Lost emails and last-ditch finds: how the Post Office inquiry was delayed

On Friday the inquiry will take aim at ‘deep rooted’ problems with the Post Office’s disclosure. Photograph: Jill Mead/The Guardian

Progress in the public inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal has been repeatedly halted by obstacles, many of them put in place by the Post Office itself.

The company, which is wholly owned by the state and thus the British taxpayer, has been accused of trying to slow down or frustrate attempts to piece together its part in what has been described by the prime minister himself as one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in British history.