To me the more significant witness was Simon Clarke. He was a barrister employed by Cartwright King. He was at the centre of so much that, as a witness, he was highly anticipated. Overall, he was a joining the dots witness. Contrary to Altman, he was often able to give straightforward evidence that didn't need so much moulding of the narrative. But his testimony was very much of two parts, the terrific part and the dodgy part.
It was Clarke who realised that Fujitu knew that there were bugs in Horizon and it was their employee, Gareth Jenkins, who had stated the opposite to secure convictions of subpostmasters. Unlike many others, Clarke took responsibility, wrote this knowledge up as advice, lit the fuse, and threw it into the Post Office blowing the scandal wide open, at least inside the Post Office and for its lawyers and adviors. So Clarke played a key role in enabling the scandal to be uncovered.
But then, for unclear reasons, he made subsequent bad mis-steps. He advised the Post Office to withhold from some subpostmasters information relevant to the miscarriages of justice they'd undergone. But strangely this was only in relation to legacy Horizon, and not the upgrade Horizon Online. It was like he was willing to make sure the Post Office did things right for the recent past, the "current day", and the future, but for the old stuff, like the Seema Misra case, it was best to let sleeping dogs lie.
He also lobbied hard to prevent convicted subpostmasters from being permitted into the mediation scheme to seek redress. Much of what he said yesterday made sense, that it was wrong to send them down this route when it would be inadequate and go nowhere near engaging with the hell they'd gone through, and that they really needed to go down the Court of Appeal route, but this story, although it made sense and fitted with what had gone on, didn't quite add up, and also had vibes of cover-up in it. Maybe a belief that the Court of Appeal route would be so difficult that perhaps few or even no subpostmasters would succeed going down this route and as a result those sleeping dogs could also rest undisturbed.
A disappointing story. Clarke could easily have emerged from this a hero but came across as someone who is a bit of an operator who will fix things but only to a degree that fits in with his agenda.
Interestingly, he also said the senior people in the Post Office were afraid of John Scott, the Head of Security. That confirms what a Post Office insider had said to the Inquiry a week or so back.