Bankrupted Post Office Horizon victim demands answers after 17 years

The public inquiry into the Post Office Horizon IT scandal has resumed this week and is focussing on one of the most high profile cases.

Former sub postmaster Lee Castleton was made bankrupt by the Post Office after a two year legal battle.

Now, 17 years on, he's hoping to get some answers about what went wrong.

His case being under the spotlight is "something I'd never ever dreamed that we'd see", he said.

There is "a lot of flooding of emotion going on", he added.

The scandal saw hundreds of workers accused of accounting discrepancies and pursued by the Post Office.

Many were fired, made bankrupt or even sent to prison.

It has been described as the biggest miscarriage of justice ever seen in the UK.

"The only thing I'm looking for is some accountability... someone to actually say: 'That was bad, that was really bad. We shouldn't have done that'."

Lee bought a post office in Bridlington in 2003. But within a year huge discrepancies were appearing in his branch accounts.

He suspected the Horizon computer system was to blame and called the helpline 91 times pleading for help.

By March 2004 the unexplained losses had hit £25,000. He was suspended after an audit that same month and ordered to repay the money. He refused.

He was eventually taken to the High Court by the Post Office where he had to represent himself. When he lost his case, the Post Office pursued him for legal costs of £321,000 which bankrupted him.

"It changed our lives completely. It was absolutely terrible and devastating," he said.

Lee believes the Post Office needed to make an example of him.

Now some of the key individuals involved in his case are being questioned as witnesses in the public inquiry.

It's trying to establish how the Horizon system led to such disastrous consequences and who was to blame.

The first phase of the inquiry, which started last year, heard testimony from sub-postmasters who were wrongly bankrupted and imprisoned.

Then it looked at the bugs and errors which plagued Horizon as it was rolled out. Phase three examined how it was run, laying the groundwork for this new and crucial phase - the actions against the sub-postmasters.

Lee's case is centre stage for the next two weeks, for which he is very thankful to the inquiry.

Does he want an apology? "It would be nice, but I doubt [I'll get] it. "

Mr Castleton, now 54, is also expecting a lot of "can't remembers".

"Memory failures" was what Helen Rose, the former Post Office auditor and investigator was accused of when she gave evidence on Tuesday.

She came to Lee's post office in March 2004 to do an audit of his accounts. He'd asked for one.

But the inquiry heard that Mrs Rose gave an "inaccurate" witness statement used in the legal proceedings against Mr Castleton two years later.

When asked why she'd signed a statement containing material she knew that was wrong, Mrs Rose said: "I can't recall. I don't know. "

In her audit report, Helen Rose had also noted "the sub-postmaster was pleased to see us" and that Lee had reported concerns to his retail line manager and the helpline. But this was never included, which would have proved useful to Lee in his case.

Ms Rose said she'd left the Post Office seven and a half years ago and had "no recollection of a lot of the things".

The barrister representing Lee Castleton, Flora Page, questioned whether this was an unwillingness to face the unpleasant truth that her conduct had helped the Post Office to victimise, many, many sub-postmasters.

"Not at all," Ms Rose replied.

On Thursday, it's the turn of Stephen Dilley, the solicitor who acted for the Post Office in the legal action against Mr Castleton, who will be watching and listening just feet away.