Horizon scandal: Former Post Office boss Paula Vennells to hand back her CBE ‘with immediate effect’
Former Post Office boss Paula Vennells will hand back her CBE with immediate effect amid the fallout of the Horizon IT scandal.
The scandal led to the convictions of hundreds of sub-postmasters.
The Horizon issue has come to public attention following the airing of ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office which returned the spotlight to the scandal.
Between 1999 and 2015, more than 700 Post Office branch managers were convicted after the faulty Horizon software made it look like money was missing from their shops.
Ms Vennells said in a statement: “I continue to support and focus on co-operating with the inquiry and expect to be giving evidence in the coming months.
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“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.
“I am 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.
“I now intend to continue to focus on assisting the inquiry and will not make any further public comment until it has concluded.”
John Glen, a minister in the Cabinet Office, said: “Holding those accountable for this tragic miscarriage of justice is essential. It is right that Paula Vennells has handed back her CBE, maintaining the integrity of the honours system.”
Labour’s Kevan Jones told Sky News he was “bemused” by the government’s response, as it nominated Ms Vennells for the honour in 2019.
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‘I was convinced to plead guilty’
Lord Arbuthnot, a former Conservative MP who campaigned on the Horizon scandal, told Sky News that if he had been in Ms Vennells’s position he would not have taken the honour in the first place.
He said: “There were many people who behaved really badly, among them, Paula Vennells, of course.
“But I’m pleased that this has now happened because it means that the subpostmasters can begin to concentrate on the wider picture.”
Who is Paula Vennells?
While honours can only be forfeited to the King, a recipient can renounce theirs voluntarily.
This involves them ceasing to refer to themselves with the title while they go through the process to get it annulled by the monarch.
Ms Vennells joined the Post Office as group network director in 2007, having previously worked at Unilever, L’Oreal, Dixons, Argos and Whitbread.
She is also an ordained priest.
Ms Vennells was made chief executive of the Post Office in 2012, the year the company split from Royal Mail.
The Post Office had been prosecuting sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses since 2000. It was the year Ms Vennells took over that the company began investigating allegations about the Horizon system.
Five years later, in 2017, a group of staff managed to bring a case against the Post Office in the High Court.
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What is the Post Office scandal
Ms Vennells came under increasing criticism, and eventually stepped down in 2019, when she received her CBE.
When a judge said in 2019 that sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses should have their convictions overturned, Ms Vennells said she was “truly sorry for the suffering caused”.
Ms Vennells is not the only person or entity to have faced criticism for her actions during the scandal.
Sir Ed Davey, who was postal minister during the coalition years, has had to fend off calls to resign. He said on Monday that the Post Office spun a “conspiracy of lies”.
The prime minister’s spokesman said that Fujitsu would be “held to account, whether legally or financially” if it is found to to be responsibly for the scandal. Fujitsu developed the Horizon software which was at fault.
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A Fujitsu spokesperson said: “The current Post Office Horizon IT statutory inquiry is examining complex events stretching back over 20 years to understand who knew what, when, and what they did with that knowledge.
“The inquiry has reinforced the devastating impact on postmasters’ lives and that of their families, and Fujitsu has apologised for its role in their suffering.
“Fujitsu is fully committed to supporting the Inquiry in order to understand what happened and to learn from it. Out of respect for the inquiry process, it would be inappropriate for Fujitsu to comment further at this time.”
The crypto lobby group, the DeFi Education Fund, has petitioned the Trump administration to end what it claimed was the “lawless prosecution” of open-source software developers, including Roman Storm, a creator of the crypto mixing service Tornado Cash.
In an April 28 letter to White House crypto czar David Sacks, the group urged President Donald Trump “to take immediate action to discontinue the Biden-era Department of Justice’s lawless campaign to criminalize open-source software development.”
The letter specifically mentioned the prosecution of Storm, who was charged in August 2023 with helping launder over $1 billion in crypto through Tornado Cash. His trial is still set for July, and his fellow charged co-founder, Roman Semenov, is at large and believed to be in Russia.
The DeFi Education Fund said that in Storm’s case, the Department of Justice is attempting to hold software developers criminally liable for how others use their code, which is “not only absurd in principle, but it sets a precedent that potentially chills all crypto development in the United States.”
The group also called for the recognition that the prosecution contradicts the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) guidance from Trump’s first term, which established that developers of self-custodial, peer-to-peer protocols are not money transmitters.
“This kind of legal environment does not just chill innovation — it freezes it,” they argued. The letter added that it also “empowers politically-motivated enforcement and puts every open-source developer at risk, regardless of industry.”
In January, a federal court in Texas ruled that the Treasury overstepped its authority by sanctioning Tornado Cash.
Stakes could not be higher
The group thanked Trump for his support of the industry and his stated goal to make America the “crypto capital of the planet.”
They added, however, that his goal can’t be realized if developers are prosecuted for building tools that enable the technology.
“We ask President Trump to protect American software developers, restore legal clarity, and end this unlawful DOJ overreach. The job’s not finished, and the stakes could not be higher.”
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Variant Fund chief legal officer Jake Chervinsky said the Justice Department’s case against Storm is “an outdated remnant of the Biden administration’s war on crypto.”
“There is no justification in law or policy for prosecuting software developers for launching non-custodial smart contract protocols,” he added.
At the time of writing, the petition had attracted 232 signatures from industry executives and developers, including Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam, Paradigm co-founder Matt Huang, and Ethereum core developer Tim Beiko, among others.
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Migrants convicted of sex offences in the UK or overseas will be unable to claim asylum under government plans to change the law to improve border security.
The Home Office announcement means foreign nationals who are added to the sex offenders register will forfeit their rights to protection under the Refugee Convention.
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As part of the 1951 UN treaty, countries are allowed to refuse asylum to terrorists, war criminals and individuals convicted of a “particularly serious crime” – which is currently defined in UK law as an offence carrying a sentence of 12 months or more.
The government now plans to extend that definition to include all individuals added to the Sex Offenders’ Register, regardless of the length of sentence, in an amendment to the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill, which is currently going through parliament. It’s understood they also hope to include those convicted of equivalent crimes overseas.
Those affected will still be able to appeal their removal from the UK in the courts under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
More than 10,000 people have now been detected crossing the Channel. Pic: PA
It is unclear how many asylum seekers will be affected, as the government has been unable to provide any projections or past data on the number of asylum seekers added to the Sex Offenders’ Register.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said: “Sex offenders who pose a risk to the community should not be allowed to benefit from refugee protections in the UK.
“We are strengthening the law to ensure these appalling crimes are taken seriously.”
Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls Minister Jess Philips said: “We are determined to achieve our mission of halving violence against women and girls in a decade.
“That’s exactly why we are taking action to ensure there are robust safeguards across the system, including by clamping down on foreign criminals who commit heinous crimes like sex offences.”
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The Home Office would like voters to see this as a substantial change. But that’s hard to demonstrate without providing any indication of the scale of the problem it seeks to solve.
Clearly, the government does not want to fan the flames of resentment towards asylum seekers by implying large numbers have been committing sex crimes.
But amid rising voter frustration about the government’s grip on the issue, and under pressure from Reform – this measure is about signalling it is prepared to take tough action.
Conservatives: ‘Too little, too late’
The Conservatives claim Labour are engaged in “pre-election posturing”.
Chris Philp MP, the shadow home secretary, said: “This is too little, too late from a Labour government that has scrapped our deterrent and overseen the worst year ever for small boat crossings – with a record 10,000 people crossing this year already.
“Foreign criminals pose a danger to British citizens and must be removed, but so often this is frustrated by spurious legal claims based on human rights claims, not asylum claims.”
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Has Labour tackled migration?
The Home Office has also announced plans to introduce a 24-week target for appeal hearings (known as “first-tier tribunals”) to be held for rejected asylum seekers living in taxpayer-supported accommodation, or for foreign national offenders.
The current average wait is 50 weeks. The idea is to cut the asylum backlog and save taxpayers money – Labour have committed to end the use of asylum hotels by the end of this parliament.
It’s unclear how exactly this will be achieved, although a number of additional court days have already been announced.
The government also plans to crack down on fake immigration lawyers who advise migrants on how to lodge fraudulent asylum claims, with the Immigration Advice Authority given new powers to issue fines of up to £15,000.
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren has called on government officials to address questions related to US President Donald Trump’s memecoin and his media company.
In an April 25 letter to Jamieson Greer, acting director of the US Office of Government Ethics (OGE), Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts and California Democratic Senator Adam Schiff requested that officials address concerns about Trump’s memecoin after the president announced a dinner and White House tour for some of the individuals who held the most TRUMP tokens. The two senators requested that Greer provide information on safeguards and guidelines related to whether foreign actors and others could buy political influence with the president, potentially impacting his policy positions and federal pardons.
“President Trump’s announcement promises exclusive access to the presidency in exchange for significant investment in one of the President’s business ventures,” wrote the two senators.
“In promising such access, this proposition may implicate several federal ethics laws and constitutional prohibitions, including the federal bribery statute and emoluments clauses of the US Constitution. It also raises the troubling prospect that foreign actors are using the memecoin as a vector to buy influence with President Trump and his associates without needing to disclose their identities publicly.”
The letter was sent the same day Warren reportedly expressed similar concerns about Trump’s potential conflicts of interest with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). According to an April 25 Reuters report, the Massachusetts senator urged SEC Chair Paul Atkins to ensure that oversight of Trump’s media company was “free from undue political interference and influence from the President and his administration.”
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Though ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, Warren does not have the authority to direct Congress’s agenda with Democrats in the minority. Two Democrats in the Senate and House of Representatives have already called for Trump’s impeachment over his memecoin dinner.
Warren added:
“The American people deserve the unwavering assurance that access to the presidency is not being offered for sale to the highest bidder in exchange for the President’s own financial gain.”
At the time of publication, it was unclear who among the top TRUMP memecoin holders would attend the dinner, scheduled to be held on May 22 at Trump’s golf club in Washington, DC. Speculation and analysis of users suggested that Trump supporters, including Tron founder Justin Sun, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and others, could attend, though none had been confirmed as of April 28.
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