ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office follows the IT scandal that saw hundreds of Post Office workers wrongfully convicted.
Between 1999 and 2015 more than 700 branch managers were prosecuted, in what has been dubbed the biggest miscarriage of justice in British legal history.
The computer accounting system Horizon wrongfully flagged financial discrepancies which resulted in prosecutions, many losing jobs and sacrificing life savings as they were forced to pay back the Post Office.
The ITV drama focuses on Alan Bates, who in 2019 won a High Court case with the Justice For Subpostmasters Alliance, which found “bugs, errors and defects in the Horizon system caused discrepancies in postmasters’ branch accounts”.
British businesswoman and former Anglican priest Paula Vennells served as CEO of the Post Office from 2012 to 2019, a time when the organisation repeatedly denied there were issues with the Horizon system.
She went on to be awarded a CBE for “for services to the Post Office and to charity” in 2019. In 2021 she issued an apology for the scandal saying: “I am truly sorry for the suffering caused.”
Since the ITV drama aired, an online petition calling for Vennells to be stripped of her CBE has reached more than 380,000 signatures.
And Express readers have agreed that action should be taken, with user Andre G writing: “Fully pay the victims the full compensation they deserve now.”
While Socialdistance3 said: “She must give her OBE back and the postmasters should get full compensation immediately”.
So what do you think, should Paula Vennells be stripped of her CBE? Vote in our poll.
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