The Post Office’s legal chief has denied he ever regarded branch operators as “guilty until proven innocent”, as alleged in an internal email written by a former chair, the inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal has heard.

Ben Foat, the general counsel at the Post Office who has been on leave owing to a combination of ill health and preparation for his appearance at the public inquiry, said the issue had been “whipped up” by the former chair Henry Staunton.

In January, Staunton wrote an email about a telephone conversation he had with Saf Ismail and Elliot Jacobs, the two subpostmaster non-executive directors on the Post Office board, summarising complaints they had about two executives – one of whom was Foat.

The email, known as Project Pineapple, was subsequently accidentally shared with Foat and other directors by the chief executive, Nick Read.

“Saf and Elliott are fed up with the amount of power wielded by Foat,” Staunton wrote. “He and other members of the senior team act as if postmasters are guilty until proven innocent (as per my experience, they both said). While Foat is at the helm, nothing will change.”

On Friday, Foat denied ever making such a comment, saying: “I have never said that people are guilty until proven innocent.”

Foat, who joined the Post Office in 2015 and was promoted to the top job of general counsel in May 2019, said: “I have maintained the view throughout my entire tenure that we need to adhere to the common issues judgment, the Horizon issues judgment and [the] Hamilton [judgment] that people are innocent until proven guilty. I am on record repeatedly saying due process needs to be done but absolutely people are innocent until proven guilty.”

Staunton has previously given evidence to the inquiry where he said that Foat had a “vendetta” against the two non-executive directors Ismail and Jacobs.

In Foat’s 124-page witness statement to the inquiry covering the final phase looking at the current practices and culture at the Post Office, he was critical of Staunton.

The inquiry has previously heard from Amanda Burton, who joined the board of the Post Office last April. She said Staunton “aggressively” tried to stop an investigation into the conduct of Read, after he learned there had been complaints about “inappropriate comments” of his own that were also part of the investigation.

Foat said: “Working with the former chairman was of particular concern given his leadership approach and specifically unprofessional behaviours and attitudes. When I would not make a particular investigation ‘go away’ in which he was subsequently identified, he was very adversarial.”

Counsel for the inquiry asked Foat what went wrong with his relationship with Ismail and Jacobs for him to be mentioned in any way in a planned conversation between them and Staunton.

“I think this came off the back of an issue with Mr Staunton,” said Foat. “After this email was given to me I received an apology form the two postmaster non-executive directors. They said Henry had whipped up this issue. I went through this email with them. I wanted to explain to them that the observations and allegations that were made in the email were false. They apologised to me for it.”