A former Post Office communications director told fellow employees he was at “the heart of a corporate cover-up”, at the same time as sub-postmaster prosecutions were taking place and years before an apology was made to victims.

The inquiry into faulty Horizon software, and the associated prosecution of 700 sub-postmasters for theft and false accounting, is taking place to establish a clear account of the implementation and failure of the Fujitsu created software.

As well as the wrongful convictions many more sub-postmasters racked up large debts, lost homes, livelihoods, and reputations as they borrowed heavily to plug Horizon’s incorrectly generated shortfalls in their Post Office branches.

The issue has received renewed attention after the January airing of ITV drama Mr Bates v The Post Office.

An email presented to the inquiry on Tuesday showed the Post Office’s former group communications and corporate affairs director Mark Davies believed he was part of a cover-up and conspiracy.

“It’s fascinating to be part of a conspiracy. To be at the heart of a corporate cover-up,” Mr Davies said in an email to Post Office communications staff, a legal team member, and another director.

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At the time the email was sent, in January 2015, the Post Office was prosecuting sub-postmasters using data from Horizon.

It wasn’t until 2019 that an apology was issued to sub-postmasters as part of their successful High Court challenge of Horizon and related prosecutions.

‘Blaming the journalists’

Despite this, it was known at the time that branch accounts could be accessed and altered remotely by the maker Fujitsu or by the Post Office IT helpdesk.

Mr Davies, appearing at the inquiry, said he thought this remote access was only used once when asked why one of his employees said the idea of remote access was “totally loony” and a “conspiracy theory”.

Emails sent by him were consistently “blaming the journalists” for asking questions about Horizon failings, a barrister for the inquiry Julian Blake said.

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It was a characterisation accepted by Mr Davies, who said: “With the benefit of hindsight, they absolutely, some of [the emails] look ludicrous, I agree.”

A report into Horizon flaws conducted by forensic accountants Second Sight commissioned by Post Office had identified bugs but Mr Davies and his team viewed its authors as lacking independence.

Second Sight were “colluding” with sub-postmasters, Mr Davies said in an email to the Post Office’s then chief executive Paula Vennells.

Various emails shown to Mr Davies on Tuesday described journalists and Second Sight as “attackers” and media reports as “sloppy”.

Additional reporting by Evan Dale.

Sir Keir Starmer has moved to reassure trade union bosses about his party’s plans to strengthen workers’ rights, after he was accused of watering them down.

The party has promised a radical shake-up for workers if they win office – including banning zero hours contracts, employment rights from day one, and ending the practice of “fire and rehire”.

The new deal for working people was billed as the biggest advance in workers’ rights for decades when first unveiled by Angela Rayner in 2021.

The party made some changes last summer, but union bosses claimed a new document circulated to them last week was an attempt to row back further on these commitments.

Sharon Graham, the general secretary of the Unite union, called the new document – which has not been made public – a “betrayal” and “unrecognisable” from the original plans.

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With tensions running high, bosses of trade unions affiliated to Labour met with Sir Keir, deputy leader Angela Rayner and shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves and agreed to scrap the new draft.

In a joint statement they said: “Labour and the affiliated unions had a constructive discussion today. Together we have reiterated Labour’s full commitment to the new deal for working people as agreed in July.

“We will continue to work together at pace on how a Labour government would implement it in legislation.”

Union sources who feared the Labour leadership were bowing to pressure from big business ahead of the election, claimed the party had been talked into a retreat.

After three hours at Labour’s south London headquarters – although it is understood Sir Keir was not there for the whole meeting – Ms Graham said Labour’s position had changed.

She told Sky News: “It was constructive. I think it was really important to have the workers’ voices heard in the meeting itself, because we wanted to reaffirm our position that the New Deal for Working People must be implemented.

“We’ve got a really good position where that has been recommitted to. We’re meeting again in three weeks’ time after we put some information together to discuss a new document. It was a crunch meeting. It was a red line meeting. But I think we’ve got there.” She added: “I think it [Labour’s position] has changed”.

The new deal had originally come with a promise that an “employment rights bill” to legislate for it would be introduced within 100 days of winning power, although this is now seen as unrealistic.

Some changes were agreed last summer at the national policy forum, a gathering of party officials, MPs and union leaders, which the Unite boss claimed was an attempt to “curry favour with big business”.

The Financial Times reported last week that a new draft included even more business-friendly language on fire and rehire – essentially sacking workers and hiring them back on less favourable terms.

The paper reported that it contained a line about the importance of allowing businesses to “restructure to remain viable and preserve their workforce when there is genuinely no alternative”.

It was also claimed that zero hours contracts would not be completely banned because some people choose to have them – but give workers rights to a contract reflecting their usual work pattern.

Labour has also promised to bring in fair pay agreements for social care workers, which a right-wing research group Policy Exchange claimed could add £225 to the average council tax bill.

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Sir Keir’s party has already pruned back their 2021 plans to invest £28bn in green energy, after a protracted battle within the party.

Union leaders will be holding Sir Keir and his shadow chancellors’ feet to the fire to ensure another of his party’s more radical dividing lines does not go the same way, under the glare of an election campaign.

But despite the smiles today, this is a row delayed, with more wrangling to be done.

The prospects for an interest rate cut next month have not been helped by the latest wage growth figures which have come in higher than expected.

Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed regular wage growth, excluding the effects of bonuses, was 6% higher over the three months to March compared with a year earlier.

That was no lower than the sum reported the previous month.

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The ONS reported that total pay was also static, at an upwardly revised 5.7% for the period.

Economists had been expecting declines in both readings.

The data also showed a rise in the unemployment rate from 4.2% to 4.3%.

ONS director of economic statistics Liz McKeown said: “We continue to see tentative signs that the jobs market is cooling, with both employment from our household survey and the number of workers on payroll showing falls in the latest periods.

“At the same time, the steady decline in the number of job vacancies has continued for a twenty-second consecutive month, although numbers remain above pre-pandemic levels.

“With unemployment also increasing, the number of unemployed people per vacancy has continued to rise, approaching levels seen before the onset of COVID-19.

“Earnings growth in cash terms remains high, with the recent falls in the rate now levelling off while, with inflation falling, real pay growth remains at its highest level in well over two years.”

The figures were released against a backdrop of intense speculation on the timing of a Bank of England interest rate cut.

The Bank, which last week signalled further progress in efforts to bring down inflation, has held the rate at 5.25% since last summer.

The rate-setting committee wants to see a “sustainable” return to its 2% inflation target before imposing the first cut.

Wage growth has been among the stubborn factors of concern.

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The Bank feels that the pace, currently around double the rate of price growth, risks fuelling a second round of inflation because more discretionary spending could result in higher prices.

Its chief economist Huw Pill later said in a speech that the pay growth rates remain “quite well above” what would be consistent for meeting the target sustainably.

Inflation figures out next week, which cover the month of April, are tipped to show a sharp easing in the main consumer prices index (CPI) measure, largely due to plunging energy bills.

A figure just above 2% is forecast by economists.

The Bank has resisted the temptation to cut borrowing costs as it believes that figure could shift back up towards 3% in the second half of the year.

Financial markets saw a 53% chance of a rate cut on 20 June – the monetary policy committee’s (MPC’s) next meeting.

While restrictive monetary policy was largely blamed for the UK’s recession during the second half of 2023, the economy has since performed better than expected.

That complicates the picture for the MPC.

Separate ONS data last week showed a 0.6% rise in gross domestic product during the first quarter of the year.

As with the wage figures, the Bank will be anxious that a growth spurt risks fanning the flames of inflation.

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Policymakers have said their decisions will be data dependent.

There is a further employment report due from the ONS ahead of 20 June and two sets of inflation figures between today and that date.

Yael Selfin, chief economist at KPMG UK, said of the rate cut prospects: “Next month will be key in terms of pay data as it will provide initial evidence of the impact of April’s National Living Wage increase.

“If it comes in line with our expectations of only a modest boost, and sufficient to keep annual pay growth on a downward trajectory, this could ignite more dovish sentiment on the MPC ahead of their June vote.”

Rob Wood, chief UK economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, believed the Bank would back a rate cut at its next meeting.

“Much as we have concerns over the jobs data, the labour market keeps gradually easing, and they give the MPC a hook to hang a June rate cut on,” he wrote.