Cable was business secretary from 2010-15 when the government privatised the Post Office

Cable has agreed with a description of Post Office management as “thugs in suits”, and had a goal of rebalancing the relationship between bosses and subpostmasters during his time in post.

He recounted a story about challenging 8 Post Office closures in his constituency, before he entered government, and being treated poorly by the organisation’s “middle management”.

Mr Bates has, I believe, described them as ‘thugs in suits’ and I recognise the description,” said Cable in his witness statement. “And [the Post Office] dealt with us in an arrogant way when we campaigned against closures.

In my first meeting with Paula Vennells [Post Office chief executive] I suggested this is what the Post Office should do,” he said. “We perhaps should have been more modest and had postmasters on the board, which would have achieved some of our aims, which I think has now happened.

Problems with Horizon barely came across my desk,” he said. “When they did it was usually in a very uncontroversial way and not drawn to my attention as an issue I should focus on. General reason is that the officials who were briefing me and ministers on the subject hadn’t seen it as a particular problem.

In hindsight, I should have been told at the outset what Horizon was,” he said. “That competent people … were suggesting there was a risk factor and I should have been told about Mr Bates and the justice group. I never heard his name until I’d been in the job five years. I wasn’t briefed on them.