The Post Office boss said it was of "deep regret" to him that the process was taking so long. He blamed bureaucracy, not prejudice or penny pinching. He said it was "astonishing" that it was his organisation managing some of the schemes, given the lack of trust people have in the Post Office.

The chief executive of the Post Office has agreed the organization's leadership team was living in a "dream world" in the months leading up to the launch of a statutory inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal, one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in UK history.