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Rishi Sunak has backed calls for a review into whether Paula Vennells, former Post Office chief executive, should be stripped of her CBE as outrage grows over the Horizon IT scandal.
The UK prime minister’s spokesperson said on Monday that Sunak would “strongly support” the honours forfeiture committee “if it chose to review the case”.
Sunak shared the public’s “sense of outrage” over the affair, the spokesperson added. The scandal involved more than 700 sub-postmasters being prosecuted by the Post Office between 2000 and 2014 based on information from the faulty Horizon computer system.
Vennells, chief executive between 2012 and 2019, staunchly defended the system in public and was in charge when the state-owned Post Office spent millions of pounds defending its actions in a landmark Court of Appeal case.
Pressure has ramped up on the government in recent weeks to act after the ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office raised awareness of the issue.
More than 1mn people have signed a petition calling for Vennells to be stripped of her award, granted by the Conservative government in 2019.
Sunak earlier on Monday labelled the Horizon affair an “appalling miscarriage of justice” at an event in Accrington, Lancashire.
The prime minister said the government had made available the money needed to compensate the victims and that ministers were looking at how they could “speed up” the resolution of the affair.
Alex Chalk, the UK’s justice secretary, was scheduled to meet legal advisers on Monday to discuss applying a blanket exoneration of sub-postmasters convicted with evidence from the Horizon system.
The minister responsible for postal affairs, Kevin Hollinrake, will also deliver a statement in the House of Commons on Monday afternoon.
Vennells previously told the Financial Times she was “deeply sorry” for the sub-postmasters who suffered and that it remained “a source of deep regret” that they and their families were affected.
“I am sorry for the hurt caused and I am sorry for the fact that during my tenure as CEO, despite genuinely working hard to resolve the difficulties, the Post Office did not identify and address the defects in the Horizon technology. The regret is constantly with me,” she said.
