Former Post Office chief hands back CBE as
Horizon scandal intensifies
Paula Vennells was CEO during crisis, with more than
100 potential victims coming forward since TV drama
Kiran
Stacey, Rowena Mason and Daniel Boffey
Tue 9 Jan
2024 19.39 GMT
The former
Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells is to hand back her CBE over the
wrongful prosecution of hundreds of staff, with over 100 more potential victims
having come forward in recent weeks.
Vennells
said on Tuesday she would return the award given to her in 2019 as the fallout
from ITV’s drama about the scandal continues to grow.
Vennells is
just one of a number of high-profile figures who have been caught up in the
scandal since the drama first aired on 1 January. Others to have come under
scrutiny include Ed Davey and other former postal affairs ministers, and,
increasingly, senior figures at the technology company Fujitsu, which has been
called to testify next week in front of the Commons business committee.
Vennells
said on Tuesday she was “truly sorry for the devastation caused to the
sub-postmasters and their families, whose lives were torn apart by being
wrongly accused and wrongly prosecuted as a result of the Horizon [accounting
software] system”.
Meanwhile
ministers are still trying to decide how best to speed up the compensation
scheme and are even considering passing a bill to issue mass exonerations for
hundreds of people whose convictions have still not been quashed.
Lawyers
acting for many of the victims said they had been contacted by over 100 more
people seeking legal advice after the broadcast of the four-part drama.
Alex Chalk,
the justice secretary, told MPs on Tuesday he expected to make an announcement
shortly on how best to accelerate the pardons and the payouts.
He told
MPs: “These were truly exceptional circumstances. When I was a backbencher, I
was on the record as saying this is the most serious miscarriage of justice
since the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six. But the clue is there were
four in the Guildford case, there were six in the Birmingham case. We are
talking about hundreds.
“It is
truly exceptional, it is truly unprecedented, and it will need an appropriate
resolution.”
A Downing
Street spokesperson said: “All our focus continues to be on ensuring all those
whose lives were torn apart have swifter access to compensation and justice.”
The
Scottish government also said on Tuesday it was considering a pardon scheme,
with the first minister, Humza Yousaf, saying a mass exoneration was “very
worthy of consideration”.
UK
government sources said however that major decisions about the compensation
scheme, including whether Fujitsu should be forced to contribute, would be made
after the long-running public inquiry by Sir Wyn Williams, which will soon
begin its third year of hearings.
Some,
however, are urging the government not to go too far in interfering with the
existing judicial process. Dominic Grieve, the former attorney general, told
the BBC on Tuesday: “It’s a short cut, which may leave some people dissatisfied
that they haven’t really been fully exonerated.”
Sir Bob
Neill, the Tory chair of the Commons justice committee, said that if the
government were to publish a bill to quash all the Post Office convictions,
Chalk should check with senior judges to ensure they agreed that the normal
means for speeding up and grouping appeals could not deliver justice within an
“acceptable timeframe”.
Vennells
said she would be giving evidence to the public inquiry “in the coming months”.
She added:
“I have so far maintained my silence as I considered it inappropriate to
comment publicly while the inquiry remains ongoing and before I have provided
my oral evidence. I am, however, aware of the calls from sub-postmasters and
others to return my CBE.
“I have
listened and I confirm that I return my CBE with immediate effect.”
No 10
called her action “the right decision”, having previously said Rishi Sunak
would “strongly support” the honours forfeiture committee if it decided to look
at rescinding the award.
Vennells
said she was focused on “assisting the inquiry and will not make any further
public comment until it has concluded”.
The
businesswoman was the chief executive of the Post Office from 2012 to 2019,
when the organisation routinely denied there were any problems with Horizon and
pursued prosecutions against hundreds of post office operators.
Others have
sought to highlight the role played by Fujitsu, which runs the Horizon software
used by the Post Office and is a major contractor across Whitehall. An earlier
version of Horizon was blamed for giving the false impression that thousands of
Post Office operators had stolen money.
David
Jones, the Conservative former cabinet minister, called on ministers to review
their decision to continue awarding contracts to the company. “I have no idea
why the government is continuing to give Fujitsu contracts – very, very big
contracts,” he said. “I can’t understand why the government wants to continue
to deal with them.”
Fujitsu
UK’s four biggest repeat customers are the Ministry of Defence, the Home
Office, HM Revenue and Customs and the Financial Conduct Authority, which
handed the controversial IT supplier 68 contracts between them totalling more
than £2.7bn since 2012.
The company
said on Tuesday: “The inquiry has reinforced the devastating impact on
postmasters’ lives and that of their families, and Fujitsu has apologised for
its role in their suffering. Fujitsu is fully committed to supporting the
inquiry in order to understand what happened and to learn from it. Out of
respect for the inquiry process, it would be inappropriate for Fujitsu to
comment further at this time.”
ITV
meanwhile said the four programmes of the drama are now the most-watched on any
channel this year.
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