Image source, Post Office Inquiry

Counsel for the inquiry Julian Blake suggests the picture painted by the emails is there was an attempt to cover stuff up, like "using words other than bugs".

Susan Crichton says: "That was not my intention at the time from my recollection."

When asked if that was the intention of others, she replies "she can't speak for other people".

Blake then turns to a file note from ex-Post Office boss Paula Vennells which reads "Susan was very very angry" and she was upset a 'lessons learned review' had been commissioned.

Crichton tells the hearing she thought it was an "inappropriate use of funds" and she thought effort should be ploughed into the mediation instead.

She is asked if the file note reflects she felt she was going to be used as a scapegoat. Crichton agrees at the hearing.

An email from Chris Day to Alice Perkins sent on 29 August 2013 with Crichton copied in is shown.

Day says in the email that he has asked Crichton to negotiate a monthly cap of £25,000 with Second Sight and Second Sight have agreed to transition out over the coming months depending on specified condition.

Blake remarks it seems that Second Sight was being moved out of the picture, but Crichton says the were still going to be part of the mediation scheme.

"Looking back at all the emails that we have seen this afternoon and this morning, do you think that the Post Office was genuine in wanting to get to the bottom of the problems of Horizon?" Blake asks.

Crichton says "I know I was genuine" in my attempt to set up the mediation scheme but adds she wasn't sure what the Post Office wanted from it at the stage.

After a short break, inquiry counsel Julian Blake shows the inquiry an email from 27 August 2013, sent by company secretary Alwen Lyons to CEO Paula Vennells.

Lyons notifies Vennells that the Post Office, the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance and Second Sight have formed a working group to manage a mediation scheme.

She raises compensation as possible outcome of that scheme and asks about planning to manage expectations.

A response from is then pulled up from Vennells - which was also sent to Crichton.

Vennells says the "hope of mediation was to avoid or minimise compensation" and that if there were to be it would only be "small figures".

Crichton says the business "probably was" concerned about the possible outcome of mediation.

Before a brief afternoon break, Crichton is taken to the summer of 2013 and was accused of effectively drinking the "corporate coolade" and was worried about giving Second Sight too much information.

Crichton disagrees with that.

Blake asks if she feels responsible for damage done to the business.

Crichton tells the Inquiry she does not and did not consider that to be the case.

Counsel for the inquiry Julian Blake asks Susan Crichton as general counsel for Post Office what investigations she made into allegations over material linked to Horizon being destroyed.

She says she spoke to her colleagues including Mr Singh, and she thinks she spoke to John Scott. .

Blake asks Crichton is there a missing paragraph in the letter that should have said "by the way we have a rogue employee who totally misunderstood the brief".

Crichton responds by saying she thinks if there's correspondence or some documents she's seen which seem to indicate that it goes to the cultural point about people saying they did not want things to be recorded.

"But that was not my view, it was not my stance," she adds.

Having received John Clarke's advice, did you press John Clarke any further as to whether anything had been shredded, Blake asks.

"I can't recollect that", she says.

Image source, Post Office Inquiry

Blake refers back to John Scott's email, sent to Crichton on 14 August 2013.

He asks Crichton about an undercover group "operating under the radar" that did not want any electronic communications, according to that email.

Crichton says she does not recollect having that conversation with Scott, nor asking him about shredding documents or not.

Blake then asks Crichton why she wouldn't be "full and frank" about the content of Scott's email with her own lawyers.

She pauses and says she was trying to be full and frank and that it was her intention to run it properly.

"I didn't intend for it to be under the radar."

Blake turns to a letter Crichton sent to Cartwright King lawyer Andy Cash on 16 August 2013.

Roderick Williams has previously told the inquiry he drafted this letter. Crichton says she recalls this.

The letter starts with Crichton saying she hadn't seen a previous letter - which included Simon Clarke's advice - for 12 days after it was received. There's a suggestion, Blake says, that Williams kept the letter in a drawer while people were away.

Does Crichton recall that? She says "it might be correct".

"Do you think there was an attempt to keep [Clarke's] advice quiet?" Blake asks.

"No, I don't think so," Crichton answers.

Crichton is asked about some correspondence from John Scott who appeared before the Inquiry in phase 4.

It was his view Crichton wanted information to be protected by legal privilege.

A detailed email is then presented to the inquiry shows there was a view by civil litigation lawyers wanting information protected by legal privilege.

Crichton says she was in charge of John Scott's department and asks Crichton if she gave Scott any direction about privilege - to which she says she did not and left it to the civil litigation lawyers.

Blake puts it to Crichton the email looks like she did give the order, something Crichton disputes again.

He then says the correspondence with Scott was happening at the same time the CEO was complaining about "bland report papers".

With the hearing now looking at a 2013 email from John Scott, which reads Susan Crichton had given a brief to provide an "under radar escalation point" over issues that might affect the integrity of Horizon and she was frustrated regarding the circulation of the Helen Rose report.

Crichton tells the hearing she was not frustrated.

Instead she says she wanted one accessible place for what had been discussed and agreed, instead of multiple emails.

She is pressed by counsel why Scott would say in a HR report Crichton was frustrated and did not want any emails which may be subject to disclosure.

Crichton answers she does not know.

The inquiry is shown a note titled "Horizon issues and Disclosure" from Andy Cash, a lawyer at Cartwright King, with Crichton as one of the recipients.

It reads "I enclose for your urgent attention an advice prepared by my colleague Simon Clark" and that the advice is to "protect the reputation" of the Post Office. Blake points out that this was Clark's advice on the duty to record information.

Blake asks Crichton if she instructed Cartwright King to give that advice or if it was provided voluntarily.

Crichton says she "does not remember seeing this in this form" and that she spoke to Martin Smith in relation to the advice that was enclosed with the letter.

Counsel for the inquiry Julian Blake flicks through to another email which is about Susan Crichton from former Post Office boss Paula Vennells dated 2 August 2013.

In it she talks about a "bland board paper" which she flags onto someone with concerns about a lack of progress and some issues around Second Sight's costs and no risks being flagged since Vennells left for some leave.

"The second alert is how much Susan sees as 'beyond her control'. One for my full return."

Crichton says it was her intention to have a discussion about risks face-to-face.

She then admits, with hindsight, she should have been "jumping up and down" a bit more about the risks to the business and the safety to convictions.

Former Post Office chair Alice Perkins notes that by the end of their conversation, Susan Crichton's was "less formal and cool in her judgement on key issues".

Though, in the same note, she adds Crichton's "fatalism" or "reluctance" to see the importance of "managing events" was "troubling".

Blake asks if there's a suggestion that, although the Second Sight report was an independent review, those being investigated might still have had some influence over it.

Crichton says that's "probably right".

She says she was trying to play the role of independent intermediary. She wanted to make sure Second Sight investigators got the information they needed in the way they wanted it.

"I wasn't always successful," she admits. "Certainly, timing-wise, things took too long to do."

Zoe Conway
Employment correspondent, reporting from the inquiry

The inquiry is now entirely focused on how the Post Office Board reacted to the interim report by forensic accountants Second Sight in 2013, which found problems with the Horizon system.

The evidence is startling to say the least.

There is concern among board members that they could be held personally liable by what the Second Sight review has found – a memo reveals the head of corporate finance reassured them this is ‘’highly unlikely’’.

We then see a note of a meeting where the then chair of the Post Office, Alice Perkins, refers to the ‘’very serious’’ risk to the Post Office’s ‘’national reputation’’ as a result of the Second Sight report and in particular its potential to effect the company’s ‘’funding negotiations’’ with the government.

We're still looking at the same note from former Post Office chair Alice Perkins.

Perkins writes that the Post Office should never have got into the position where it hadn't seen a draft of the interim Second Sight report until days before it was published.

Does it feel like you're being blamed, Blake asks Crichton.

"Yes, it seems so," she replies.

Blake then asks Crichton if she thought there should have been an inquiry in the first place, and whether she was a "sole voice" in saying so.

"It felt like that at times," she says.

Crichton is shown another note, which details events that could have had a "big impact" on the national reputation of the Post Office.

Blake asks Crichton about the parliamentary question, raised by Lord Arbuthnot and answered in the House Commons by Jo Swinson. She is also asked about government funding.

Crichton says she cannot remember where the Post Office was regarding funding with government.

She tries to recall whether it was a one or two year funding agreement following the separation from Royal Mail, but cannot recall clearly.

Moving on, Crichton says she feels it had been right to have the inquiry into the Post Office, adding that she felt there was a fundamental issue for the business, which needed to be addressed.

She says Second Sight's work "really brought it home to me".

More now on the board meeting Crichton was not invited to.

Alice Perkins said she explained to Crichton afterwards that the meeting had developed quickly and it had not been "appropriate" to bring her in. She also said the agenda was packed.

When asked about this, Crichton tells the inquiry her reaction - she says it was "not appropriate" that she had not been included.

She says she "didn't necessarily believe" that the agenda was too packed, and that there was no time to discuss the issue fully.

At no point did she enter the room, she tells the inquiry.

We're looking now at a note from Post Office chair Alice Perkins on a meeting she had with Crichton in July.

In the note, Perkins says Crichton was "cool" from the outset of that meeting.

She also writes that Crichton said she was not "prepared to be treated as a 'scapegoat'", though Perkins insists this was not the case.

Inquiry counsel Julian Blake pushes Crichton on this point.

Crichton says she was worried about not being able to operate without the support of the chair, board and chief executive Paula Vennells.

Earlier, inquiry counsel Julian Blake showed the inquiry a document titled "update on the work programme arising from the Horizon report", which he says was produced on the same day as the email note from Paula Vennells.

He asks Crichton if she knew who drafted the document, to which she replies: no.

"Would you be surprised if Paula Vennells herself drafted this?, Blake asks.

"No it wouldn't surprise me," she says.