The Post Office executive who oversaw the IT scandal that saw hundreds of subpostmasters wrongly jailed could lose her CBE, the civil servant in charge of reviewing honours has said.
Sir Tom Scholar, the chairman of the Honours Forfeiture Committee, said his team would look at whether to remove Paula Vennells’ CBE after a government inquiry into the scandal concluded later this year.
Ms Vennells was chief executive of the Post Office from 2012 to 2019 and was awarded the CBE by the Queen “for services to the Post Office and to charity” in the year she stood down from the organisation.
However, since then it has emerged that hundreds of subpostmasters across the UK were wrongly convicted of theft, fraud and false accounting, ruining lives because of problems with the Post Office’s computer system. It has been dubbed the most widespread miscarriage of justice in UK history.
Problems were not investigated
In all more than 700 subpostmasters and subpostmistresses were prosecuted for theft, fraud and false accounting between 2000 and 2014 over faulty information from the Horizon IT system, which identified incorrect accounting glitches. Reports of the problems were not investigated during Ms Vennells’ tenure.
The Government has opened a fund worth nearly £700 million for compensation, A public inquiry into the scandal started two months ago.
Sir Tom was responding to Labour MP Kevan Jones, who has written to the committee repeatedly over the past three years asking for Ms Vennells’ honour to be reviewed.
In his letter dated April 20, Sir Tom pointed out that his committee “is not an investigative body and is only able to reflect official findings by those bodies which do have that power”.
He said: “As you know there is currently an official government inquiry into the Post Office Horizon IT issue and the inquiry is planning to submit its findings in autumn 2022.
“In your letter of July 9 2020 to the previous chair of the Forfeiture Committee, you asked the committee to reconsider the honour awarded to Ms Vennells once there had been an investigation into the issue.
“The committee will have more information on which to make an assessment once the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry has completed its work.”
Sir Tom explained in the letter that his committee is “able to consider cases where individuals are deemed to have brought the honours system into disrepute.
“Examples of this might include when that person has been sentenced to a term of imprisonment exceeding three months, or where they have been censured/struck off by the relevant regulatory authority or professional body for actions or failures to act which are directly relevant to the granting of the honour.”
Mr Jones told the Telegraph: “It is good to finally receive a response from the Honours Forfeiture Committee.
“Victims of this scandal will rightly not be able to understand why Paula Vennells still retains this honour given the evidence already in the public domain.”
A government spokesman said: “Forfeiture action is confidential and we cannot comment on whether or not specific cases are being considered by the committee.”
Did not have a view
Sources said the committee would not usually consider any case while there were legal proceedings or inquiries in process, as is in the case with Ms Vennells.
The Post Office said it did not have a view on whether Ms Vennells – who it pointed out was no longer an employee – should lose her honour.
A spokesman said: “The Post Office has no comment to make regarding Sir Tom Scholar’s remarks and takes no view as to what the Honours Forfeiture Committee should or should not do when it comes to her honour.”
In April 2021 39 former Post Office workers saw their criminal convictions overturned by the Court of Appeal. Other appeals were expected to follow.
When the convictions were overturned Ms Vennells quit as a non-executive director of Morrisons and home furnishing retailer Dunelm. She also stopped her duties as an ordained Church of England minister.
She could not be reached for comment by the Telegraph this weekend. However, she said in April last year: “I am truly sorry for the suffering caused to the 39 subpostmasters as a result of their convictions which were overturned last week.”
Only a tiny minority of recipients of honours have them removed by the committee.
Disgraced children’s entertainer Rolf Harris was stripped of his CBE in 2015 after being found guilty of sex attacks on young girls, while broadcaster Stuart Hall had his OBE removed in 2013 following his conviction for sex offences against children.
Former Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Fred Goodwin was knighted in 2004 for services to banking but had it annulled in Feb 2012 “because of the scale and severity of the impact of his actions as CEO of RBS” in the run-up to the financial crisis, in what the Cabinet Office described as “an exceptional case”.
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