Ed Davey apologises to Alan Bates at the Post Office Horizon inquiry – as it happened

Lib Dem leader had declined meeting with campaigner in May 2010, saying I do not believe it would serve any useful purpose'

McFadden also told the Horizon IT inquiry of course I wish I had done more" to question the Post Office over its Horizon IT system.

In his witness statement, the Labour MP and Cabinet minister said:

The Post Office's insistence that the Horizon system was robust and reliable was proven over time to be wrong, with terrible human consequences. Their reliance on court judgments to back up that position was also to be proven wrong in the subsequent court actions that were pursued over the years in order to overturn earlier verdicts.

Rereading this correspondence now, and knowing the injustice done to so many subpostmasters, of course I wish I had done more to ask the Post Office if they were really sure their IT system was as robust as they suggested.

At the root of all this was the Post Office's insistence that its IT system was robust and not to blame for accounting errors and their willingness to bring prosecutions through the courts over many years.

This resulted in many innocent people being convicted or being held liable for debts they did not owe in the civil courts.