UK Post Office ex-boss hands back royal honour in fallout of IT scandal

A former British Post Office boss at the centre of a controversy of wrongful convictions of hundreds of post office branch managers, including many British Indians, on Tuesday said that she would hand back her royal honour.Paula Vennells, 65, was CEO of the government-owned Post Office Ltd between 2012-19 at the peak of an IT scandal involving a faulty accounting software named Horizon.

A former British Post Office boss at the centre of a controversy of wrongful convictions of hundreds of post office branch managers, including many British Indians, on Tuesday said that she would hand back her royal honour.

Paula Vennells, 65, was CEO of the government-owned Post Office Ltd between 2012-19 at the peak of an IT scandal involving a faulty accounting software named Horizon. Her role came under renewed scrutiny after a hard-hitting real-life television drama series aired recently and a petition crossed a million signatures demanding a revocation of her Commander of the British Empire (CBE) honour for ''services to the Post Office and to charity'', conferred in the 2019 New Year's Honours List.

''I continue to support and focus on cooperating with the inquiry and expect to be giving evidence in the coming months,'' Vennells said in a statement on Tuesday.

''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," she said.

The former CEO reiterated 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 system".

Meanwhile, UK Justice Secretary Alex Chalk met with senior judges to discuss possible solutions to the scandal and updated the House of Commons.

''We are urgently working on the detail of how to clear the names of the postmasters as quickly as possible and further details will be announced in due course,'' he said.

His meetings are focused on speeding up the process for some of the over 700 sub-postmasters who are still waiting for their convictions to be overturned. Back in April 2021, the case of Seema Biswas, now 47, came to light when she had her conviction quashed alongside Vijay Parekh – two British Indian sub-postmasters among a group of 39 who won a Court of Appeal case. Misra took over her post office in Surrey in 2005 and was pregnant when she was wrongly handed a 15-month sentence over 12 years ago after being accused of stealing GBP 75,000 from her branch.

''I would definitely have killed myself if I hadn't been pregnant,'' said Misra, a mother of two who had hailed the Court of Appeal verdict as a "huge moment".

Over the weekend British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the government was committed to speeding up the process of exoneration and compensation for the victims.

''Obviously it's something that happened in the '90s but actually seeing it and hearing about it again just shows what an appalling miscarriage of justice it is for everyone affected and it's important that those people now get the justice they deserve, and that's what the compensation schemes are about," said Sunak.

The ITV drama 'Mr Bates Vs The Post Office', which aired in the UK this month, has acted as catalyst for this simmering issue, with the Metropolitan Police also confirming that it is investigating the Post Office over potential fraud offences.

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