ALMOST 500,000 people have signed a petition demanding that former Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells be stripped of her CBE.

The disgraced executive oversaw the wrongful sackings of more than 500 postmasters and postmistresses accused of theft and fraud because of a fault in the Post Office’s Horizon computer system.

Horizon identified the “loss” of hundreds of thousands of pounds from the accounts of individual Post Offices.