A difficult day of questioning for Van den Bogerd - and it's likely to get tougherpublished at 17:18 British Summer Time 25 April

17:18 BST 25 April

Peter Ruddick
Business reporter

We expected this to be a difficult day of questioning for Angela van den Bogerd, who was a senior director in the Post Office, and so it proved.

In between the "I don't recall" statements there were some key revelations:

1. When it comes to remote access of the Horizon IT system, a key email was missed in 2010. That led to a litany of misleading or incorrect statements, to sub-postmasters, the media and, arguably, the High Court
2. Despite being aware of "rumblings" of complaints, van den Bogerd claimed she had no proper knowledge of Horizon "bugs" until 2013. She did admit it looked like the Post Office had been trying to "control the narrative" by not using the word "bug"
3. She expressed disbelief at a new document for the inquiry suggesting a Post Office strategy to replace forensic accountancy firm Second Sight, who exposed bugs in its IT system, with an internal process

At a couple of points today, Jason Beer KC, counsel to the inquiry, seemed incredulous at the repeated claim that she was "not involved" in various areas. He even asked: "Can you tell us what you did do?"

Things are only likely to get tougher tomorrow when lawyers for the sub-postmasters themselves get to ask questions.

It's not over yet for van den Bogerdpublished at 16:58 British Summer Time 25 April

16:58 BST 25 April

Zoe Conway
Employment correspondent, reporting from the inquiry

Lead Counsel Jason Beer doesn't do sarcasm. His questioning is pretty straight.

But this afternoon a hint of mockery crept into his voice. Perhaps he couldn't help it.

''You weren't close to many things,'' he put to Angela van den Bogerd as she yet again explained how she wasn't involved in a key decision the Post Office made about it's handling of the Horizon scandal.

''What were you doing at this time?'' he asked her.

In the breaks, over cups of tea, sub-postmasters have been wondering just how the woman they blame for causing them so much suffering will be held to account.

She has been accused by the inquiry of making false statements about her knowledge on the remote access issue (how Fujitsu could access sub-postmasters accounts without their knowledge).

But Jason Beer is still building his argument. She is back tomorrow when it could become much clearer how much responsibility she bears for this scandal.

Evidence has wrapped up for today, but Angela van den Bogerd will be coming back to give more evidence tomorrow.

We will be back too, bringing you her key lines as they happen.

Stick with us as we have analysis on her first day of evidence on the way.

Beer asks whether van den Bogerd was aware of instructions from a member of the Post Office to destroy or shred evidence, and not to write anything down in order to avoid disclosure duties to the court.

As a reminder, the Post Office has been accused of shredding important documents that could have undermined its claim that there was nothing wrong with the Horizon IT system.

Van den Bogerd says she was aware of the "shredding situation", and had read about the instructions in the disclosure pack.

What did you know about the "shredding situation?" Beer asks.

She says that her colleague Gail Peacock had mentioned that the Post Office's then head of security John Scott had given this instruction - and remembers feeling a sense of "disbelief".

She adds that Susan Crichton had intervened at the time and "put that straight".

We are hearing that van den Bogerd had "extensive" dealing with Andrew Parsons over years, who was on the receiving end of the document we just saw.

She says she didn't speak with him about ceasing to use Jenkins as a witness, and says that she learned that there was an issue with Jenkins' evidence from top Post Office lawyer Rodric Williams.

Asked whether she was told that Jenkins's evidence was "tainted", she says: "Not that I can remember."

Beer turns to another document and asks about Fujitsu's Gareth Jenkins, who was ditched from Post Office prosecutions.

The document says Jenkins should not be called on as an expert witness and that there were a number of convicted defendants to whom the existence of bugs in the Horizon system should have been disclosed.

Van den Bogerd says she was not aware of this advice [about Jenkins] at the time.

She is then asked if she ought to have been told about this advice and she says yes.

She also says there were discussions in the working group about the safety of prosecutions of cases, but "she was not brought into this detail at all".

Beer asks van den Bogerd if she was aware that the Post Office had prosecuted "very many people" in the past based on Horizon evidence.

“I wouldn’t say very many, I’d say some,” she replies, prompting Beer to ask what her impression was of how many people the Post Office had prosecuted in the last 13 and a half years.

She says her only recollection was that she wouldn't have been aware of the number of cases on the national level, adding that it would be only the cases she was involved in.

Beer then points out that van den Bogerd repeatedly said throughout the day that she wasn't “close to many things”.

“Not involved in briefings, not involved in IT, not involved in the provision of information concerning Horizon to Second Sight, not involved in investigating those early complaints about Horizon,” he says. “What were you doing at this time?”

“I was doing whatever my business-as-usual role was and I was working closely on at this point, on the spot reviews with Second Sight,” she says.

Earlier we heard Beer ask van den Bogerd about three claims made by Vennells during her address to MPs:

1. Theft from the Post Office was about the temptation
2. Every case was decided in favour of Horizon
3. Horizon was never found to have been at fault

Van den Bogerd was questioned about her role in creating the briefing pack, with Beer pointing out that the briefing pack does not mention those three claims made by Vennells.

Beer asked if there was any occasion where Vennells and Alice Perkins decided to convey these messages to MPs.

She replied that she only remebered the scheduled meetings, but could not say if Vennells and Perkins decided to meet on their own to discuss making those three claims.

Had those points been brought up in meetings she was in, she said, she would have defended the postmasters and postmistresses. I always saw them as "very honest, hardworking decent people who didn't come in to defraud the business", van den Bogerd said.

Beer highlights that Van den Bogerd had worked "closely" with the Post Office's IT specialist, Simon Baker, on the Second Sight project for around a year.

"Why did Baker hold the view that the focus was to bring things back under the Post Office's control and remove Second Sight without telling you about it?" he asks.

Van den Bogerd says she doesn't know, adding: "That's certainly not a conversation he had with me."

Beer points out the Post Office did ultimately remove Second Sight. Was that unrelated to this plan described earlier, he asks.

"As far as I was concerned, yes," she replies.

The inquiry is looking at a document outlining a plan for van den Bogerd to head the investigations, rather than Second Sight.

Highlighted in the document is a line that says "this strategy almost entirely falls on Angela's shoulders", and singles her out to head the investigations.

She says she wasn't party to the conversations around this.

It's put to her that the Post Office wanted to control the processes and eventually control the outcomes of the investigation.

Van den Bogerd says that wasn't her view.

Pressed, she says that she was in some conversations about concerns over Second Sight's costs and outputs, but that the discussion was to bring in additional resources.

She denies that she was told to phase out Second Sight, and says she doesn't think she was asked to carry out anything relating to it.

Beer is showing an email exchange between Simon Baker and Paula Vennells in August 2013, in which Baker says the Post office should be allowed to investigate cases independently.

Asked if the Post Office could ever independently investigate cases against it, van den Bogerd concedes it could not.

Beer then refers to the line from Baker that the Post Office investigating cases itself would allow it to "take control". He asks "this was always the plan wasn't it?".

"That wasn't my take", she says.

She repeats her line from earlier that she believes there was a desire to get "under the skin" of what happened in branches.

Beer turns to an overview of the Second Sight investigation process and how the Post Office interacted with it. Van den Bogerd is asked if the Post Office only checked transaction records.

“For the spot reviews, I don’t think so, I think we went wider, particularly in the Lepton case,” she says.

Beer asks whether she was aware of the extent to which audit data had been examined by Fujitsu by all of the spot reviews.

She says: “I can’t say that I was."

Van den Bogerd says that Susan Crichton's departure was "quite a shock".

"Why do you think she left?" Beer asks, pointing out that she had introduced Second Sight to the company.

Van den Bogerd says she doesn't think Crichton was "embarrassed" for introducing the forensic accountants to the Post Office, but says she Crichton was "aware that we weren't getting the outputs that we thought we would by that time".

Van den Bogerd is asked why the Post Office used Second Sight to carry out the investigations.

She says her impression was that it was less costly than one of the "Big Four" accounting firms.

So then why did the Post Office consider replacing Second Sight after its interim report, Beer asks.

Van den Bogerd says she believes it was due to "cost and lack of output".

It's put to her that the reason was because Second Sight were "too independent".

She says this was not her take.

On the subject of Susan Crichton – the general counsel who picked Second Sight and left her role in 2013 – van den Bogerd says that she was not aware of anyone blaming Crichton over Second Sight, nor her job being on the line over it being, as Beer puts it, "too independent".

Asked if the priority was damage limitation and reputation management, she says she didn't think it was as stark as that.

"Protect the brand at all costs?" Beer asks.

"That wasn't my sense at the time," Van den Bogerd says.

Beer shows a briefing note for Vennells and asks van den Bogerd to what extent she was involved in coming up with the briefing.

“I don’t really remember”, she says, adding that determining the content of the briefing was usually a “collective approach”.

Beer then turns to the 'Forward Strategy' outlined in the document, which details a 'Plan A' and 'Plan B.'

'Plan A' suggests persuading James Arbuthnot to postpone his meeting with Second Sight, while 'Plan B' suggests preparing a “full communication strategy” and using “rebuttal and tactics” to “minimise reputation impact”, if 'Plan A' does not succeed.

Beer asks van den Bogerd if she was the driving force behind this strategy.

“I was aware of this strategy, but I was not a driving force," she says.

The hearing resumes after a short break and we are still on the topic of the 2012 meeting with MPs.

The inquiry is shown what is known as a briefing pack, which details some talking points for the meeting.

Alongside it, counsel pulls up the record of what was said in the meeting, which includes Vennells's remark that there is an "issue of not trying to put temptation in people's way".

There's no note of temptation in the briefing pack, so van den Bogerd is asked where this came from.

She says the briefing pack is not meant to be a script, and there may have been discussions she wasn't privy to prior to the meeting.

She adds, however, that it was not unusual for someone to diverge from the briefing pack.

Earlier we heard the ex-senior Post Office director asked about whether she accepts, knowing what she knows now, that it's not possible to identify Horizon system errors from the logs alone.

She accepted that, from a postmaster's perspective, they would not have known what to look for, and added that in 2004, she wouldn't have known either.

She said she relied on another team to provide the expertise, but conceded she didn't know if they were qualified to provide that expertise.

Van den Bogerd is asked who was responsible for fact-checking claims made by former Post Office CEO Paula Vennells.

Van den Bogerd's answer is unclear, and Beer asks a follow up question: "Would you expect careful and diligent checks to have been made before going on the front foot?"

"Yes," says van den Bogerd.

Beer says that this shows that Vennells was "going on the front foot" against the MPs, and was "using the court system as a prop".

"You can be assured, MPs, that there's nothing to see here," he says.

"I can't disagree with that," replies van den Bogerd.

In response to a follow up question, van den Bogerd confirms she cannot help in establishing the steps taken to confirm the veracity of information given to the MPs.

Image source, Post Office Inquiry

Beer again refers to the meeting minutes in which Vennells says the Horizon system was “very secure” and that “every keystroke” was recorded.

He asks van den Bogerd if she believed what Vennells had said. “I did,” she responds, adding that she had no reason not to believe her CEO and didn't know who had briefed her.

Beer also points out that the document states that Vennells had said that every case taken to prosecution had been found in favour of the Post Office.

Van den Bogerd said she believed Vennells when she said this.

When Beer brings up that two sub-postmasters were acquitted in June 2012, van den Bogerd says she was not aware of this information.