The ex-chief executive of the Post Office has quit her roles on the boards of Morrisons and Dunelm in the wake of an IT scandal which led to the wrongful convictions of former postmasters.
Paula Vennells, who ran the Post Office between 2012 and 2019, resigned with immediate e ffect in the wake of Friday’s High Court judgement, also stepping down from her role as an Anglican minister.
Hundreds of subpostmasters were prosecuted for theft, fraud and false accounting because of the Post Office’s defective Horizon accounting system, which had “bugs, defects and errors” from the very outset of its installation in branches from 1999.
A total of 39 sub-postmasters had their convictions quashed on Friday, with some waiting twenty years to clear their names. The mass acquittal is one of the biggest wrongful convictions in British history.
Ms Vennells left the Post Office in 2019, months before a damning High Court judgment in a civil claim brought against it by hundreds of former subpostmasters. Ms Vennells was made a CBE for “services to the Post Office and to charity.”
Some hundreds of workers spent decades clearing their name, with a number losing their homes, declaring bankruptcy, and dying by suicide in the wake of the convictions.
In a statement, she said she is “truly sorry” for the “suffering” caused to subpostmasters who were wrongly convicted of offences.
Ms Vennells, who is an associate minister in the Diocese of St Albans, issued the apology on Sunday as she announced that she would be stepping back from her regular church duties in the wake of the Horizon scandal.
She said: “I am truly sorry for the suffering caused to the 39 sub-postmasters as a result of their convictions which were overturned last week. It is obvious that my involvement with the Post Office has become a distraction from the good work undertaken in the Diocese of St Albans and in the parishes I serve.
“I have therefore stepped back with immediate effect from regular parish ministry, and intend to focus fully on working with the ongoing Government Inquiry to ensure the affected sub-postmasters and wider public get the answers they deserve.”
In brief updates to the London Stock Exchange, both companies said she would be leaving the roles, which include responsibilities for setting executive pay and upholding corporate responsibility.
Ms Vennells took home £89,000 in fees from Morrisons and £30,000 from Dunelm in the past year, according to the latest published annual accounts.
Dunelm chairman Andy Harrison said: “We respect Paula’s decision to step down from the board and I would like to thank her for the positive contribution she has made to the business since her appointment in September 2019.”
Morrisons chairman Andrew Higginson said: “Paula has been an insightful, effective and hardworking non-executive director, and, on behalf of the board, I want to thank her for her significant contribution over the last five years.”
The diocese said she had informed the Bishop of St Albans, the Rt Rev Alan Smith, who is the son of a former postmaster.
The Bishop of St Albans said it is “right” that Ms Vennells “stands back from public ministry” following the ruling.
He said: “As the son of a former subpostmaster I express my distress at the miscarriage of justice that so many subpostmasters have suffered.
“They and their families are in my thoughts and prayers. I am glad that these and earlier appeals have overturned convictions that have been found to be unjust.”
The Post Office knew there were “serious issues about the reliability” of the Fujitsu-developed IT system, which was rolled out to branches in 2000, but continued to bring “serious criminal charges against the subpostmasters on the basis of Horizon data”, the Court of Appeal said on Friday.
Lord Justice Holroyde said the Post Office “effectively steamrolled over any subpostmaster who sought to challenge its accuracy”.
Three of the former subpostmasters, Wendy Cousins, Stanley Fell and Neelam Hussain, had their appeals dismissed by the court because “the reliability of Horizon data was not essential to the prosecution case”.
After the ruling was delivered at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, former subpostmasters whose convictions were overturned called for a public inquiry into the scandal which “destroyed” people’s lives.
The Criminal Cases Review Commission, which investigates potential miscarriages of justice, has encouraged any other former Post Office employees to consider challenging their convictions following the ruling.
Post Office chief executive Nick Read said: “The quashing of historical convictions is a vital milestone in fully and properly addressing the past as I work to put right these wrongs as swiftly as possible, and there must be compensation that reflects what has happened.”
