More than 900 sub-postmasters were prosecuted for stealing because of incorrect information from a computer system called Horizon, in what has been called the UK's most widespread miscarriage of justice.

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 went to prison for false accounting and theft. Many 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.

A draft report uncovered by the BBC shows the Post Office spent £100m fighting the group in court despite knowing its defence was untrue. The Post Office said it would be "inappropriate" to comment.

Although campaigners won the right for cases to be reconsidered, so far only 102 convictions had been overturned.

• 1999: The Horizon accounting system is rolled out in Post Offices across the UK
• 2000: The first issue with the system is reported by Alan Bates, sub-postmaster of a branch in Wales
• 2003: Bates loses his job after refusing to accept responsibility for missing funds in the branch accounts
• 2004: More sub-postmasters find themselves being asked questions about missing funds - at times in the tens of thousands of pounds. Jobs are lost, some are declared bankrupt and some eventually sent to prison
• 2010: A high-profile case of wrongful conviction occurs - pregnant Surrey sub-postmaster Seema Misra is jailed after being accused of stealing £74,000
• 2012: Formal investigations into the Horizon software begin
• 2015: The Post Office halts private prosecutions of sub-postmasters
• 2017: Legal action is launched against the Post Office by a group of 555 sub-postmasters
• 2019: Post Office CEO Paula Vennells stands down, before the company agrees to pay £58m to the 555 sub-postmasters
• 2021: The public inquiry into the scandal begins
• 2023: The government announces that every wrongly convicted sub-postmaster will be offered £600,000 in compensation
• 2024: There's a resurgence of interest in the scandal after ITV releases a mini-series titled Mr Bates vs the Post Office. Vennells hands back her CBE
• 2024: The government introduces new legislation to speed up clearing victims' names and paying compensation

Henry moves on to ask a question related to former sub-postmaster Parmod Kalia, who was sentenced to six months in jail after being falsely accused of stealing £22,000 from his Post Office branch.

He's sitting next to Henry in the inquiry room today and as the lawyer explains Kalia's current situation - that the jail term affected his family life, his mental health and he now lives alone in a community centre - Kalia looks visibly emotional.

We're shown a letter from Van den Bogerd to Kalia from 2015 in which she insists accusations made in a BBC Panorama special into the Post Office scandal were "inaccurate".

"Do you accept that it is completely unambiguous you have no knowledge at all of a plan to exit Kalia from the mediation scheme?" Henry asks, to which Van den Bogerd responds simply: "No."

That's us caught up - the inquiry's due to resume in about half an hour, at which point we'll resume our live updates.

Jacqueline Howard
Reporting from the inquiry

Edward Henry: "You were deliberately supressing the truth."

Angela van den Bogerd: "No I would never do that."

EH: "You were letting wrongful convictions stand."

AVDB: "No."

That's just a flavour of the back-and-forth between Henry and Van den Bogerd that went on for the better part of 15 minutes just before.

Henry, who represents a group of wrongfully convicted sub-postmasters and postmistresses, is throwing accusation after accusation at Van den Bogerd, who dismisses each one with a simple "no" or "I disagree" every time.

It's worth remembering Henry's just one lawyer, there are more in the room. How many will be given the chance to ask questions today is unclear but one thing's clear - it's going to long couple of hours for Van den Bogerd when we return from lunch.

Image source, Post Office inquiry

A key part of Van den Bogerd's evidence has been that she didn't have the "knowledge base", as Edward Henry KC puts it, to deal with Horizon complaints.

He suggests she's minimising her level of understanding before the inquiry, to which she disagrees.

Having shown her an email exchange from 2014, where its stated that "any mention of missing money/IT fault is/should be dealt with" by Van den Bogerd, he puts it to her that was in the "driving seat".

"Not for IT matters, no", she replies, saying again and again that it was not her "area of responsibility".

Van den Bogerd goes on to say she relied on the advice of IT experts.

But Henry suggests that former Post Office CEO Paula Vennells viewed her as a "safe pair of hands" - "spin the company lines, that's what she knew about you, and that's what you revealed to her... you would do anything to protect the Post Office," Henry says.

She disagrees, saying that's not right.

There's an hour lunch break now, so proceedings will be paused for a bit.

We'll quickly catch you up on the last couple of minutes before that was announced - so stay with us.

Edward Henry KC is revisiting a key issue from an evidence shown in the inquiry yesterday.

It's about remote access that was a key issue in John Breedon's voice mails and emails to Angela.

Breedon was a manager at the Post Office at the time.

Henry asks Van den Bogerd if she admits she knew about that now, "she may be liable to perjuring herself based on evidence she gave to courts years ago." She answers "No."

The email Henry shows Van den Bogerd says she had been told about a "back door" into Horizon which people could access.

She says she "genuinely doesn't remember reading any of that context back in 2010", to which Henry quips that "genuinely" is doing some "pretty heaving lifting there".

"Are you being dishonest about this now or were you inexcusably negligent at the time?" Henry asks.

"I am not being dishonest about it," Van den Bogerd says.

It's now time for lawyers representing sub-postmasters to ask Van den Bogerd questions.

First up is Edward Henry KC. He asks Van den Bogerd if, as she rose through the ranks at the Post Office, she ever asked herself whether people had gone to prison and "it was totally wrong".

"No," she says.

He asks then if it ever occurred to her that from 2010 onwards, innocent people were being sent to prison on her watch.

She says no, and that she trusted that "due process" was being followed.

Jacqueline Howard
Reporting from the inquiry

The counsel to the inquiry, Jason Beer KC, has wrapped up his questions for the day, and we now turn to questions from lawyers representing former sub-postmasters.

Chair of the inquiry, Sir Wyn Williams, turns to the lawyers awaiting their turn, and asks them to let him know now whether they have any questions that would "make it necessary or desirable" for him to give Van den Bogerd a warning about self-incrimination.

One lawyer answers in the affirmative, and so Sir Wyn reminds Van den Bogerd that she is within her right to refuse to answer any question put to her if there is a risk the answer would incriminate her.

It indicates we are about to shift gears here in the inquiry room, and that Van den Bogerd is about to be put under serious pressure.

Image source, Post Office inquiry

Beer reminds the inquiry that in February 2015, Angela van den Bogerd sat next to the then-Post Office CEO Paula Vennels in Parliament giving evidence.

In her witness statement to the inquiry, Vennells, who will testify over three days in March, said she had, nor seen no evidence to suggest that there had been any miscarriages of justice.

Beer asks if van den Bogerd briefed Vennels about what Warmington had flagged about Carl Page.

"No," Van den Bogerd says, "Because at that point, we didn't have evidence." She suggests that Warmington was working through a hypothesis but nothing had been concluded.

Beer concludes his questions to Angela.

Image source, Post Office Inquiry

Beer tells the inquiry he's moving on to his final set of questions for van den Bogerd now, before lawyers representing sub-postmasters take over.

He turns to a lengthy transcript of a telephone call in January 2015 between Ron Warmington, of Second Sight, and van den Bogerd about Carl Page, a former sub-postmaster who was wrongly accused of theft.

Van den Bogerd tells the inquiry she didn't know Warmington was recording the call.

During the phone call, Beer says Warmington expressed his concerns over the prosecution of Page, telling van den Bogerd he thought the Post Office "got this wrong".

Beer reads out parts of the conversation, highlighting one section where Warmington said he couldn't see any evidence money had been stolen.

Beer asks if Warmington was suggesting that this was a miscarriage of justice.

Van den Bogerd says he had information the Post Office didn't have that was leading him to that conclusion, but he hadn't finished his investigation.

She adds that she had asked Warmington to hand over any new evidence, which she told him she would pass on to the Post Office's investigations team.

Emma Simpson
Business correspondent, reporting from the inquiry

We’ve been getting a real glimpse of what was going on behind the scenes in the breakdown of the mediation scheme set up to help wronged sub-postmasters.

The “expectation gap” on compensation is interesting.

Top in-house lawyer Chris Aujard has made a note of a meeting held in 2014 on the progress of the scheme with Paula Vennells and the Second Sight team.

Paula observed the figures being discussed were a long way from what they had in mind at the start, which were much smaller and more of a “token” payment.

Aujard goes on: “Neither the board nor Shex (the Government) would countenance the payments of large scale amounts.”

Van den Bogerd is asked by Beer if she knew the plan was for “token” payments.

She says she wasn’t aware of the note until this morning, but says it was always felt compensation wouldn’t be huge.

Then we move on to the below slide deck in preparation for an executive committee meeting, in which stakeholders, Second Sight, are described as "hostile".

It’s not clear who wrote it. "It’s not the language I’d use," van den Bogerd says.

Image source, Post Office Inquiry

The inquiry is now shown another very long email now from Second Sight forensic accountant Ron Warmington which suggests that the Post Office believed it was inappropriate for Second Sight to review data concerning the operation of suspense accounts.

Beer asks Van den Bogerd to explain why the Post Office believed that.

"I think initially the request was too broad," Van den Bogerd answers.

"But it was indicating a potential accounting issue," Beer insists and highlights a line in which Warmington highlights the possibility that "the amount that has been received [by the Post Office] was money that should've been remitted to a Post Office client or to one of the branches".

Warmington suggests there's money in there that has been wrongly processed as a result of errors by various figures "including the Post Office itself."

Van den Bogerd agrees that it was a "very serious issue".

A telephone call transcript between Angela and Warmington shows the Post Office managers' unwillingness to share data Second Sight wanted about suspense accounts.

Van den Bogerd confirms there was "reluctance" to share certain information.

The inquiry is now looking at correspondence with Second Sight over the Post Office's suspense account balances.

For context, suspense accounts are where disputed or unexplained transactions are sent until reconciled. This is a key issue that's come up repeatedly over the course of the inquiry.

Beer puts it to Van den Bogerd that the emails between Second Sight and Post Office executives suggested that she had been informed significant sums each month were being held in suspense accounts which couldn't be reconciled with those of the Post Office.

What was done about that, he asks.

She says she wasn't "driving this particular line" with Second Sight, and that she's "never seen" Post Office suspense accounts.

Jacqueline Howard
Reporting from the inquiry

The inquiry is being shown a 2014 email from Second Sight investigator Ron Warmington to the Post Office, which was passed on to Angela van den Bogerd.

It's a very, very long email that covers a number of technical aspects of the Horizon accounting software.

Jason Beer KC, is instructing the lawyer in charge of displaying the documents today to scroll through it repeatedly, trying to locate the section of interest. He then apologises to the inquiry, noting the length of the email and "headache-inducing font". It's Comic Sans.

There's laughter in the room, but it's moments like this one that transport you back to the time this all unfolded, when technology was a bit clunkier than it is today, and Comic Sans was a somewhat acceptable font in a professional setting.

Angela van den Bogerd is asked about an internal document created after a meeting by the Post Office Executive Committee, at which she had not been present.

The inquiry is shown the "context" written in the report, which is consisted of several bullet points. One of them says that the Post Office has no hard power and a minimal influence but was having to pay for the mediation scheme.

Another bullet point says "hostile stakeholders including those directly engaged in the mediation scheme by the Post Office."

Van den Bogerd says that she didn't put together the report and doesn't recall being approached for her thoughts on its contents.

She says the Post Office "never intended" to have hard power or control over the mediation as an independent process was running, and suggests that it was Second Sight, the independent forensic accountants, that were referred to as "hostile".

"Were they hostile?" Beer asks.

"Not to my knowledge, they were challenging. They were independent therefore they were challenging, that's what I expected them to be," she replies.

Image source, Post Office Inquiry

Still on the topic of the mediation scheme, Beer asks van den Bogerd if the Post Office was maintaining a charade.

She says the Post Office wanted to get closure on those cases, and some did, but it was obvious there was a "gap in expectation".

Beer asks if the purpose of the mediation scheme was for the Post Office to tell sub-postmasters that there was nothing wrong with Horizon, and that their contracts had been properly terminated.

"That was never my understanding," van den Bogerd says, "had it been that, I wouldn't have volunteered to get involved".

Jacqueline Howard
Reporting from the inquiry

We've just seen meeting minutes from 2014 in which Paula Vennells, then chief executive of the Post Office, tells a meeting with Second Sight investigators (van den Bogerd is not present here) that the amount they estimate will need to be given to former sub-postmasters as compensation is greater than she thought - that "much smaller and more of the nature of a 'token' with apology" sums were in mind.

As Beer reads this out, there are audible sniggers around the room.

Van den Bogerd says she wasn't thinking about compensation when she joined the Second Sight scheme and she was there to uncover the truth in the sub-postmaster claims - triggering chair Wyn Williams to intervene.

He's pressing her on how it can be that the scheme began not thinking about compensation, to having "token" estimates mere months later.

"So in summary, once it became clear ... that some people were looking for very large sums of money, it became the view of the Post Office that that was never going to happen in truth," Beer says.

"Yes, that's what they didn't expect to happen," van den Bogerd replies.

Beer moves on discuss the mediation scheme. Angela van den Bogerd was a member of the working group when the scheme was being set up.

She was leading the team of case review investigators and advisors, which dealt with the responses to the issues that had come in from the applicants, i.e. the sub-postmasters.

In her witness statement, she says she wanted to understand if there was anything in the claims that it was Horizon that was generating discrepancies in the accounts.

Beer asks if the idea of the mediation scheme, from the beginning, was to placate some sub-postmasters with token payments and apologies.

Van den Bogerd has to be asked the question twice as her first response, does not satisfy the counsel.

On second attempt, she answers directly: "No."

"The intention was always about understanding if there was anything in the issues," she says, adding that it was "a genuine attempt to investigate those claims".

Image source, Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry

We're now hearing about the Post Office's approach to sharing information with sub-postmasters who were engaged with independent investigators Second Sight.

Inquiry counsel Jason Beer KC brings up an email from Ron Warmington, a forensic accountant involved with Second Sight, sent in November 2013 to Shirley Hailstones, a case review manager. In it Warmington copies in former sub-postmasters Lee Castleton and Alan Bates.

He suggests that what happened at a Lepton Post Office branch could also have happened to Castleton. (Castleton was made bankrupt after he lost a two-year legal battle with the Post Office, in which they falesely accused him of stealing £25,000.)

In her response to Warmington's email, we see that Hailstones removed Castleton and Bates from the chain - and goes on to say to Angela van den Bogerd separately that "this interaction should in my view not be widely circulated".

Warmington is seen to flag that correspondence of this nature should be shared with applicants of the Second Sight scheme - referring to Castleton and Bates.

Beer asks Van den Bogerd if she thought sub-postmasters should be kept out of the loop.

She says this was a "point of process", and Bates's Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance told the Post Office that applicants didn't want direct contact from the company because "it brought back bad memories".