Post Office managers were ‘thugs in suits’, Vince Cable tells inquiry

Vince Cable giving evidence to the inquiry: ‘Problems with Horizon barely came across my desk.’ Photograph: Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry/PA

The former Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable has labelled Post Office managers “thugs in suits” and claimed he would have got to grips with the Horizon IT scandal if MPs campaigning for branch owner-operators had bothered to have in-person meetings with him.

Cable, who was business secretary for an unusually long period between 2010 and 2015, told the inquiry into the scandal that he never learned who lead campaigner Sir Alan Bates was until just before he left office.