Now claw back Vennells’s bonuses from the Post Office. The rules allow it | Nils Pratley

And all the others, thanks.

"Vennells’s incentive payments add up to £2.2m over the course of her time in charge. She may note that when James Crosby, former boss of HBOS, gave up his knighthood in 2013 after a parliamentary committee found he “sowed the seeds” of destruction at the bank, he volunteered to surrender 30% of his pension entitlement. Those were the days before clawback clauses but Crosby was nodding to the principle that giving up a gong is not enough. In a post-clawback world, matters should be simpler: the rules are meant to insist on repayment of bonuses. If the relevant clauses aren’t triggered in Vennells’s case, when would they be?

“None of which is to deny that the rotten saga goes further than her. The politicians with oversight roles of the state-owned Post Office clearly have questions to answer, as do the relevant executives at Fujitsu, supplier of the dodgy IT software. But, among the business crew at the top of the Post Office over the years, the two chairs during Vennells’s time must explain why they backed the executives to the hilt.”