Pros and cons of the British honours system

Former head of Post Office hands back CBE and shines spotlight once again on the awards process

Paula Vennells
Paula Vennells handed back her CBE after 1.2 million people signed a petition calling for it to be stripped
(Image credit: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The former head of the Post Office has succumbed to public pressure and handed back her CBE over her part in the Horizon IT scandal. 

Paula Vennells, who was chief executive of the Post Office between 2012 and 2019, and before that a senior executive, oversaw the conviction of hundreds of falsely accused sub-postmasters for fraud and led the defence of the flawed Fujitsu-designed IT system that caused the scandal.

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  Chas Newkey-Burden has been part of The Week Digital team for more than a decade and a journalist for 25 years, starting out on the irreverent football weekly 90 Minutes, before moving to lifestyle magazines Loaded and Attitude. He was a columnist for The Big Issue and landed a world exclusive with David Beckham that became the weekly magazine’s bestselling issue. He now writes regularly for The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, Metro, FourFourTwo and the i new site. He is also the author of a number of non-fiction books.