EX-POST Office boss Paula Vennells told the government that subpostmasters “had their fingers in the till,” the Horizon IT inquiry heard today.

Former postal affairs minister Jo Swinson told the inquiry that Ms Vennells was trying to convey that “although these might seem to be lovely people, clearly some of them are actually just at it.”

Ms Swinson said she was reassured that the former chief executive “spoke not only with the standing of a CEO of a major institution, but also with the moral authority of an ordained vicar.”

The former Liberal Democrat MP, postal affairs minister between 2012 and 2015, told the inquiry she recalled “probing Paula Vennells on matters relating to Horizon on several occasions in person.”

She also said that Ms Vennells “knew there was a problem with an unsafe witness, and she never told me.”

Ms Swinson was referring to leading Fujitsu engineer Gareth Jenkins, who is the subject of a Metropolitan Police investigation on suspicion of perjury and perverting the course of justice.

Ms Swinson told the inquiry she “did not ask many questions” about the nature of the government’s role as shareholder of the Post Office and wished she had “intervened more.”

When asked by counsel to the inquiry Julian Blake what she thought she did to contribute to the scandal, Ms Swinson replied: “There’s various things that I wish I had done differently,” and that: “Justice could have been years earlier.”

More than 700 subpostmasters were prosecuted by the Post Office and handed criminal convictions between 1999 and 2015 as Fujitsu’s faulty Horizon system made it appear as though money was missing at their branches.

Hundreds of victims are awaiting compensation.