Post Office scandal: Paula Vennells should return her CBE now rather than delaying the inevitable

After a much-criticised BBC interview on Sunday in which the Prime Minister erroneously described the scandal “as something that happened a very long time ago in the ‘90s”, Downing Street said on Monday that Mr Sunak would strongly support the Honours Forfeiture Committee assessing whether former Post Office boss Paula Vennells should be stripped of her CBE.

It comes as calls grow for the former Post Office chief executive to hand back her CBE after an ITV drama returned the widespread miscarriage of justice to the spotlight.

A petition addressed to Sir Chris Wormald, the chair of the Forfeiture Committee, calling for Ms Vennells to lose her honour has already attracted more than one million signatures.

In truth, the simplest thing to happen at this stage is for Ms Vennells to volunteer to proactively hand back the honour rather than draw out the seemingly inevitable any longer.

Ms Vennells, who ran the Post Office between 2012 and 2019 while it routinely denied there was a problem with its Horizon IT system, has previously said she is “truly sorry” for the “suffering” caused to sub-postmasters wrongly convicted of offences.

More than 700 Post Office branch managers were convicted after faulty Fujitsu accounting software Horizon made it look like money was missing from their shops.

Ms Vennells’ apology currently rings hollow to the victims. While her returning the honour does not go anywhere near addressing the pain and suffering victims have been through, it would at least be an important acknowledgement of the hurt that has been caused.