Post Office live: Prosecution witness says Post Office 'tried to put words in my mouth'

3.40pm: Beer moves on to the issue of bugs, efforts and defects (which we'll refer to bugs for ease). Jenkins admits he was aware of the attitude in Fujitsu that they could 'live with' some bugs so long as they did not disrupt the system to any material extent. These bugs were not always thoroughly investigated but did not affect individual branches, says Jenkins.

Inquiry then goes into detail about the nature and scope of the Horizon system. Beer says he wants to start low down and asks what a node is. Jenkins appears to stumble, prompting Beer to say: 'This is not a good start.' Big laugh in the public gallery.

3.20pm: Back after a short break, and Beer asks whether Jenkins saw barrister Tatford give evidence to the inquiry last year. Jenkins reveals he was in the room to hear it.

Tatford said in his evidence to the inquiry he made it very clear to Jenkins that he was under a duty to provide a frank disclosure of Horizon problems to the Misra defence expert.

'I don't believe we had that sort of conversation,' says Jenkins. He clarifies that he did not understand from Tatford there were disclosure obligations. 'His [Tatford's] evidence is in error?' asks Beer.

'That is not my understanding of what occurred at the time,' says Jenkins.

2.50pm: Jenkins agrees his witness statement in the Misra case gave only a 'partial picture' but insists he was only asked to comment on a limited number of issues. He did not realise at the time that he should disclose his knowledge of other bugs in the Horizon system as he did not think they applied to Misra's branch at the relevant time. 

'If someone had told me I need to do something about [other bugs] I would have done something about it,' he says.

Was he ever concerned about Post Office lawyers asking him to amend his statement and the evidence he was giving?

'I thought everything was just a legitimate tidying up of the statements to make them more readable,' Jenkins says.

2.30pm: Beer goes to another case, that of Kim Wylie, an accused sub-postmistress from Winlaton in the north east. Again the defence witness set out a lengthy explanation of their credentials, the caveats and limits to their report and the declaration of independence. Jenkins annotated this statement and wrote under the declaration: 'Standard stuff. No comment required.'

He now tells the inquiry he just saw it as a declaration which was standard, and not the words within it. He was trying to comment on Horizon and no-one told him of any of the duties of an independent expert witness.

'I hadn't really taken much notice of it and didn't really think any of that applied to me,' he says. 'I was not making such a declaration.'

2.10pm: And, we're back. Jenkins says he felt like part of the prosecution team because that was how Post Office treated him.

Beer shows him a defence expert witness statement which set out in detail their relevant experience and duties to the court. Jenkins says it did not occur to him at the time that he was expected to provide the same.

Jenkins tells the inquiry 'I was basically doing what I had been asked to do which was to comment on the report and then it was suggested that it was presented in terms of a witness statement. So that's what I did.'

12.55pm: A colleague of Jenkins complained about a direct approach from an external solicitor to him in November 2012 for information on a case. This colleague said it was 'clearly unacceptable that he is being ambushed in this way'. Jenkins wrote to Post Office executive Angela van den Bogerd the following January that another approach was outside his official remit, adding: 'I probably shouldn’t be doing this investigation for you in this way.'

12.40pm: Beer asks, given that Jenkins has repeated that he was not the Horizon architect, why he was always called on to give expert evidence. He says he doesn't know. He was never formally told by Fujitsu it was part of his job, although it became that way over time.

Beer asks if money came into it, but Jenkins says he was getting paid whether or not he supported prosecutions.

Beer then asks whether Jenkins ever felt under pressure from Post Office or its lawyers to push the reliability of Horizon whenever defence lawyers raised this.

He replies: 'There were certainly cases where they were trying to put words in my mouth which I didn't want to say... I just took it as being the way these things happened.'

12.15pm: Jenkins was ultimately not called as a witness in the Castleton case, although he continued to advise on aspects of Horizon. Dilley had said that although Jenkins would make a good witness, he would not be called for evidential reasons. Jenkins replied in an email: ‘Fine (I won’t try and understand what this means!)’

He repeats that at this stage he did not understand the role or duties of an expert witness and these were never explained to him.

Chambers ultimately was called as a witness and Jenkins agrees with Beer’s suggestion she was ‘extremely reluctant’, adding: ‘She certainly didn’t feel very comfortable with it.’

The inquiry goes to another morning break.

12pm: Inquiry hears that Jenkins met at Fujitsu HQ with Bond Pearce lawyers including Stephen Dilley in 2006 to discuss the Castleton case. Jenkins says he has no recollection of the duties of an expert witness being discussed at this meeting. Dilley emailed a couple of days later to say that Castleton's lawyers were making disclosure requests for error records that were a 'stab in the dark'. Jenkins was asked for his opinion and the defence was 'clutching at straws'. He reiterates that he had never been made aware of his duties as an expert witness at this stage.

11.40am: Another key part from Jenkins' witness statement: 'I deny any wrongdoing in relation to the evidence that I gave in any of the case studies being considered by this Inquiry. I now know that I gave evidence without understanding that I might be subject to "expert duties" (depending upon the sort of evidence I was giving). I also thought that I could trust the way in which POL lawyers conducted these cases and that, in turn, my approach was appropriate and correct.'

11.25am: Back after a short break, and Beer goes to the case of Lee Castleton, the Bridlington sub-postmaster taken to court by the Post Office over the £27,000 apparently missing from his branch account. He was ordered to pay £300,000 Post Office legal costs after losing his case in the Royal Courts of Justice in 2006.

Jenkins was instructed as an expert witness in the case and the inquiry sees documents showing that his duties were set out in detail.

10.45am: Trawling through Jenkins’ statements and one section stands out: the Post Office’s decision to stop using Jenkins as an expert witness in 2013 based on the Simon Clarke advice (see the 9.30am entry). Jenkins writes that he cannot recall anyone from Post Office or Fujitsu explaining the reasons for him being dropped.

Remarkably, he does even not recall seeing any written legal advice or having it explained to him, adding: ‘I first became aware of the criticisms made of me in Mr Clarke's advice during the appeals against conviction in the Court of Appeal in 2020.’

10.30am: Beer asks how Jenkins became so involved as an expert witness. He says he was seen as able to turn some of the technical jargon into something that lay people could understand better. Yet he was not told about all the reported issues with Horizon and does not appear to have been given an overall picture.

Beer asks: 'Did anyone say "we need to make sure that Mr Jenkins knows about the things that are not referred to him"?' Jenkins says this never happened.

Beer continues: 'Did it occur to you "I might need before going to court to find out about things that are not referred to me"?'

Jenkins: 'That didn't occur to me. I was confident and probably wrongly so that when problems did occur they were quickly fixed... with hindsight I would have done things differently.'

10.05am: A brief moment of light relief as a fly appears to be flying around Jenkins and distracting him. Beer says he will have it removed if it keeps causing disruption.

Then more serious business. Beer goes to the ruling of Mr Justice Fraser in 2019 in the group litigation which was heavily critical of Jenkins and his Horizon system. Do you accept that Mr Justice Fraser found Horizon was not remotely robust, asks Beer. 'I accept that was what he said,' replies Jenkins.

Was Horizon Online susceptible to accounting flaws?

Jenkins: 'I think [Fraser] is maybe putting it too strongly. Horizon Online was and is doing a good job in terms of its accounting.'

Does he actually believe the judge's ruling about Horizon not being robust?

Jenkins: 'I don't accept that finding. There were some discrete bugs that caused problems to the accounts but they were very discrete and I believe they were well controlled and managed at the time.'

9.45am: A real air of anticipation in the inquiry room as we wait for Jenkins to arrive. All the major broadcasters are here and preparing lunchtime bulletins. The public gallery is near to full – the biggest attendance since Paula Vennells. Seema Misra, the sub-postmaster convicted on Jenkins’ evidence, is here. Jenkins arrives to total silence and inquiry counsel Jason Beer KC is ready to go.