what have we learnt as it enters its final day?

As the inquiry comes to a close, this is what we have learnt.

Tony Blair signed off £1 billion Horizon contract

The Horizon IT system — then the largest non-military IT system in operation — was seen as a revolutionary new technology to bring the Post Office’s 20,000 shops into the 21st century.

In testing 146 unresolved faults were found, and one call centre worker helping postmasters balance their accounts after the rollout said: “We all knew this Horizon system was crap.”

Blair’s spokesman said the inquiry had seen evidence where he had personally sought and received assurances the project could be delivered and faults resolved.

Postmasters raised the alarm in 2003

Newspaper clippings have shown that postmasters hounded out of their businesses blamed IT issues in 2003, when Baljit Sethi argued that the system was faulty. This cutting below was also seen by the inquiry.

Sir Alan Bates, who later led the campaign against the Post Office, also blamed Horizon in an article in his local north Wales newspaper. “It is my belief this all started in 2000 when the Post Office introduced Horizon,” he wrote.

Post Office investigators behaved ‘like mafia gangsters’

The inquiry heard that Steve Bradshaw, the former Post Office investigator, called one postmistress 60 times: “He did not identify himself in his calls. He just made demands of me.”

Her story was one of thousands of grisly run-ins with the team that liked to call itself the “Post Office police”. Even as late as 2015, investigators were labelling postmasters “crooks”.

Investigator Gary Thomas wrote that the company was missing its profit targets because “we stopped getting £XX million [sic] from bloody good financial recoveries”. He added: “We were the best investigators they ever had and they [postmaster suspects] were all crooks!!”

He later blamed the Post Office as it “made me 100 per cent believe that Horizon was correct”.

The inquiry heard investigators received bonuses based on the amount of money they recovered for the company.

Father bankrupted after Fujitsu witness told to defend company in court

The Post Office pursued a brutal civil action to recover illusory losses from Lee Castleton, a postmaster from Bridlington.

The father-of-two, who was played by Will Mellor in Mr Bates vs the Post Office, an ITV drama of the scandal that aired in January, was one of a small number of postmasters’ cases the inquiry spent several weeks investigating.

The inquiry heard that a security team manager at Fujitsu, Peter Sewell, told an employee giving expert evidence in the High Court: “Castleton is a nasty chap and will be all out to rubbish the FJ [Fujitsu] name, it’s up to you to maintain absolute strength and integrity no matter what the prosecution throw at you.

Castleton said: “Fujitsu weren’t named as a respondent in the court action and yet they felt they needed to fight that cause.” In his evidence, Sewell said: “I don’t know why I wrote it, I apologise.”

Post Office staff admit pregnant mother was denied key documents in court

Seema Misra was jailed for theft on her son’s tenth birthday — while eight weeks pregnant with her second child. The 47-year-old and her defence team mounted the greatest challenge the Post Office had faced.

The Post Office’s head of criminal law, Jarnail Singh, was sent a report detailing a Horizon bug that affected dozens of branches three days before the trial, but did not disclose it to the defence, despite saving the document and printing it out.

The report was written by a leading Horizon engineer, Gareth Jenkins, who also did not tell the jury of bugs that had affected other branches when he gave evidence to Misra’s trial as an expert witness.

After the conviction, senior staff at the Post Office celebrated in an email chain. “Brilliant news. Well done,” wrote the managing director at the time, David Smith. In his evidence, Smith apologised for the comment.

Post Office used racist classifications for suspects

Documents released to the inquiry showed that staff were told to classify suspects racially.

These included “negroid types … ie West Indian, Nigerian, African, Caribbean etc”. It also included codes for “Arabian/Egyptian types”, “Chinese/Japanese types” and “dark-skinned European types”.

This included Misra, whose investigator’s report categorised her as “Indian/Pakistani Types … ie Asian, etc”.

Paula Vennells knew Horizon was faulty in 2013

Secret “smoking gun” recordings, first reported by The Times, revealed that Vennells, the former chief executive of the Post Office, was briefed on three bugs.

Postmasters claim this was part of a body of evidence of a second conspiracy to cover up what had happened and protect the Post Office business from oblivion.

In a separate email, Vennells confirms she read files related to wrongful convictions in the same year and found them “very disturbing”.

One of the files related to Noel Thomas, now 77, who was jailed for false accounting in 2006 after being held responsible for £48,000 missing from the accounts of his post office on Anglesey. His conviction was overturned in 2021.

In the document sent to Vennells, he wrote: “I was convicted of false accounting and sent to prison … I could not properly operate the computer system. It is my belief that the Horizon computer system should be forensically investigated.”

Vennells was dissuaded. “If we say publicly that we will look at past cases … whether from recent history or going further back, we will open this up very significantly into front page news,” her director of communications, Mark Davies, wrote. “In media terms, it becomes mainstream, very high profile.”

“You are right to call this out,” Vennells replied. “And I will take your steer, no issue.”

Two years later, in 2015, Vennells told MPs no evidence of miscarriages of justice had been found, and that if there had been, “it would’ve been really important to me and the Post Office that we surfaced those”.

Vital legal advice ‘buried’

A bombshell document that revealed a key expert witness had misled “several” trials was not disclosed to postmasters.

In July 2013, the barrister Simon Clarke passed legal advice to the Post Office saying Gareth Jenkins should have told juries about bugs in the system.

Susan Crichton, the general counsel at the time, told the inquiry she believed she briefed Vennells on the so-called Clarke Advice. “It would undoubtedly have been referred to at board level,” Mark Davies, the communications director, added.

The document only reached convicted postmasters, including Seema Misra, to help them appeal in 2021.

Suicide widow silenced by ‘gun to the head deal’

The inquiry delved into the events surrounding the suicide of Martin Griffiths, who took his own life in 2013 after he was wrongly accused of stealing £100,000 from his branch.

It heard the Post Office’s first reaction to the suicide was to hire a media lawyer to protect its “brand reputation”.

Vennells then inquired about “previous mental health issues and potential family issues”.

Angela Van den Bogerd, a Post Office executive, admitted she had suggested a settlement deal.

The offer of £140,000 was conditional on signing a non-disclosure agreement and conditional on the family dropping a separate claim. “Yes, I did feel silenced,” Griffiths’s widow, Gina, said afterwards.

In her evidence, Van den Bogerd said the payment was not designed “to keep the matter hushed up”. She apologised for her role in the scandal but denied “covering up” key evidence.

PR chief joked about ‘conspiracy’

The Post Office communications director and Vennells ally Mark Davies said it was “fascinating to be part of a conspiracy” and a “corporate cover-up” in emails shown to the inquiry.

In evidence, Davies conceded some of the numerous emails he had written “blaming the journalists” who were campaigning on the issue “look ludicrous” with the benefit of hindsight.

Former boss of Vennells turns on her

Paula Vennells was accused of “slavishly” maintaining that the Horizon IT system was robust despite knowing it was faulty by her former boss.

Private text messages shown to the inquiry revealed Dame Moya Greene, chief executive of the Royal Mail between 2010 and 2018, told Vennells earlier this year: “I think you knew.”

When Greene, who had supported Vennells as recently as 2022, gave evidence she said she made the comments “on the basis of the evidence that has emerged in this inquiry”.

Vennells has denied this and said she was not told the unvarnished truth by her lieutenants. Royal Mail Group owned the central Post Office company until 2012, when the group was spun off and floated.

Sir Ed Davey said he was ‘misled’ as Post Office minister

Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader, said he was “deeply sorry” for the failure to get to the bottom of the scandal.

He served as postal affairs minister in the coalition government between 2010 and 2012, and was one of a string of ministers to defer to the line that the Post Office was operationally independent.

Davey turned down a meeting with Sir Alan Bates in 2010, saying he did not believe a “meeting would serve any useful purpose”, but met him later that year, albeit “for presentational reasons”.

‘Truly sorry’ Fujitsu agrees to compensation

Fujitsu apologised for its role in the scandal and said the company had a “moral obligation” to compensate victims.

Paul Patterson, the boss of Fujitsu in Europe and the UK, said his company would contribute to the redress bill, which has now swelled to £1.8 billion.

“We did have bugs and errors in the system, and we did help the Post Office in their prosecution of sub-postmasters,” Patterson said. “For that we are truly sorry. I am personally appalled by the evidence I have seen.”

The global chief executive, Takahito Tokita, also apologised earlier this year, telling the BBC: “Of course, Fujitsu has apologised for the impact on them, their lives and that of their families.”

Postmasters have labelled the comments “sorry, not sorry” apologies elicited only by the inquiry and a desire to keep in with the government.

Kemi Badenoch blames bureaucratic ‘machine’ for slow compensation

The leader of the opposition, and former business secretary, said repeated attempts by her to speed up compensation and increase the budget were thwarted.

“It was quite clear to me that we were allowing bureaucracy to get in the way of redress too much of the time,” she told the inquiry this week. “Kevin [Hollinrake] and I wanted to get the money out there, and we were always given a reason why we couldn’t.”

The inquiry will hear closing statements from barristers in December, and the chairman will report next year.