court, which his barrister Tommy Dominguez suggested showed a legitimate public interest.
Mr Sprake made a “short follow” in his van of Ms Vennells’ husband John Wilson, who was driving his wife’s VW UP car on 24 January 2024 – three weeks after the broadcast and three months before her evidence to the inquiry – for the purpose of “intelligence gathering”, but had ceased as soon as he established that she was not the driver. He said he did not know who Mr Wilson was, and that he was working within professional industry codes of conduct.
The court heard that Mr Sprake had also taken a photograph of the exterior of Ms Vennells’ home from a public road; an image Mr Sprake’s barrister Tommy Dominguez said was similar to others taken and published in recent years in coverage of the Post Office Horizon scandal in The Sun and Daily Mail respectively, and which Ms Vennells said she found “intrusive”.
A lawyer for a second photographer, Andrew Stone, defending his client for placing a tracking device on the Volkswagen, of which there was CCTV evidence, argued it was “unattractive and unreasonable” behaviour but not “oppressive” and did not, as a single incident, fall under the Stalking Protection Act 2019.
The Officer in the Case (OIC) for Bedfordshire police said they had not considered Mr Sprake to be involved in the tracker incident. Mr Sprake also strongly denied knowledge of its use in a recorded police interview.
Barrister for Mr Stone, David Osborne, said: “Step back for a moment and consider the role of the press. Context is everything. I would suggest that if this were being done to an ex-partner or even a love island contestant, you might take a different view.
“But this is a genuinely important, generation-defining scandal in this country and it is that the criminal law ought to allow a degree of consideration about what a journalist is entitled to do in order to pursue a legitimate and important story.
“This is hardly an example of torment of a person. Not a course of conduct. Not unreasonable.”
Mr Osborne added: “All of the mainstream media – all of them intruded upon Ms Vennells’ life and no doubt cause a great deal of anguish.. this was beyond a legitimate story – the courts in my view must protect press freedom.
“We live in the United Kingdom not Russia. I have no doubt that Paula Vennells was under enormous strain. No one would seek to justify the hateful letters she received.
“At the same time the ITV drama itself misrepresenting… it led to press interest for four months until she gave evidence at the inquiry. At no point did the police sweep them up and say they were causing distress.”
Solicitor Advocate for the Crown Prosecution Service Mark Fidler spoke of the impact on Ms Vennells, who said she had been left “hyper vigilant” and “alarmed and concerned” about being followed, adding “we are not prosecuting Ms Vennells here,” before resting his case.
After a night’s deliberation, District Judge Dodd found Ms Vennells to be a reliable witness but agreed that the trial should be discontinued and dismissed the charges without calling Mr Sprake or Mr Stone to the witness box.
In closing comments, the judge said she did not “condone the behaviour”, saying it was “unattractive” but that, though the fitting of the tracker was not acceptable, it could not “be described as oppressive”.
“The press has an important job which Ms Vennells acknowledged,” the judge said, adding that though the treatment Ms Vennells received “in total” following the ITV broadcast was, in her view, “approaching the criminal”, this was not the fault of the photographers.
“The conduct of others involved not here was disgraceful,” the judge concluded.