Former Post Office minister defends Paula Vennells amid scandal

Miss Vennells was chief executive of the Post Office from 2012 to 2019 at a time when it wrongly accused thousands of sub-postmasters across the UK of theft, fraud and false accounting based on errors in its Horizon IT system.

Around 3,500 were accused of taking money from their businesses and 736 were prosecuted by the Post Office despite protesting their innocence.

The high court ruled in 2019 that Horizon was at fault, but to this day just 93 convictions have been overturned.

Former North Norfolk MP Sir Norman Lamb was Post Office minister for seven months in 2012 – the year that Ms Vennells took charge.

READ MORE: Post Office 'behaved monstrously' says sub-postmaster convicted of theft in scandal

Former Post Office minister and North Norfolk MP Norman Lamb (Image: Supplied)

In 2012 she commissioned a review of Horizon by forensic accountants, which reported evidence of “flaws and bugs” in the system and raised serious concerns about the treatment of sub-postmasters.

“At that point she was newly appointed and she announced that she would instruct a forensic accountant to review the whole system to get to the bottom of what had gone wrong," Sir Norman said.

"That was totally the right decision. Having taken up the case of a constituent who had been prosecuted, to hear a new chief executive of the Post Office committed to getting to the bottom of the scandal felt like the big breakthrough.

"It was the first moment after more than a decade that the Post Office had conceded that there was any problem."

Miss Vennells collected more than £4.5m in pay in her time as Post Office chief executive, which included £2.2m of performance-related bonuses. 

On Tuesday (January 9) she announced she would be handing back her CBE with immediate effect. 

READ MORE: MP who was once a sub-postmaster calls for Post Office chief to be stripped of CBE

Paula Vennells was chief executive of the Post Office from 2012 to 2019 (Image: PA)

Sir Norman met with Alan Bates - the sub-postmaster who the ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office is based - in July 2012.

He took over the ministerial position from fellow Liberal Democrat, and that party's current leader, Sir Ed Davey. 

"I’m appalled and horrified by the scale of the injustice," Sir Norman said. 

"I met with Alan Bates, who’s the hero of all this, and he was a deeply impressive man - very quiet and unassuming - but so persistent and so dogged in his pursuit of justice."

Former Llandudno sub-postmaster Alan Bates appears on ITV's Good Morning Britain (Image: ITV / Good Morning Britain)