Justin Welby ‘should quit’ over claims he backed Paula Vennells to be Bishop of London

Queen Elizabeth II’s former chaplain has called for the Archbishop of Canterbury to stand down amid suggestions that he endorsed the disgraced former Post Office boss to be Bishop of London.

Paula Vennells, who was the Post Office chief executive from 2012 to 2019, handed back her CBE last week.

Between 1999 and 2015, more than 700 sub-postmasters were prosecuted after the faulty Horizon accounting software made it look as though money was missing from their sites.

Fewer than 100 convictions have been overturned to date in what has been described as the most widespread miscarriage of justice in UK history.

Last week it emerged Ms Vennells was shortlisted to become Bishop of London in 2017 – the third most senior role in the Church of England after the Archbishops of Canterbury and York – despite suggestions that sub-postmasters had been wrongly prosecuted having emerged at the time.

Church sources claim the Most Rev Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was personally supportive of Ms Vennells’ candidacy.

The late Queen’s former chaplain, the Rev Canon Jeremy Haselock, an associate priest at Great St Bartholomew’s in the City of London, criticised the alleged endorsement, writing on social media: “Surely this is the point at which Welby must go. Another demonstration of his complete lack of sound judgment.”

In the post, seen by The Telegraph, he added: “His backing for this woman for episcopal office shows how completely he fails to understand the nature of that office.

“His total failure to bring pastoral care to the fore during the pandemic and the disastrous decisions he made at that time shows his complete and utter lack of understanding of the Church and its ministry. His has been a terrible primacy and clutching his GCVO [Royal Victorian Order], he should go.”

Rev Canon Haselock was appointed Chaplain to Her Majesty the Queen in 2013, a title he held until 2021.

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