Post Office expert admits seeing trial obligation legal advice
A key figure behind the flawed IT system that led to hundreds of sub-postmasters being wrongly jailed has told the Post Office inquiry he had “not remembered” legal advice he was given about his obligations as an expert witness.
Former senior Fujitsu engineer Gareth Jenkins was crucial in the prosecutions process because he was one of the architects of the Horizon accounting systems and one of a few people to have extensive knowledge of their workings.
He had said in his evidence on Wednesday that he had not received a letter by Bond Pearce solicitors that explained his duty of impartiality as an expert witness.
At the start of his second day of evidence, he admitted under questions from counsel to the inquiry Jason Beer KC that he would have read the document in 2006, after it was shown he had been copied in to the correspondence.
Money latest: Popular energy provider sinks to bottom of rankings table
However, Mr Jenkins added that his focus would have been on answering questions about Horizon that were contained in a separate attachment.
The letter, which related to the Post Office prosecution of postmaster Lee Castleton, was written four years before Mr Jenkins was presented as an expert witness in the case of Seema Misra, who was wrongfully sentenced to 15 months in prison while pregnant in 2010.
Mr Jenkins told the inquiry on Wednesday that he had not understood the legal obligations of impartiality until 2020.
Former engineer defends Horizon system
Post Office pressure to change witness statement
He alleged that the Post Office had exerted pressure on him to support its case against her.
Mr Jenkins, who is being investigated by police over suggestions of perjury, claimed in his witness statement that Post Office lawyer Warwick Tatford had looked over a draft of his witness statement for Mrs Misra’s trial and recommended he “make some points more strongly in favour of the Post Office”.
Read more from Sky News:
Fresh details revealed for new UK theme park
Royal Mail takeover to land advisers £130m
Jenkins apology ‘too little too late’
This included, he said, that Mr Tatford “wanted me to say it looked as though Mrs Misra had stolen money rather it was incompetence,” Mr Jenkins wrote.
Asked by Mr Beer what he made of the proposed changes, Mr Jenkins said he assumed it was “normal practice” as he had no comparable experience, but added it had made him feel “uncomfortable”.
Be the first to get Breaking News
Install the Sky News app for free
Put to him by Mr Beer that he had a number of opportunities to see if the Post Office was tweaking his evidence for its own interest by the end of Mrs Misra’s trial, Mr Jenkins told the inquiry: “Having looked back at things now, I can understand that may have been happening, but at the time I thought everything that was happening was just a legitimate tidying up of statements to make them more readable.”
He apologised to Mrs Misra. She later told Sky News that it was “too little, too late”.
Remote access
Sub-postmaster branch accounts were able to be altered remotely by Fujitsu, a fact which was part of the High Court ruling in 2019 that Horizon software was “not remotely robust”.
But Mr Jenkins on Wednesday reiterated his defence of the computer programme and added that remote access was limited until 2018.
Theoretically, however, he said he knew remote access was possible from 2000, nearly two decades before the Post Office would admit it and 15 years before it stopped prosecuting sub-postmasters.
He did not realise it was happening in practice until 2018, he told the inquiry.
Mr Jenkins’s four days of evidence will continue on Thursday and Friday.
He is appearing at the inquiry for a day longer than former Post Office chief executive Paula Vennells.