The woman who was in charge of the Post Office when branch managers were falsely accused of fraud should consider giving up her CBE, the postal services minister said on Wednesday.
Kevin Hollinrake criticised the award given to Paula Vennells, who was the CEO of the Post Office from 2012 to 2019.
The MP added he would also support criminal prosecutions following the scandal, which saw more than 700 workers prosecuted based on “flawed” information from computer system Horizon.
Mr Hollinrake told ITV: “Paula Vennells got a CBE for service to The Post Office. I think that matter needs to be looked at. If I was Paula Vennells, I would seriously consider handing that back voluntarily at this point in time.”
Former postmaster Alan Bates, who led a class action lawsuit against the Post Office, has also called for Ms Vennells’s honour to be “taken away”.
Mr Bates, played in the drama by Toby Jones, and his partner Suzanne Sercombe used their life savings to buy a Post Office branch in Llandudno, North Wales in 1998.
Soon after the Horizon IT system was implemented in 1999, postmasters started reporting unexplained discrepancies and losses.
Despite complaints, use of the system expanded across the country and, by 2013, it was used by at least 11,500 branches.
Between 2000 and 2014, 736 sub-postmasters were prosecuted based on “flawed” information. Four workers died by suicide after being accused.
Mr Bates and five others took the company to the High Court in a Group Litigation Order covering 555 claimants. A judge ruled that computer errors were to blame and the denials about Horizon issues was down to “institutional obstinacy”.
In December 2019, the Post Office agreed to pay £58 million in compensation for the false prosecutions based on faulty evidence from the Horizon system.
However, the campaigners were only left with £12 million — about £20,000 each — after paying their legal costs.
Mr Bates turned down an OBE for services to justice in January last year.
Ms Vennells has previously apologised for the “suffering” caused by the scandal after 39 former Post Office workers had their convictions quashed by the Court of Appeal in 2021.
