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Horizon scandal : Review into Vennells' CBE

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Horizon scandal : Review into Vennells' CBE

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https://www.postofficetrial.com/2021/08 ... le-on.html

Paula Vennells was given a CBE for her services to the Post Office shortly before she left the organisation in early 2019. She had spent seven years as chief executive, during which time the average Subpostmaster pay had plummeted to unsustainable levels, the Post Office was in total institutional denial about (and, the evidence suggests, covered-up) its responsibility for dozens of miscarriages of justice, and she also authorised a litigation strategy which would see the organisation cease to be capable of operating as a going concern.

There have been calls by MPs and the Communications Workers Union for the Reverend Vennells to be stripped of her CBE. Now, according to the Daily Telegraph, the former Chairman of the Post Office, Alice Perkins is also in the frame.

The report (which is paywalled), reports government "sources" describing "plans to launch a review into honours awarded to people embroiled in the Horizon subpostmasters scandal."

This review "is expected to involve a list of names of figures involved being compiled, along with an assessment of the level of their involvement."

Vennells is named, as is Perkins: "the former chairman of the Post Office, who is married to Jack Straw, the former foreign secretary. She was made a Companion of the Order of the Bath in 2002."

Alwen "I have lived and breathed the business my whole life" Lyons, the Post Office's former company secretary, who was made an OBE in 2017, is not mentioned. She has a significant role in this scandal, according to information I hope to put in my forthcoming book.

The Daily Telegraph does not give any details of how this review of Post Office honours is going to function and what relationship it will have with the government's forfeiture committee. The forfeiture committee is the only body which has the power to recommend Her Majesty annul an honour, but it is not an investigative body, which means it relies on a complaint, and information supplied to it. It also, weirdly, is not obliged to publish its decisions.

The sort of information the forfeiture committee will consider is limited. According to its website, the committee: "reflects the findings of official investigations and makes a recommendation of whether or not the honours system has been brought into disrepute."

It seems as if this government "review", reported by the Daily Telegraph, could be classed as an "official investigation", though on what legal basis it is founded, what level of "review" will be carried out and what relationship the review is going to have to the statutory inquiry into the Post Office scandal has yet to be explained.

The Daily Telegraph's sources state the impetus for this review is coming from the Prime Minister and Robert Buckland, the Justice Secretary who are both apparently "very exercised" about the scandal.

I have asked the government for more information.
I Wrote
It's good to get these types of threads, the ridiculous my manager said bollox so we can reassure ourselves that while the world is falling apart, Royal Mail managers are still being the low-life C***S they have always been.
My BFF Clash
The daily grind of having to argue your case with an intellectual pigmy of a line manager is physically and emotionally draining.

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