Former sub-postmaster Lee Castleton, who was made bankrupt by the Post Office after a two year legal battle, told the BBC that he accepted the argument that Mr McFadden trusted the advice he was being given by the Post Office.
“You wouldn’t employ a plumber and then decide what’s wrong with a [broken] boiler,” he said.
However, he said the government could have ensured the Crown Prosecution Service was bringing prosecutions, and not the Post Office.
“I really do believe that the sheer amount of money and pressure that can be brought by a public body should always be checked by a third party,” he said.
Mr McFadden earlier said that it was not possible to unpick exactly who had drafted the letters that he signed insisting on the robust nature of Horizon.
But Mr Castleton said it was “unfair on the victims” that the “perpetrators of this seem to be surrounded in mystery”.
He added that he felt Mr McFadden was being “disingenuous” by saying he did not know who had drafted the letters.
“It’s clear that ministers were being given information by people, and those people would be known to the ministers,” he said.
At another point in McFadden’s testimony, the inquiry was shown a series of letters from MPs including Brian Binley and Jacqui Smith.
They raised concerns that random flaws in the Horizon system were causing discrepancies in accounts, with sub-postmasters having to spend their savings to pay the Post Office back.
The letters also questioned prosecutions brought by the Post Office against sub-postmasters.
However, the stock response that Mr McFadden signed at the time was that the Post Office itself was in charge of operational matters such as prosecutions, while the government was in charge of overall strategy.
When concerns were raised about Post Office, what the government would do is go to the Post Office to get a response, Mr McFadden said.
Mr McFadden said: “In every case they [Post Office] are insisting, in response to our requests, that the system is robust, that it’s been proven in court, there is no evidence to suggest there’s anything wrong with it [Horizon],” he said.
He said the business department didn’t have a “separate source” of information about Horizon except from the Post Office.
When asked later why the government did not speak to sub-postmasters themselves, Mr McFadden responded that it would not have been appropriate for ministers to question the decisions of courts.
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