A petition launched in the wake of the Post Office scandal has quickly amassed tens of thousands of signatories.
More than 500,000 people have said Paula Vennells, the company’s former chief, should be stripped of her CBE, with support growing rapidly overnight.
The number of people giving the 38 Degrees petition their backing exploded almost overnight, surging from 100,000 to its current total of 505,963.
Many of those backers appear to have followed the new ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office, which outlined a decade and a half’s worth of wrongful convictions.
The show touched on the prosecutions of 700 branch managers between 1999 and 2015, legal action that has since been described as the most significant miscarriage of justice in British history.
Ms Vennells presided over the installation of a new IT software named Horizon in Post Office branches across the UK in 1999, with bosses hoping it would improve efficiency.
The software proved glitchy, however, and led to incorrect financial discrepancies for which Post Office chiefs prosecuted 736 postmasters between 2000 and 2014.
Many of them were accused of fraud and theft, leading to massive personal financial and job losses.
But Ms Vennells was awarded a CBE in 2019 for services to the Post Office and quit the same year, apologising for the “suffering” caused to postmasters.
She said: “I am truly sorry we were unable to find both a solution and a resolution outside of litigation and for the distress this caused.”
Members of the public, high-profile figures and officials have called for her to forfeit the CBE, with the latest petition showing public feeling behind the scandal.
The 38 Degrees petition saw thousands of people saying she “must be stripped of the CBE” with many saying they were shocked by Mr Bates vs the Post Office.
The ITV show is based on the campaigning by Alan Bates, who lost his life savings and job and campaigned for 20 years for victims to receive justice.
Mr Bates was able to secure £58 million of compensation for victims of the Horizon scandal and was immortalised in the show by actor Toby Jones.
But he has continued to suffer and reportedly turned down the offer of an OBE following his tireless campaigning.
