Blake now asks Crichton for her view on the competence of Rob Wilson, former head of criminal law, and Jarnail Singh, a senior lawyer on the same team.

Crichton accuses the pair of having had an "unhealthy view" of sub-postmasters.

She says their attitude was that the alleged shortfalls in sub-postmasters' Horizon accounts was that "this is public money we have to protect it, that's our job".

Julian Blake, counsel to the inquiry, starts off by asking Crichton if she had a role in ensuring the Post Office fully investigated the prosecution of sub-postmasters.

"No, I don't think I did," she says, adding that it might have been under chief operating officer Mike Young's remit. She says that it would have been the responsibility of the security team.

Blake presses her on this, asking if, as head of legal, she saw herself as having any role in overseeing this.

"I didn't no," Crichton adds.

Image source, PA Media

Susan Crichton was the Post Office's top in-house lawyer. As general counsel, she reported directly to former chief executive Paula Vennells, and was in frequent contact with Post Office executives.

She told the inquiry yesterday that she felt as though she was made a scapegoat at the Post Office, with little choice but to leave in 2013.

She became a solicitor in 1985 and worked for a number of companies before joining the Post Office in 2010 as head of legal.

While at the company, Crichton was company secretary between January 2010 and July 2011. She became legal and compliance director in April 2012, when the company separated from the Royal Mail.

After leaving the Post Office at the end of November 2013, she joined Lloyds TSB, where she worked until 2018 before retiring.

Image source, Post Office Inquiry

Susan Crichton, former general counsel for the Post Office, has taken her seat in the inquiry room, after her hearing was forced to run into a second day.

We'll be providing regular updates on what she says - and you can watch along live by clicking the Play button at the top of this page.

Here's the moment from the inquiry yesterday when we heard that former Post Office boss Paula Vennells had sought advice from her "computer literate" husband.

Susan Crichton was shown a chain of emails suggesting "non-emotive words" to refer to Horizon's software errors, commonly known as glitches or bugs.

More than 900 sub-postmasters were wrongfully convicted because of a faulty computer system.

The Post Office itself took many cases to court, prosecuting 700 people between 1999 and 2015.

Another 283 cases were brought by other bodies, including the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

Many sub-postmasters went to prison for false accounting and theft, and several were financially ruined.

In 2017, a group of 555 sub-postmasters took legal action against the Post Office. In 2019, it agreed to pay them £58m in compensation, but much of the money went on legal fees.

What happened at the inquiry yesterday?published at 09:30 British Summer Time 24 April

09:30 BST 24 April

Emma Simpson
Reporting from the Post Office Inquiry

With Susan Crichton, we had a glimpse of what was going on behind the scenes as the Post Office went into crisis mode.

She’d been asked by chair Alice Perkins to find forensic accountants to investigate the mounting concerns by sub-postmasters and MPs.

Crichton recommended Second Sight. They were supposed to be independent.

But her bosses didn’t like what they were uncovering and Crichton says she felt the pressure.

When the interim report was produced, the board seemed more worried about the reputational damage to the Post Office and the risk to its funding negotiations with the government than the impact on its own branch managers or trying to find out the truth.

Then there was the Paula Vennells memo talking about the need to avoid or minimise compensation for the mediation scheme that followed.

Crichton felt she’d been made a scapegoat with no choice but to leave.

Chris Aujard took over from her and we’ll be hearing from him later today after Susan Crichton finishes her evidence.

He was involved in the collapse of the mediation scheme and the plan to sack the Second Sight team.

Aoife Walsh
Live editor

Image source, PA Media

Welcome back to our live coverage. We're preparing for another day at the Post Office inquiry, with Susan Crichton, the company's former head of legal, set to face further questioning about the handling of the Horizon IT scandal.

Her evidence yesterday gave the inquiry a glimpse behind the scenes of the chaos unfolding at the Post Office while sub-postmaster complaints about Horizon were being investigated.

Later, the inquiry will hear from Chris Aujard, former general counsel for the Post Office, who was involved in the collapse of a mediation scheme for sub-postmasters.

We'll be bringing you the latest developments and analysis here, and you can watch the inquiry live by pressing Play at the top of this page.

Image source, Post Office Inquiry

The Post Office inquiry has adjourned for the day and we're about to pause our live coverage.

But before we go here's a recap of some key moments from today:

• Giving evidence today was Susan Crichton - the former head lawyer at the Post Office before she resigned in 2013
• She apologised to sub-postmasters and their families for their "suffering" and said she wished the scandal had been "resolved more quickly". Crichton said she hopes it "never happens again"

• The inquiry heard ex-Post Office boss Paula Vennells said in an email that she did not want to use the word "bugs" when referencing Horizon errors, something counsel to the inquiry Julian Blake called "absolutely Orwellian"
• Crichton agreed with Blake's suggestion that changing language demonstrated "an element of smoke and mirrors"
• She also described herself as being mentally "in a bad place" at the time as a result of the scandal and was shocked at not being invited to a board meeting

The Post Office inquiry will be continuing tomorrow from 09:45 BST.

We'll bring you the latest lines as Susan Crichton is asked further questions about the handling of Horizon IT problems.

Today's page was written by Ian Aikman, Seher Asaf, Andre Rhoden-Paul, Thomas Mackintosh and Imogen James. It was edited by Malu Cursino, Emily Atkinson, Jack Burgess and James Harness.

Zoe Conway
Employment correspondent, reporting from the inquiry

In today's session the counsel to the Inquiry, Julian Blake, said a picture is being painted of "cover-up’" at the top of the Post Office over problems with the Horizon issue.

He showed the inquiry an email written by the then Chief Executive, Paula Vennells, in preparation for a Post Office board meeting in the summer of 2013.

It concerns how the board is going to be briefed on plans to set up a mediation scheme.

The scheme, which would be set up later that year, was to give sub-postmasters an avenue to voice their concerns with the Post Office.

Paula Vennells says that a memo written to brief the board members on the scheme should not mention compensation. She writes the hope is to ‘avoid or minimise compensation’.

Counsel to the inquiry Julian Blake asks the chair if he should continue or end for the day.

The chair says he needs no more persuasion to end today's hearing before saying there's only a certain number of questions that Susan Crichton can be expected to answer in one day.

Crichton will return to give evidence on Wednesday at 09:45 BST.

Blake adds that today is three years since the quashing of convictions of 39 sub-postmasters by the Court of Appeal in 2021.

Blake asks if Crichton was aware of any changes at the Post Office (PO) following her departure, as notes from a Second Sight meeting say they can see a "change in approach" after her departure.

She says no.

And looking at how it was going when she left, Crichton is asked about whether she thought the PO was becoming more restrictive or less towards Second Sight.

Reflecting on today, she says she supposes "they would become more restrictive, although I hoped... that the mediation scheme might move the process forward."

Image source, Post Office Inquiry

Blake turns to an email exchange between Post Office CEO Paula Vennells and chair Alice Perkins from the month Susan Crichton left - dated 7 September 2013.

Vennells writes that Crichton said the role was "making her ill" and that it sounds as if she wanted to leave "straightaway".

"Much will depend on Susan's state of mind," she adds.

Blake asks Crichton if she believes Vennells understood her reasons for leaving the Post Office.

"No, I don't think she did," Crichton replies, and adds that she doesn't think Vennells understood her beliefs over the Second Sight review needing to be "independent" without influence by the Post Office.

She concludes: "I had decided time was to draw a close to this chapter in my career."

Crichton is asked about when she gave up her HR role.

She says it was "absolutely the right thing to do" and that HR "in addition made that job very difficult to do".

And when asked on her general reflections of the note we have been reporting on, Crichton says she finds it "quite shocking" and "distressing", and that "I must have been in a really bad state".

She says Paula Vennells should have put her on a month's sick leave.

Image source, Post Office Inquiry

Crichton describes the flavour of the second version of Second Sight's report as not being focused on evidence but instead a "somewhat emotional interpretation of the facts".

She says she spoke to Second Sight about this to say what they write needs to be written on evidence terms.

"I wouldn't have been able to force them; we just had an exchange of views," Crichton tells the inquiry.

Crichton also says she cannot remember discussions about being "risk adverse" - as Blake recalls a detailed reflection note from Paula Vennells' meeting with Crichton at Costa Coffee.

The counsel to inquiry Julian Blake reads a portion of the email in which it says Crichton "put her integrity as a lawyer above the interests of the business".

She is also asked if managing Second Sight's investigation more closely was in conflict with her role as a lawyer.

Crichton says she would have said at the time she wanted to ensure Second Sight's report was independent and she wouldn't try and control them in a way which wouldn't give them ability to write their report in their own way, provided it was evidence-based.

She adds she had never experienced a situation where her integrity as a lawyer was in conflict with the business she worked for and she was focused on delivering the Second Sight report.

"If that meant I put my integrity as a lawyer above the needs of the business, then possibly that's what I did. I didn't see it that way at the time."

Image source, Post Office Inquiry

Blake continues reading the reflections in the email, which says Susan Crichton said she would never have put a business she worked for in the situation they found themselves in with the Second Sight interim report.

Crichton continues by saying that she wished she had never allowed former Post Office chair Alice Perkins to persuade her to do the independent review.

"This suggests you regretted getting Second Sight involved," Blake says.

"I didn't regret getting Second Sight involved," she responds.

Crichton adds that she regretted not being clearer about what she meant by being independent.

Blake remarks that we've seen some evidence on some documents that refer to you convincing Perkins to do the independent review but here we have the suggestion that it was the other way around.

Crichton says she thinks Alice was driving the review and it was her initial intention that the MP cases should be reviewed, but there "gradually cooling" as the process went on.

The Vennells note continues by saying: "I wonder if Susan is overreacting to the [Second Sight] review", adding that emotionally Crichton might "throw in the towel".

Vennells writes that it might be Crichton's way of saying she "can't cope with much more pressure".

She says Crichton was "demonstrating that she wants to "right the wrongs (my words - not hers)" - which Crichton tells the inquiry was probably to do with her handling of Second Sight review.

Returning to the note, Vennells notes Crichton was very emotional - swinging between "wanting to get away and making a case to fight".

Crcihton says that reading this note back, this is probably "a fair characterisation" of her state at the time.

"I never expected to find myself in this position," she adds.

Blake reads from a note from 2 September 2013 about a meeting Crichton had with Paula Vennells.

When asked about this, Crichton tells the inquiry she could not work out what in the message is "reflection and what was the meeting".

She says her view at the time was that she could not continue in her role if she did not have the confidence of the chair, the board and the chief executive.

Blake turns back to the board meeting where Crichton was not invited inside. He asks her whether this was the point from when she felt she could not attend board meetings in the future.

"It's something I never expected to happen to me and it took me some time to adjust to what had happened," she says, but adds it was clear to her she "couldn't continue" in her role.

"Mentally, I was in a bad place," she says.

More details from the note are read out - as Blake continues by reading the email saying Crichton "again raised that Alice had made mistakes".

Crichton is asked if the review was somehow her being set up - and she accepts that was her recollection at the time.

Continuing to answer questions about a cover-up Crichton says she cannot recall the meeting and says the behaviour of "shouting in a public place" is not normal for her - noting the venue being a Costa Coffee in Old Street, London.