Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey and former Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells are both facing demands to hand over money to a fund for the victims of the Post Office Horizon scandal.
The Lib Dem leader pocketed £275,000 in a fee from Herbert Smith Freehills the legal firm which carried out many of the private prosecutions of hundfreds of sub-postmasters who was falsely accused of fraud with more than 200 going to prison.
The fee came after he was minister for the Post Office in the coalition government in 2012 and had refused to meet Alan Bates and other victims of the scandal saying that a meeting would serve “no useful purpose”.
Meanwhile, Ms Vennells, who has just handed back her CBE after more than a million signed a petition to have it removed from her, earned £2.2million in bonuses while she was chief excutive and has been accused of covering up the cases.
Now MPs beleieve they and others at the heart of the scandal which has been linked to at least four suicides and ruined the lives of hundreds of innocent people should hand over their earnings and give it to the fund set up to help sub-postmasters rebuild their lives.
One former has questioned how Sir Ed, who is refusing to relinquish his knighthood, would have made contact with the legal firm so closely involved with the scandal.
The ex-minister said: “He would have known them through his work as a minister. It does not feel like a random coincidence that they gave him lucrative consultancy work. He needs to explain all this clearly.”
Sir Ed has claimed that he was “lied to on an industrial scale” by the Post Office executives and Fujitsu the company behind the faulty Horizon software and noted that he did eventually meet the victims.
But both he and Vennells are now under pressure to hand over the cash.
Of the five MPs who initially raised the problems in 2012 only two are left in Parliament – Independent former Tory Andrew Brdgen and Labour’s Kevan Jones.
Mr Jones told express.co.uk: “People like Vennells who profited from this misery should make sizeable donations to help the victims.”
Mr Bridgen said: “Will Ed Davey be handing back his knighthood? I doubt it.
“Our honours system becomes more discredited by the day. What the victims really need is proper compensation for the false criminalisation and humiliation they suffered at the hands of the establishment which closed their eyes, ears and ranks on them because they were viewed as irrelevant collateral damage for political and corporate career advancement.
“Perhaps ‘Sir’ Ed Davey should hand over the money he took from lawyers who victimised innocent sub postmasters and Vennells should hand over her undeserved multi million pound bonuses from her disservice of the national treasure that was once the Post Office.”
The issue has hit the headlines after the ITV biopic Mr Bates vs the Post Office revealed the suffering of hundreds of sub-postmasters.
In handing back her CBE, Ms Vennells issued a statement apologising for her role in the cover up.
She said: “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 subpostmasters 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.”
A Lib Dem spokesman said: “Paula Vennells gave back her CBE because she was at the centre of a conspiracy of lies against the victims, the public and ministers of all parties.
“By contrast, as Alan Bates said yesterday, Ed was one of many ministers who was misled and lied to by the Post Office.
“He has always been clear that the earnings from the work he did advising on climate change issues were used to fund the lifelong care for his severely disabled son.”
“Ed had no knowledge that HSF held this account and never had any conversations about the Post Office or Horizon scandal at any occasion with HSF.”
