Post Office campaigner Alan Bates slammed the company’s former boss Paula Vennells on BBC Newsnight, and queried why she was given a CBE in the first place amid the ongoing scandal.
The Post Office accused hundreds of sub-postmasters of fraud, false accounting and theft between 2000 and 2015, based on data from its Horizon IT system.
The programme has since been found to be faulty, but many of the victims are yet to receive compensation.
After the ITV drama, Mr Bates vs The Post Office, was released last week, the ongoing saga has been brought back into the spotlight, as the general public call for further action from the government.
One particularly contentious element of the scandal is Paula Vennells – the Post Office chief executive from 2012 until 2019 – and her CBE, which she has just handed back, adding she is “truly sorry” for the scandal.
It came after a petition calling for the Chair of the Forfeiture Committee to strip Vennells of her CBE exceeded 1.2 million signatures as of Tuesday morning.
But Bates – one of the main claimants in a 2019 case against Post Office which brought the injustice to light – still raised a key question on BBC Newsnight on Monday.
He said: “It’s not just should she give it back or should it be taken away.
″Who gave it to her in the first place? That’s a big question that needs answering.
″Because this scandal was known about, and the problems with Horizon were known about for many years. So why did they think that she’d done such a good job at the Post Office?”
According to reports at the time, Vennells was honoured because she turned the Post Office from a company which was losing £120 million a year to a profitable firm.
She was also credited for her “commitment to the social purpose” of the Post Office and for maintaining its stability.
On Monday night, Bates revealed he did meet Vennells “over the years” to resolve the crisis, but he claimed she “just took the company line, she just defended the company left right and centre, it was all about the brand”.
“I know, like many others, that they were well aware of the problems with the system,” he alleged. “Numerous reports had been produced over the years but they didn’t come forward and they didn’t own up over the problems.”
Vennells received a CBE in December 2018, in the 2019 New Years Honours List “for services to the Post Office and to charity”.
PM Rishi Sunak also said he would “strongly support” moves to remove the former CEO’s honour on Monday.
In her Tuesday statement to PA news agency, Vennells said she is supporting the inquiry into the scandal, but had maintained her silence “as I considered it inappropriate to comment publicly” before she had given evidence to the probe.
She added: “I am, however, aware of the calls from sub-postmasters 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 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.
“I now intend to continue to focus on assisting the inquiry and will not make any further public comment until it has concluded.”