Adam Crozier, former chief executive of Royal Mail, said he didn't know his company was responsible for prosecuting sub-postmasters
He told the inquiry: "I do not recall having involvement in or knowledge of the oversight of the investigations and prosecutions”
Earlier, former Post Office managing director Alan Cook also said he didn't realise the Post Office itself brought prosecutions
He said there would have been a "higher bar" if an outside body - for example the Crown Prosecution Service - brought the cases
Cook was managing director from 2006 to 2010 - hundreds of people were prosecuted while he was in charge
The inquiry is taking a break now until 1405 (BST).
We'll bring you some of the last lines before the morning session adjourned, and key moments from Crozier when it returns.
Stay with us.
Beer asks Adam Crozier about the Post Office board meetings that he attended. "Did you receive the minutes for the meetings you did not attend?", he asks.
"Yes," says Crozier, because he was a director of Royal Mail holdings.
He is then asked if he received the minutes of the Post Office's audit and risk committee.
"I definitely did not, as far as I recall," Crozier replies.
Jason Beer KC asks Crozier if there were any mechanisms for other main board members "to go down into the Post Office board to take a look at what was going on".
Crozier says yes and explains that at the time leaders were trying to do "a big people and culture transformation".
"So there were tentacles in the Post Office in terms of people and technology," Crozier says.
Jason Beer KC asks Croziers if there was a way for people in the Post Office to report issues to him or the Royal Mail board if the Post Office managing director or CEO was not inclined to do so.
Crozier says yes, there was a whistleblowing process as well as a "have-your-say" anonymous survey to allow for feedback.
Beer asks how these complaints were fed through, and Crozier says the results of the anonymous surveys were looked at, including by the management team, the audit committee, and the board.
Beer asks if there was something that allowed sub-postmasters to reach the Royal Mail board without going through the Post Office processes, and Crozier says he doesn't believe there was.
Adam Crozier now confirms that the Post Office and Royal Mail relied on external legal advice.
He is subsequently asked if he thinks some of the prosecutions of sub-postmasters were conducted by external lawyers.
"I believe they had a big role in that, yes," he replies.
In his answer to a follow up question, he reveals that he is not sure exactly what that role entailed.
Adam Crozier is now giving evidence as the Post Office inquiry carries on into this afternoon. Here's a recap of what we learnt this morning when former Post Office boss Alan Cook was questioned.
Crozier says the Post Office had a relatively high degree of autonomy under its delegated powers.
He says the Post Office enjoyed the greatest amount of autonomy out of the wider Royal Mail group, and was the only one with its own governance set up.
Asked why that was, Crozier says it goes back to the government setting up the company in 2000. Royal Mail had to modernise and be a commercial company operating in an environment with competitors, whereas the Post Office was to try and become a sustainable public service.
Inquiry counsel Jason Beer KC spends some time elaborating on how Post Office Ltd was a separate legal entity to Royal Mail, and had its own board and managing director.
Adam Crozier confirms that during his time at Royal Mail, the Post Office's managing directors were David Mills (who will present evidence next week), and Alan Cook - who was before the inquiry earlier today.
Frances Read
Live reporter
Adam Crozier so far seems to have kept his involvement with the Post Office Horizon scandal relatively at arm's length - that is until today.
Will he argue he was just too far up the food chain to know any of this and that the responsibility lies with the Post Office board? That argument is very likely to be tested today.
Previously, Crozier has said he did not have any involvement with the Horizon IT system during his time at Royal Mail. But during this inquiry we’ve heard that sub-postmasters did indeed write to him about Horizon.
Did he get those letters? If not, why not? That could be a key question at the inquiry today.
At the heart of this are questions about accountability. Where does the buck stop? Crozier was right at the top - albeit at Royal Mail - and today’s a key day in really understanding that.
The inquiry hears that the Royal Mail had its own audit and risk committee.
Crozier confirms he was an attendee for these committees but not a member.
He explains that members were all non-executive directors.
Questions to Adam Crozier begin with some formalities.
Counsel to the inquiry Jason Beer KC Beer starts off by asking Crozier about his employment history before joining the Royal Mail group in 2003.
Crozier confirms that he sat on the Royal Mail Holdings management board.
As a reminder, the Post Office was part of Royal Mail until 2012.
Image source, Getty ImagesAdam Crozier was the CEO of Royal Mail Group Ltd between 2003 and 2010.
The Post Office was part of the Royal Mail umbrella group back then, but had a separate board, which Crozier did not sit on in his capacity as chief executive.
He regularly drew criticism from Post Office unions for his high salary; in 2007-08, he earned £3m in pay and bonuses, while during his seven-year tenure, he raked in a total of £9.7m.
In that time period, between 2003 to 2009, the Post Office secured 400 convictions using Horizon data, according to evidence from the inquiry.
He left the top job at Royal Mail back in 2010 to head ITV, and is now chair of BT.
The BT top executive has only issued a brief statement about the Horizon IT scandal since it re-entered the national conversation, saying that he extends his “heartfelt sympathies to the individuals and families who were so wronged by the tragic miscarriages of justice”.
He went on to deny having “any involvement” in the Horizon issue during his time there, but adds that he feels “deeply sorry for those whose lives were ruined”.
Image source, Post Office InquiryAdam Crozier, the former chief executive of Royal Mail has just been sworn in.
Stay with us to hear what he tells the inquiry.
As always, you can watch along by pressing Play at the top of the page.
According to the government, there were 983 convictions across the UK relating to the faulty Horizon software used in Post Office branches.
Of those, 700 were initiated by the Post Office, external.
The other 283 were brought by bodies including the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service in Scotland, the Public Prosecution Service in Northern Ireland,, external and the Crown Prosecution Service in England and Wales.
This morning, Alan Cook - Post Office managing director from 2006 to 2010 - said it took him more than three years to realise the Post Office was initiating its own prosecutions.
As we reported earlier, there were 292 Horizon-related convictions while Cook was in charge.
Cook told the inquiry this morning: "The problem that I was bringing to the piece was I just had a presumption, and I didn't hear something sufficiently categoric to say 'what, you mean we decide on our own and no-one can stop us?'"
James Gregory
Reporting from the inquiry
Cook has finished giving his testimony to the inquiry, and many will see this as a pretty bruising morning for the former Post Office managing director.
The final few exchanges were particularly heated - understandable given they were from lawyers representing sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses who were falsely accused of being responsible for shortfalls at their branches.
Cook maintains he was not aware at the time that prosecutions were being carried out in the Post Office's name during his tenure.
But the counsel lawyer, and the lawyers representing the victims, have put to him several documents which they say makes clear the Post Office was behind many of these cases.
What's interesting today is that several people in the room with me have no involvement with the scandal at all - they're members of the public who feel so incensed by what has happened to the sub-postmasters they wanted to bear witness to it.
Back to Ed Henry KC's line of questioning. He says the court of appeal stated the prosecutions against sub-postmasters should never have been brought because they were an "affront of the conscience of court"
"What do you have to say for yourself?" Henry puts to the former managing director.
"All I can do is apologise unreservedly," Cook says, adding that he would not characterise himself as a malicious person nor want to cause harm.
"It is not an excuse, but rather an explanation," Cook adds.
Cook says there's no excuse for the fact that this happened, and that it more importantly happened "on my watch", but that's why this inquiry is happening.
"But it's not acceptable," what happened on my watch.
Watch: Skinner says 'people in high places' are walking away from the scandal unscathed
Responding to Alan Cook's evidence today, in which he says he didn't realise the Post Office brought its own prosecutions, Janet Skinner says the former managing director should have been "well aware of what was going on".
Skinner was handed a nine-month sentence in 2007 over an alleged shortfall of £59,000 from her Post Office branch in Bransholme, Hull. Her conviction was quashed in 2021.
Read more about her case here.
James Gregory
Reporting from the inquiry
A personal apology to one of the sub-postmistresses at the inquiry this morning - Janet Skinner - is made now.
Skinner was sentenced to nine months in prison in 2007 over an alleged shortfall of £59,000 from her Post Office branch in Hull. Her conviction was quashed in 2021.
"I can only apologise on behalf of the whole organisation for the way you were treated. It was disgraceful.
"I can only apologise personally. I have an accountability that I should have been on top of it and I wasn't.
Quote MessageThis will be with you for the rest of your life, it will be with me for the rest of my life.
Alan Cook, Ex-Post Office managing director
Ed Henry KC, a lawyer for another group of sub-postmasters, is next up.
He brings up the date of 12 April 2007, citing how sub-postmistress Janet Skinner - who is sitting directly to his right - was released from prison on that day, having spent nine months in prison for false accounting.
"Jailed on the lie that Horizon was infallible," Henry says, before outlining how she was urged by the Post Office to plead guilty for false accounting.
"She hadn't stolen a penny. All of this was being done in your name and you claim you didn't know," Henry puts to Cook, who quickly replies: "I just can't be more apologetic."
Henry then says to Cook that telling the sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses to plead guilty to false accounting was a "deliberate" strategy of the Post Office's.
Cook says that he doesn't know if this was indeed a "deliberate strategy", but if that's how it manifested itself it's entirely "unacceptable".
"I ought to have known it, I didn't know it," Cook says.
Stein accuses Cook of telling a "straight out lie" when he said he had no oversight or knowledge of the investigations.
Cook says he acknowledges he knew about the investigations, but was not aware that it was solely the Post Office authorising most of them.
That tense exchange follows a series of questions in which Stein puts it to Cook that he received very comprehensive information about ongoing investigations.