In an interview with the BBC’s World at One programme, Sir Alan said that he hoped public scrutiny would ensure justice was done.
Between 1999 and 2015, hundreds were wrongly prosecuted after Fujitsu’s faulty Horizon IT accounting system made it look like money was missing.
Many lost their livelihoods or were forced to make up shortfalls, while others have described feeling ostracised from their communities. Some former sub-postmasters took their own lives.
On Monday, Edward Henry KC, representing victims, said: “The truth is this tragedy is not about an IT system. Horizon did not destroy the innocent – the malignant culture of the Post Office did.”
“People were ruined, people were bankrupted, people were imprisoned, there were atrocious miscarriages of justice, people died,” he said.
His statement marked the beginning of the end of the inquiry which was set up in September 2020 to look at the Post Office scandal.
It has heard from 298 witnesses, received 780 witness statements and dealt with more than 2.2 million pages of disclosure.
Witnesses have included Paula Vennells, the former chief executive of the Post Office, who has been widely criticised for her handling of the matter.
Summing up, Mr Henry told the inquiry: “The greatest horrors of the world, man’s cruelty to man, are not caused by monsters, malfunctions or misfortune but by those who claim to act in the name of good.
“Enforcing a perverted vision of order that leaves no room for dissent. Cruelty has a human heart.”
At the beginning of the year, the ITV drama Mr Bates versus the Post Office captured the public’s imagination and won a number of awards by focussing on the human stories behind the scandal.
Sir Alan said that “the country will be holding quite a few people to account on this and they will want to see real justice” as a result.
He also said that he hopes the inquiry’s chair, Sir Wyn Williams, would “name names in this one”.
Sir Wyn’s final report on the scandal is due to be published next year, but Sir Alan said he was worried it could be “put on a shelf” and that little would happen afterwards.
As Sir Wyn considers all the information, one of the barristers representing the victims, Sam Stein KC, requested that the inquiry should remain involved, particularly in holding the Post Office and the Department for Business to account for compensation payments.
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