Workers Revolutionary Party
JANET SKINNER (centre) with her daughter and niece outside the Royal Courts of Justice on Friday, she was imprisoned in 2007 for nine months and separated from her two children
âHEADS must roll for the humiliation and misery inflicted on decent, upstanding people,â the CWU (Communication Workers Union) insisted yesterday.
It is demanding criminal investigations into senior Post Office figures who oversaw the criminalisation of hundreds of postmasters, including jailing many of them.
This demand comes after 39 postmasters had their convictions for theft, fraud or false accounting quashed by the Court of Appeal last week.
Judges overseeing the case ruled last Friday that corrupted data from the Post Officeâs Horizon system was at fault, not the workers.
Ordained priest Paula Vennells was last seen at her multi-million pound home in Bedfordshire last Friday
She made £4.5million in seven years, got a CBE and had boardroom jobs with Dunelm and Morrisons
Mrs Vennells has now quit all her public roles, including with the Church of England after the scandal
Calls for her to be investigated as 39 postmasters wrongly convicted of stealing amid flaws of IT system
Ex-Post Office boss Vennells quits roles at leading retailers Print
26th April 2021
Former Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells has stepped down from boardroom positions at retailers Morrisons and Dunelm, as well as her role as a Church of England minister.
Vennells was in charge at the Post Office between 2012 and 2019, when reports of multiple faults with IT system Horizon were not properly investigated, as a result, postmasters were convicted of stealing money, with some imprisoned.
Morrisons and homeware retailer Dunelm confirmed that Vennells was to leave as a director of their boards immediately.
Vennells also revealed, on Sunday (25 April), that she would be stepping back from her duties as an associate Church of England minister in Bromham, Oakley and Stagsden, in Bedfordshire.
FORMER Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells quit as a non-executive director of high street chains Morrisons and Dunelm today in the wake of the postmaster miscarriage of justice scandal.
Ms Vennells, who ran the Post Office from 2012 to 2019, pursued prosecutions against hundreds of subpostmasters, accusing them of theft and false accounting.
On Friday, the Court of Appeal quashed the convictions of 39 former subpostmasters, saying that bosses knew there were “serious issues” with the Horizon IT system developed by Fujitsu but continued to bring criminal charges using data taken from it.
In a statement today, Morrisons chairman Andrew Higginson said that he wanted to thank Ms Vennells for her “significant contribution” to the supermarket giant, while Dunelm chairman Andy Harrison said that he “respected” her decision to resign.
Royal Mail boss Simon Thompson vows to root out bullying: He admits postal service has a problem and launches drive to heal the scars of the past
Simon Thompson admitted that the postal giant had issues with bullying and he vowed to stop it at source
Thompson is also understood to be planning initiatives aimed at improving conditions for workers
He is also looking at reintroducing a version of the postal cadets scheme which ran from the late 1970s until 1996