We're closing our live coverage for the day, thank you for joining us.

You can read our news story on today's Post Office inquiry here.

This afternoon, we also heard from Allan Leighton, former chairman of the Post Office during some of the time it was wrongly prosecuting sub-postmasters.

Lawyers for the inquiry were trying to get a sense of how much the top brass at the Post Office and Royal Mail knew what was going on with the prosecution of the sub-postmasters.

• Leighton started his evidence by apologising for what happened
• He said he was aware that the prosecutions were conducted by the Post Office, unlike other senior executives Alan Cook and Adam Crozier who said earlier this week they were not
• Asked how much he know about the problems with the Horizon IT system in 2001, he told the inquiry he could not recall any issues
• He explained that the business was suffering after the separation of the Post Office and Royal Mail, and that was the key focus of executives at the company

Watching today's hearing was former sub-postmaster Christopher Head.

He was wrongly accused of stealing £88,000 from his branch near Sunderland, before the criminal case was dropped against him. The Post Office later launched a civil case.

He told BBC News after the hearing: "Even an apology now means nothing if it's not backed up with action and that's the problem that we're seeing.

"We're not seeing people properly compensated, we're not seeing accountability yet, so therefore the apology should come at the end once we've seen everybody held responsible and once we've been fully compensated."

He adds the inquiry is slow but it is necessary due to the number of years the scandal went on for and the amount of organisations involved.

Earlier today we heard from Jon Longman, who was the former Post Office investigator responsible for investigating sub-postmasters until 2012.

Longman investigated the high-profile Seema Misra case. The former sub-postmistress was wrongfully jailed while pregnant after being accused of stealing £74,000.

While being pressed by lawyers at the inquiry, Longman said he "was always told Horizon was robust" and given this he did not have concerns about the growing number of challenges.

He also admitted he was "never comfortable" with the case of sub-postmistress Jennifer O'Dell who was wrongly accused of stealing more than £9,600 in 2009, adding the system should have been investigated.

Longman was asked whether issues with the Horizon IT system were "swept under the carpet", to which he says that "with hindsight I should have been more forceful".

Internal emails shown to the inquiry showed that Post Office investigators feared a "world of trouble" if the organisation lost a case based on Horizon's integrity.

Ben Hatton
Reporting from the inquiry

Aneka Thirurajah, a lawyer at Hodge Jones & Allen, is part of the team representing Seema Misra, and has been speaking with me about the evidence we heard from Jon Longman earlier today.

“It was interesting to hear that with hindsight, as so many other witnesses have said, that he may have done things differently.

“But I think for me it was quite disappointing that despite all of this, and despite Misra coming in person herself, she never once got an apology from Longman,” she says.

Longman’s evidence, Thirurajah says, demonstrates there was a “wider cultural failing” within the Post Office.

In one sense it was good for Longman to have admitted there was “institutional bias”, she says, but adds: “At the end of the day it doesn’t change anything that happened back in 2010 when Seema’s case was being heard.

“It’s good that they are aware of it now, but at what cost? Because that is 14 years later.”

Just before the inquiry wraps up for the day, security reports are discussed and Leighton is shown evidence relating to Royal Mail.

There is a brief interruption by the chair of the inquiry, Sir Wyn Williams, who asks Leighton whether he expected similar security reports dealing exclusively with Post Office Limited to be presented to the Post Office board.

"I am not sure, sir," Leighton replies.

He says that what he would have expected, if there was a concern in any way shape or form, is that it would have been raised at the Post Office board.

Sir Wyn then asks: "If it was thought appropriate to report to Royal Mail that there had been 399 prosecutions in a particular year... wouldn't it have been equally appropriate to report to the Post Office that Post Office had prosecuted 100 people, or whatever it was?"

"When you put it like that, yes," Leighton adds.

In the last hour of questioning, Leighton is specifically asked if he was aware that prosecutions were conducted by the Post Office.

"Yes," he responds.

Former Post Office managing director Alan Cook and Adam Crozier, former chief executive of Royal Mail, have both said earlier this week that they weren't aware that prosecutions were made internally.

What do you make of that? Leighton is asked, specifically about Alan Cook's testimony.

"If that’s Alan's recollection, that’s his recollection," he responds.

The lawyer at the inquiry proposes bringing today's proceedings to a close.

Leighton will come back another time to give further evidence.

Stay with us as we catch you up on a few more lines

Leighton is presented with evidence on a number of people prosecuted.

He is asked whether the document is about Royal Mail personnel or might have included sub-postmasters. He says it was probably just Royal Mail.

Leighton adds that at no stage did they have any discussions about the level of prosecution of sub-postmasters.

Leighton is asked if prosecutions were actively on his mind. "Not at all," he says.

He adds that there was "nothing ever raised of that nature" regarding a systemic issue resulting in prosecutions.

Sam Stevens now asks if Leighton is satisfied structures were in place regarding prosecutions.

He says there were lots of "checks and balances" in the organisation that give people the opportunity to flag something up.

"The issue was things were not flagged up," he says.

Leighton is asked about the way the company played "judge, jury and executioner" in the process of dealing with sub-postmasters.

There was no independent or third party involvement in the process, lawyer Sam Stevens says.

Stevens asks if that was inherently risky when taking sub-postmasters to court.

Leighton replies that it was like that for hundreds of years, but that "people cannot hide behind the process."

We're now hearing more from Leighton, who says it was not unusual for Post Office Limited to be prosecuting its own staff, as it had always been the case.

Leighton says the issue is not to do with the structure, but "where there is a miscarriage of justice, or where there is data that should have been provided and was not provided, that is a miscarriage of justice".

Lawyer Sam Stevens asks Leighton if it is not a miscarriage of justice for the company to be both the investigator and prosecutor, to which Leighton says "yes".

He says the problem with the wrongful convictions were not with the structure of the company, but rather the data not being provided.

"Today, I don't think it should happen... It is because of people that this happened," he adds.

After a lengthy conversation on risk management and audit practices at the Post Office and Royal Mail, the Post Office's counsel moves on to ask about prosecutions of former sub-postmasters.

Leighton is asked when he first became aware of the Royal Mail group prosecuting former sub-postmasters for theft, fraud and false accounting.

He answers he was aware "when I joined the organisation".

Former Post Office boss Allan Leighton is told he will need to come back to continue his answers at a later date because the inquiry team do not want to rush the evidence. It won't be tomorrow though.

Leighton is also asked about his other appointments, which overlapped with his time in the role of Royal Mail chairman and his commitments to the Post Office.

Lawyer Sam Stevens talks through the appointments Leighton held in the early 2000s and asks if the businessman was on too many boards.

He says he would have spent more than 40% of his time on Royal Mail duties, adding that he works in a "very different way to other people", long hours and full-time.

"I absolutely spent the time that I required to spend on the Royal Mail and on Post Office Limited," he stresses.

"I don't take any roles that I don't think I can commit the time to," he adds.

"I am categoric about this."

Just before the inquiry takes a small break, Leighton is asked if - during his time at Royal Mail - there were conversations with the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) about Horizon.

Leighton says yes, but it was just progress reports.

Asked if he discussed the prosecutions of sub-postmasters with the DTI, he says no.

Leighton is asked, as someone who had worked in the private sector, about differences between the governance between a publicly owned or a listed business.

"I think there’s only one good way to run an organisation," he responds.

He says that there are some subtle differences between the two, but the majority of work "is exactly the same".

Pushed on the subtle differences, he says that in having the government as a shareholder there is a greater "churn" - or turnover - of personnel "than in the outside world".

Allan Leighton now touches on "big issues" facing the Post Office at the time of its separation from Royal Mail.

He says the first was "revenue disappearing" - the company was facing revenue loss of 40%.

The second issue was the network and how much of it would be rural.

"Negotiating with the government how much they would be prepared to pay for the unprofitable parts of the Post Office because that was going to deliver a social service," he says.

The third issue was the implementation of Horizon.

Asked by Sam Stevens, counsel for the Post Office inquiry, if prosecution of sub-postmasters should be added to that list, Leighton says: "I think in hindsight, yes."

Seema Misra, the wrongly convicted subpostmistress who was sent to prison while pregnant has said "The apologies don't make any difference. I don't know if I'll ever accept their apologies."

Speaking to the BBC at the Post Office Inquiry today Misra said "I can't get the time back".

Misra was watching on as Jon Longman, the Post Office investigator whose report helped falsely convict her for theft and false accounting, was quizzed this morning at the Inquiry.

She said: "I want proper compensation for each and every victim and accountability".

When asked who she thought was to blame for the scandal she said she blamed the Labour government of 1999 for imposing the Horizon system on the Post Office.

She went on to say that each and every person who's responsible for the scandal - either in the authorities, the Post Office, Royal Mail and Fujitsu, needed to be put behind bars.

Misra explained how she didn't tell her parents, who were living in India, what she was going through, through fear she'd lose them if she admitted she'd been to prison.

"I lost both of them before my conviction was overturned."

Image source, The Post Office inquiry

Image source, Post Office Inquiry

Allan Leighton is now asked to briefly summarize the background to the discussion on the separation of the Post Office and Royal Mail.

Leighton says that the decision that Post Office should be separated from the Royal Mail at some stage was made by the government.

"When I joined there were discussion about selling the Royal Mail's business to the Dutch post office," he adds.

He adds that he thought it would have been unprofitable and not good value for the country, so he didn't think it was a sensible thing to do.

Sam Stevens then asks Leighton about the experience and the qualifications he was looking when appointing a chairman for the Post Office and if there was a priority to make the business solvent or profitable.

Leighton says that the situation was "pretty dire" and the most important thing to start with was solvency.

"Solvency was a massive issue for the Post Office."

He adds: "The only way to solve the issue was you had to have new products and a new system, Horizon, that would enable those changes to take place at a branch by branch level."