A former postal minister has said it was a mistake for the government not to step in as Post Office executives developed their ultimately unsuccessful legal defence of the flawed Horizon IT system against a lawsuit brought by branch owner-operators.
Margot James, who held the role from mid-2016 to early 2018 when Sir Alan Bates and 554 other prosecuted post office operators brought the case to clear their names, told the public inquiry into the IT system she should not have stuck to the line adopted by the executives and UK Government Investments, the body that manages state-owned assets.
