Post Office inquiry live: Ex-Fujitsu engineer Gareth Jenkins gives third day of evidence

Most of today’s
questions focused on the case of the Surrey sub-postmistress Seema Misra – an
important test case in the Post Office’s defence of Horizon, and Gareth Jenkins
was a key witness.

Time and again, Jenkins was presented with examples where his evidence did not give the full
picture of what he knew about crucial issues in the trial – such as bugs and
errors.

The bugs, he said, had
been fixed, or related to a different version of the system, and therefore
weren’t relevant in his view.

As an expert witness, Jenkins had a legal duty to disclose that information, even if it would help the
defence – a duty he said he wasn’t informed of.

He said he was happy
with his evidence at the time, but he could now see it wasn’t “as good as it
should have been”.

Jenkins was presented
with evidence that he had twice been asked to detail other known issues with
Horizon ahead of the Misra trial – but had only mentioned one bug, which had
been fixed.

“Was it an unwillingness
to reveal known problems with Horizon?” he was asked.

“I think it was a case
of me misunderstanding the question,” he replied.

Finally, he was asked
what he knew about the 2013 legal advice which revealed that he had been failing his
duties as an expert witness.

When he was stood down
as expert witness back then, he said he was happy not to be involved.

“I preferred to be
working on my day job” he said.

He hadn’t understood why
he was stood down until 2020, he said.

We’re going to be pausing our coverage of the Post Office inquiry. Please join us again tomorrow, when ex-Fujitsu engineer Gareth Jenkins returns to deliver his fourth day of evidence.