The inquiry is back from a short break, and counsel Julian Blake is moving to the case study of Khayyam Ishaq, whose conviction was quashed by the Court of Appeal.

Ishaq was a former sub-postmaster who was convicted of offences including theft, false accounting, and fraud in 2013. He pleaded guilty to the theft of £17,863 and was sentenced to 54 weeks' imprisonment initially.

In 2021, the conviction was overturned when the court concluded that the Horizon data was not reliable and there was no basis for the prosecution.

The lawyer returns to Stephen Bradshaw's witness statement and asks what investigations he carried out into the integrity of the Horizon IT system.

Bradshaw, a former Post Office investigator, is asked if he accepts he had knowledge of bugs in Horizon system, to which he says he cannot recall any information he received concerning bugs.

A little more now from earlier when Bradshaw was asked about bonuses and whether there were any links between payments and prosecutions.

"Does your success in a criminal case impact on the amount that you're paid?" inquiry counsel Julian Blake asks.

"No, not at all," Bradshaw responds.

Pushed on this, Bradshaw says: "You don't get any extra bonus because of this, it is all about how well or not well you do your job."

Further pressed on whether an employee's role in protecting the business or preventing a wider impact is rewarded monetarily, Bradshaw adds: "It may do, it may not do."

Sam Hancock
Live reporter at the Post Office inquiry

During a brief recess, I spoke to Janet Skinner, a sub-postmistress who was jailed in 2007 for nine months over an alleged shortfall of £59,000 from her Hull Post Office.

Her conviction was quashed by the Court of Appeal in April 2021.

Before the break, inquiry lawyer Julian Blake took Stephen Bradshaw, the former Post Office fraud investigator who's giving evidence, through his interview with Skinner many years ago.

The transcript of that interview, which we've seen, showed how at one point Bradshaw told Skinner to "get up earlier" to get to work.

I ask her how it felt hearing that. "It was a lot more than him telling me to get up earlier," she says.

On Bradshaw himself, she says while he's still employed by the Post Office, his "loyalties" are always going to lie with the company.

"He's never going to show remorse," she tells me.

I ask how her she's doing through all this. "Alright, yeah, I'm OK," she says.

Image source, PA Media

Blake goes back to the case of Jacqueline McDonald. He reads from a transcript of McDonald, where she says she was led to believe by Stephen Bradshaw that she was the only one being investigated.

But she later discovered through a magazine article that others were also being prosecuted.

Blake also highlights that there was a "conscious decision" not to tell McDonald about Seema Misra's case, another sub-postmistress from Surrey.

The context is consistent, Blake says. So doesn't McDonald's comment ring true?

Bradshaw says it doesn't, asserting that he had never told McDonald that she was the only one under investigation.

The counsel subsequently shows Bradshaw's own appraisal of his behaviour from 2010/2011. He suggests Bradshaw saw it as a career boost to press on with the McDonald case, rather than pivot to investigating Horizon - which would be "bad for the business".

Bradshaw replies that there's always a "flamboyant way" of saying things during your own appraisal.

Bradshaw is asked about disclosures he made in his investigations which were then given to the criminal law team.

He says he always gave the correct information in each case.

It's raised that other information that could have been key to the investigations wasn't always provided but Bradshaw suggests the lawyers would be aware of other details.

The inquiry chair interrupts and questions this assumption, suggesting any other relevant material, especially that useful to a defence, should have been chased up by the investigator and included in a report.

Bradshaw then agrees.

Bradshaw is now being asked about a report he received with "quite clear criticisms" about the Horizon IT system.

Asked about his prior knowledge of "bugs, errors and defects" in the system, Bradshaw says he didn't know what the particular bug, error, or defect was in place and "nobody has ever come or cascaded it down to say what particular bug, error or defect was in the system".

He says the Post Office solicitors in the criminal law division would be aware of the contents of this report, and given their expertise he expected them to go on to make the relevant people aware.

"I would have expected the criminal law team to be the full disclosure officers," he adds when asked about whether he disclosed the information pertaining to the report that criticised the Horizon IT system.

Post Office investigator Stephen Bradshaw says he signed a 2012 statement attesting to the Post Office's "absolute confidence" in the Horizon computer system - but it was written by lawyers.

"In hindsight... there probably should have been another line, stating these are not my words," he says.

Counsel Julian Blake continues to review Stephen Bradshaw's conduct. He points to an interview with Jacqueline McDonald, who was sentenced to jail for theft for 11 months in 2011.

Blake reads a transcript of her interview, where Bradshaw accused McDonald of telling him "a pack of lies".

Blake says the language sounds somewhat like what you would hear in a "1970s television detective show". "Was that phrase appropriate?" he asks.

Bradshaw responds by saying it was a "difficult interview".

He defends his statement, saying the defendant's representatives did not label it as "oppressive or aggressive".

The counsel now raises the case of Janet Skinner who had her conviction for false accounting quashed.

She was jailed in 2007 - and served three months - over an alleged shortfall of £59,000 from her Hull Post Office.

At the time of the investigation, Skinner felt someone else at the Post Office must have stolen the money that couldn't be accounted for. Bradshaw was involved in the case and is asked about how he dealt with Skinner at the time.

The counsel reads through exchanges between the two, where Bradshaw tells Skinner she should have "got up earlier" to avoid having another colleague open the business in the mornings.

He asks Bradshaw if he thinks it's appropriate to give someone lifestyle advice.

Bradshaw apologises for how he spoke but puts it down to his particular use of language and the context.

• Read more about Janet Skinner's case here.

Sam Hancock
Live reporter at the Post Office inquiry

Inquiry lawyer Julian Blake's questioning so far has largely focused on how Stephen Bradshaw carried out his investigations of sub-postmasters and postmistresses.

In particular, Blake's asking why, amid growing speculation over the suitability of Horizon, Bradshaw repeatedly said there was no issue. Bradshaw puts this down to the fact nobody from "management" alerted him to one.

Looking around the room, some people shake their heads when Bradshaw confirms what's written in his formal statement to the inquiry - that his investigations were conducted "in a professional manner".

It's worth saying that not all those watching are former postal workers. I spoke to one man earlier who described himself as an "interested member of the public".

Whether it's because of an ITV drama or not, this scandal is front and centre of a wide variety of people's minds - and they're not only former sub-postmasters, lawyers, journalists and the Post Office.

Back to the latest from the inquiry. Counsel Julian Blake puts several old emails to Stephen Bradshaw, including one from 2012 written by the chief of the Post Office's PR department which said it was important to get across that the Post Office continues to have confidence in Horizon.

Blake asks whether Bradshaw was aware that his witness statement from a decade ago was drafted in part by the PR department.

No, says Bradshaw, saying he only saw the final version that had been approved by his lawyers.

Bradshaw says it is "not really" appropriate, but confirms that these are not his words. It appears that they were drafted by the Post Office's PR department, but that he was given assurances by his lawyers that everything had been approved.

Post Office investigator Stephen Bradshaw is being questioned by counsel Julian Blake.

Bradshaw is now asked if he believes his signing off of Horizon systems in witness statements led to people going to to prison.

He says he signed a lot of statements drafted by lawyers Cartwright King for the Post Office. In those he expessed "his confidence" in the IT system.

Asked if it was appropriate for him to declare "confidence" in Horizon in a 2012 statement, he said: "I was given that statement by Cartwright King and told to put that statement through."

Sam Hancock
Live reporter at the Post Office inquiry

Image source, Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry

Proceedings kicked off with chairman Sir Wyn Williams giving Stephen Bradshaw a kind of legal warning about self-incrimination. It was interesting to see.

Bradshaw, who worked as a fraud investigator for the Post Office at the time of the Horizon scandal, looked fairly relaxed throughout. He said he understood and with that, inquiry lawyer Julian Blake was allowed to begin questioning him.

I'm sitting a few rows back from Jo Hamilton and some of the former sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses who were convicted as a result of the Post Office's faulty software, Horizon.

As Bradshaw speaks, they - the victims of this scandal - are taking notes and whispering to their legal representatives.

Image source, Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry

Julian Blake points to a statement signed by Bradshaw in 2012 that said the Post Office was confident in the "integrity" of the Horizon system. Blake says it may have helped send people to prison.

Bradshaw says he did not write that statement himself. He says he may have questioned it at the time, but that he was given "assurances" to put it through.

He admits that it caused moments of reflection - a slight contradiction to what he said earlier - and adds that he would not have put it through today.

The chair interrupts proceedings to confirm that the statement was drafted by his solicitors and that Bradshaw simply put his name to it. Bradshaw confirms that was indeed the case.

It's put to him that colleagues had flagged some concerns about how Horizon was working but Bradshaw says he would only have given credence to information given to him by superiors.

He says he's not technically minded so would have to have been told by someone above.

A case from 2013 is raised by the counsel, three years after articles are published questioning the system's efficacy, where Bradshaw attests to the integrity of the system.

Bradshaw says his expertise was only around the hardware not the the technicalities of the system.

Image source, Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry

Counsel Julian Blake is trying to establish whether Stephen Bradshaw was aware of problems with Horizon.

Bradshaw confirms that he was aware of reports around issues with the system in 2010.

Blake then brings up an email by Bradshaw to the Horizon call centre, asking for a log of calls in relation to problems with the software.

"Didn't that cause you pause for thought?" Blake asks.

Bradshaw replies that he took that into account, but says he is not "technically minded" and would expect that to come from the "people above".

Bradshaw is quizzed over past statements he made about multiple investgations into irregularities at Post Offices.

He repeatedly states in the documents that in several cases he had "no concerns" about the conduct of the investigations.

He is asked if he thinks he has given enough thought over 20 years to whether he's been involved in one of the largest miscarriages of justice.

Bradshaw replies, saying concerns about irregularities in Horizon were not cascaded down to him so he didn't know about potential glitches.

He says he had no reason to expect anything was wrong as he wasn't told.

Inquiry counsel Julian Blake is going through Stephen Bradshaw's career with him.

Bradshaw began working with the Post Office in 1978, and has held a wide range of roles there.

In 2000, he became part of the Post Office investigations team around the time Horizon was rolled out. He held various roles in the team, and is currently employed as a security manager.

Bradshaw confirms he has spend 45 years at the Post Office.

Sir Wyn Williams, the chairman, is reminding investigator Stephen Bradshaw that as a witness at a public inquiry he has a right to refuse to answer a question if there's a risk of self-incrimination.

He's told lawyers will be permitted to assist him while he gives evidence.

A few moments ago Bradshaw confirmed that he has legal representation.