The disgraced former Post Office chief blamed for pursuing a £90million court case against her own staff could be stripped of her CBE under a Government review, it has been reported.
Ministers are said to be looking at launching a probe into the Horizon subpostmasters scandal.
It could ultimately see ex-boss chief executive Paula Vennells stripped of her 2019 honour, reports the Telegraph.
The scandal saw hundreds of innocent Post Office staff sacked, bankrupted or wrongly convicted after cash appeared to vanish from their tills because of a computer glitch.
Ms Vennells was awarded the CBE in the 2019 New Year's Honour's list 'for services to the Post Office and to charity'.
The award was made nearly a year before the first group of subpostmasters were awarded compensation for their false prosecution.
Dozens have since won cases in the Court of Appeal, in what has previously been described as the 'biggest miscarriage of justice in modern English legal history'.
And it has led union bosses to repeatedly call for Ms Vennells, who was CEO of the Post Office from 2012 to 2019, to be stripped of her CBE.
Ms Vennells was awarded the CBE in the 2019 New Year's Honour's list 'for services to the Post Office and to charity'
The scandal saw hundreds of innocent Post Office staff sacked, bankrupted or wrongly convicted after cash appeared to vanish from their tills because of a computer glitch. Pictured: Postmaster Tom Hedges celebrates after 39 former subpostmasters win victory in the Court of Appeal
And that could now happen as part of a Government review into the scandal, reports the Telegraph.
According to the paper, ministers are looking to launch a review - which is likely to assess the level of involvement of figures working at the Post Office at the time.
It is understood by the Telegraph that Ms Vennells, along with Alice Perkins, the former chairman of the Post Office, who his married to former Labour Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, and who was made a Companion of the Order of the Bath in 2002.
Should the review finding compelling evidence against those involved, their names could be submitted to Parliament's forfeiture committee, which has the power to revoke honours with the approval of the Queen, the Telegraph adds.
A government source told the paper: 'These honours are often dished out to people in the public sector simply for doing their jobs, even when they are completely hopeless out of them.
'But some of those in the senior echelons of the Post Office were worse than hopeless, they were cruel.
'It would undermine what little confidence is left in the honours system not to look at stripping gongs from those involved.'
It comes after 12 subpostmasters were earlier this week cleared by the Court of Appeal after being wrongly convicted in the Post Office IT scandal.
Among them was Hasmukh Shingadia, 62, from Upper Bucklebury in West Berkshire, owns a convenience store in the area which the Duke and Duchess used to visit.
He was accused by the Post Office of stealing £16,000 and pleaded guilty because he was 'made to feel' he had to.
Mr Shingadia was given an eight-month suspended prison sentence in 2011 but has since had it quashed.
He told the Reading Chronicle: 'I was in all the newspapers as the royal wedding guest who was a thief and a fraudster so today is massive for me and my family, but also of course the other subpostmasters who have had their convictions quashed,' he said.
'I'd seen Kate Middleton grow up and I remember her being in my shop on the day the radio was saying she was to marry William. Being a guest at the wedding meant the press focused on my case in court.
'It was an awful time for us when I was convicted. My mother had died the previous year, I’d had cancer and undergone surgery to remove a sarcoma, and my daughters were only young at the time and they had people telling them at school that their dad was a thief.'
In April, 39 former subpostmasters who were convicted and even jailed for theft, fraud and false accounting had their names cleared - some after fighting for nearly 20 years.
On Monday, three senior judges overturned the convictions of a further 12 people who were convicted based on evidence from the faulty IT system used by the Post Office from 2000.
Hundreds of innocent Post Office staff were blamed for losses in branch accounts caused by serious flaws in the Fujitsu-developed Horizon computer system which was in use between 1999 and 2015.
Hasmukh Shingadia (pictured with his wife Chandrika outside their Spar shop), 62, from Upper Bucklebury in West Berkshire, owns a convenience store in the area which the Duke and Duchess used to visit
The Court of Appeal has cleared 12 more former subpostmasters who were wrongly convicted of offences as a result of the Post Office Horizon scandal. Pictured: Former Post Office workers celebrating in April after their convictions were overturned
Between 1999 and 2015, hundreds of postmasters were sacked or prosecuted after money appeared to go missing from their branch accounts (file image)
Rather than admit the IT system was defective, the Post Office concealed evidence of the glitches and instead forced its own staff to plead guilty to crimes they knew they had not committed, lawyers representing the 42 who sought to get their convictions overturned by the Court of Appeal said.
Many postmasters and postmistresses were prosecuted for theft, fraud and false accounting, while others were hounded out of work or forced to pay huge sums of 'missing' money. The scandal blighted their lives, as former staff lost their homes and marriages, and suffered ill health as a result.
Between 1999 and 2015, hundreds of postmasters were sacked or prosecuted after money appeared to go missing from their branch accounts (file image)
Horizon, an IT system developed by the Japanese company Fujitsu, was rolled out by the Post Office from 1999.
The system was used for tasks such as transactions, accounting and stocktaking. However, subpostmasters complained about defects after it reported shortfalls - some of which amounted to thousands of pounds.
Some subpostmasters attempted to plug the gap with their own money, even remortgaging their homes, in an attempt to correct an error.
Between 1999 and 2015, hundreds of subpostmasters were sacked or prosecuted due to the glitches. The ex-workers blamed flaws in the IT system, Horizon, but the Post Office denied there was a problem.
In case after case the Post Office bullied postmasters into pleading guilty to crimes they knew they had not committed.
Many others who were not convicted were hounded out of their jobs or forced to pay back thousands of pounds of 'missing' money.
The Post Office spent £32million to deny any fault in their IT system, before capitulating.
However, the postmasters and postmistresses said the scandal ruined their lives as they had to cope with the impact of a conviction and imprisonment, some while they had been pregnant or had young children.
Marriages broke down, and courts have heard how some families believe the stress led to health conditions, addiction and premature deaths.
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One former postmaster, Martin Griffiths, killed himself after he was falsely suspected of stealing £60,000, while some have since died and 'gone to their graves' with convictions against their names.
Lord Justice Holroyde and two other judges quashed the convictions of Robert Ambrose, Hasmukh Shingadia, John Armstrong, Timothy Brentnall, Jerry Hosi, Gurdeep Singh Dhale, John Dickson, Abiodun Omotoso, Malcolm Watkins, Sami Sabet, Carina Price and Rizwan Manjra.
Their appeals were unopposed by the Post Office, and the judge said the court would give full reasons in writing at a later date, but that they should be cleared as soon as possible in the circumstances.
In a statement after the ruling, Post Office chairman Tim Parker issued a grovelling apology for 'the impact on the lives of these postmasters and their families that was caused by historical failures'.
The Post Office had spent £32million to deny any fault in Horizon before capitulating and has since paid a £58million settlement to 557 postmasters following an acrimonious High Court battle. It now faces a further 2,400 claims under a new compensation scheme.
But lawyers representing the former postmasters claimed the Post Office 'still appears to care little about the people whose lives it has destroyed' and called on Prime Minister Boris Johnson to announce a 'judge-led public inquiry', with the power to summons witnesses, into the prosecutions of postmasters.
The Communication Workers Union called for criminal investigations into senior Post Office figures who 'oversaw the criminalisation of hundreds of postmasters' and called for former CEO Paula Vennells, who is said to have known that Horizon could cause money to appear to be missing, to be stripped of her CBE.
Nick Read, Post Office chief executive, 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.'
In a statement, Helen Pitcher, chairman of the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) - which referred the 42 subpostmasters' convictions to the Court of Appeal - said: 'This has been a serious miscarriage of justice which has had a devastating impact on these victims and their families.
'Every single one of these convictions has clearly had a profound and life-changing impact for those involved.
'Six convictions had already been quashed which had been referred to Southwark Crown Court.
'The Post Office has rightly acknowledged the failures that led to these cases and conceded that the prosecutions were an abuse of process.
Former subpostmasters Janet Skinner (left) and Tracy Felstead (right) outside the Royal Courts of Justice, London, ahead of their appeal against a conviction of theft, fraud and false accounting in March
'We sincerely hope that lessons will be learned from this to prevent anything similar happening elsewhere in the future.'
Welsh postmaster jailed for nine months 'fell off the ladder' after conviction - before picking himself up and seeking challenge to Post Office prosecution
Noel Thomas was jailed for nine months in 2006 after he was accused of stealing £48,000
Noel Thomas was jailed for nine months in 2006 after he was accused of stealing £48,000 while he was working for the Post Office in Gaerwen on Anglesey.
He told the BBC that he admitted to the charge because he never reported discrepancies he noticed, but insisted he did not take the money and blamed the Horizon computer system.
'I want everyone to have their name cleared and to get to the bottom of what has
