Peter Ruddick
Business reporter

Tim Parker was also quizzed on another key topic. Time.

He was asked how long he actually spent working on Post Office issues.

The answer? A minimum of just one and a half days a week which, in 2017, he requested actually be reduced to half a day a week or two days a month.

At one point today an email was shown that showed the former chair's signature.

He also listed roles with the National Trust and Samsonite at the time. He said this was actually a benefit.

It gave him better judgement because he was also involved with other companies and the non-business world.

As with his assertion that he was only following advice or was distracted by other commercial issues, it will be up to the inquiry chair Sir Wyn Williams to decide if this is fair.

That wraps up Parker's evidence to the inquiry, which continues.

Peter Ruddick
Business reporter

That is arguably the sentence of the day from former Post Office chair Tim Parker.

From the decision not to disclose a key case review to the idea that a High Court judge be asked to recuse himself because of bias, Parker said he only acted on the suggestion of legal experts.

This afternoon, after being quizzed by lawyers representing sub-postmasters, the former chair said he was sorry for his role in events.

He also explained why he didn't give a direct apology at the beginning of today's session. He said he had been told it might just seem a bit hollow.

Apologies are important because, after the first convictions were overturned, he wrote letters to sub-postmasters to say sorry.

Today, he said these letters were genuine and reflected his view that the "game was up" and the Post Office "just needed to change". He argued it had tried to change.

Peter Ruddick
Business reporter

After a morning of evidence from Tim Parker, we have heard some of the same arguments made by people who have given evidence to this inquiry previously. However, we have also heard a crucial claim.

Like others before him, Parker said he was brought into an organisation that was - in his words - in "deep crisis". His focus was not solely on Horizon and sub-postmaster claims but was also on trying to make the business commercially viable.

He denied being aware of civil service concerns about the leadership of Paula Vennells.

Within weeks of arriving, he commissioned lawyers to conduct a review of the IT system and the accompanying legal cases.

That review aired the allegation that the Post Office may have "bullied" sub-postmasters into pleading guilty to false accounting by also charging them with theft. This is often viewed as a more serious offence. A series of eight recommendations were made.

However, the report and those recommendations were never fully shown to the board or ministers. It is Parker's evidence that this decision was taken after legal advice from internal Post Office lawyers. Advice that - with hindsight - he thinks should have been tested or challenged.

That challenge never happened and, instead, the Post Office focused on fighting Alan Bates and his group in court.

We will hear more about those court cases this afternoon.

Emma Simpson
Business correspondent

Tim Parker told the inquiry there was no intention to hide the Swift report but he’d been told it was a legally privileged document.

Legal privilege protects confidential or sensitive material between a lawyer and their client from having to be disclosed.

We’ve been hearing a lot about this in the inquiry.

Parker says he got the advice from the Post Office’s top lawyer, Jane MacLeod.

“It’s one of my regrets that I got that advice and I took it,” he said.

Did she advise you directly? "I can’t confirm one way or the other," he replied saying he'd no axe to grind on this.

“I had no vested interest in trying to protect the Post Office.”

He acknowledged that had the full report been discussed, it may have led to a different approach to the subsequent High Court action which the Post Office lost at a cost of £100m.

But he also felt that by that stage it may have needed a judge to resolve all the issues.

Emma Simpson
Business correspondent

Image source, Post Office inquiry

Tim Parker was the chair of the Post Office from 2015 until 2022, resigning just a few days before the launch of the inquiry.

He had been scheduled to give evidence over two days but that's been reduced to one day now.

After the 2015 BBC Panorama which helped expose the scandal, the new postal affairs minister asked Parker for a proper review of the Horizon problems.

He commissioned the so called Swift review. It warned miscarriages of justices may have happened and said it was incumbent on the Post Office to see how often and why Fujitsu had tampered with branch accounts remotely, right back to 1999.

But this report was never shown to the full board of the Post Office nor disclosed to the High Court in the epic legal battle against the Post Office by sub-postmasters.

Having seen the evidence, the authors of the Swift review urged the Post Office to do another investigation to get to the bottom of how often Fujitsu had secretly altered branch accounts.

The work began but was then brought to a halt just after sub-postmasters launched their legal action.

Parker wrote to the minister saying the investigation had been scrapped on "very senior advice" from the senior barrister representing them.

Welcome to this morning's livestream-only page, as the inquiry into the Post Office Horizon scandal continues.

Tim Parker, the former chair of Post Office Ltd, is giving evidence today. Parker previously said the company was "extremely sorry" to those affected by the scandal and their families, blaming "historical failures".

You can follow the inquiry live by clicking the Watch live button at the top of the screen.