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.
