The former Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells has said she will hand back her CBE over the wrongful prosecution of hundreds of post office operators.
After days of pressure, Vennells issued a statement saying she was returning the honour given to her in the 2019 New Year’s honours with immediate effect.
She said in Tuesday’s statement that 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”.
The miscarriage of justice has been gaining attention since an ITV drama was broadcast, with more than 100 new potential victims of the Post Office scandal contacting lawyers after its airing.
Only 93 of 900 convictions made over apparent accounting “shortfalls” have been overturned so far, while 2,417 settlements have been made under a scheme to compensate those who suffered personal injury, distress and inconvenience, harassment, loss of reputation and bankruptcy.
Politicians are facing growing calls to help the remaining post office operators whose convictions are unsafe.
On Tuesday, Alex Chalk, the justice secretary, told MPs he was considering bringing a bill to parliament to quash the remaining 800 convictions with a “simple bill”.
Responding to a question from Nadhim Zahawi, the Conservative former cabinet minister, Chalk said: “The suggestion he made is receiving acting consideration. I expect to be able to make further announcements shortly.”
The long-running inquiry into the Post Office scandal will soon begin its third year of hearings.
In her statement, Vennells said: “I continue to support and focus on cooperating with the inquiry and expect to be giving evidence in the coming months.
“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.”
Vennells said she was now 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.
In the House of Commons, many MPs pressed the government to take action, with Chalk acknowledging that “exceptional” measures were needed.
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.”
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”.
Chalk said the government respected the judiciary, and would only legislate if it had exhausted all alternatives.
