A former Fujitsu engineer has apologised for emails in which he accused Seema Misra, a high-profile victim of the Post Office’s Horizon IT scandal, of “jumping on the bandwagon” in questioning the reliability of the organisation’s computer system.
Gareth Jenkins, a former senior engineer at Fujitsu, which developed the Horizon system, was giving evidence for a third day to a public inquiry examining why the Post Office wrongly prosecuted hundreds of branch operators for financial discrepancies before it emerged that the system was unreliable.
Jenkins was questioned about the criminal prosecution of Misra, a post office operator who was pregnant with her second child in 2010 when she was convicted of theft and sentenced to 15 months in prison. Her conviction was overturned by the court of appeal in 2021. Jenkins was an expert witness for the Post Office at her trial.
Jenkins told the inquiry that her prosecution by Post Office management had been “fairly chaotic” and agreed that he felt “uncomfortable” and put under pressure by Post Office management over the case.
The inquiry was shown an email dated 1 March 2010 from Jenkins to a Post Office executive in which he wrote that Misra had “decided to jump on the bandwagon” and blame Horizon in her court case.
Jenkins told the inquiry of his choice of words: “It was totally inappropriate on my part and I apologise.”
He sent another email to a Post Office manager in February 2010 in which he wrote: “Please see email trail below. This is another example of postmasters trying to get away with ‘Horizon has taken my money’.”
Jason Beer KC, counsel to the inquiry, asked: “Does that reveal what your mindset was in February 2010 when you were conducting investigations into Seema Misra’s case and providing witness statements?”
Jenkins replied: “No. That is me, very poorly, trying to summarise what I thought was being laid out in the email trail below and I apologise for the wording that I used there.”
Beer continued: “Did you believe that there were many examples of postmasters trying to get away with ‘Horizon has taken my money’?”
Jenkins replied: “I can’t remember what I believed … I was trying to summarise the email trail below. I didn’t believe there were any problems with Horizon that were causing Horizon to lose money.”
Jenkins was asked why he had not felt the need to take legal advice about whether to include details in his witness statement about an IT bug found in a Derby branch.
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“You were stepping out of the computer lab and walking into a court, weren’t you?” said Beer.
Jenkins said: “I didn’t realise there was that difference I needed to worry about and no one advised me as to that.”
Jenkins was asked about whether he was now “untroubled” or “happy” with his witness evidence at Misra’s trial. He replied: “At the time, I was. I clearly appreciate now that it was not as good as it should have been. But at the time, I felt happy with it.”
The inquiry heard that he was told in an email by a colleague after Misra’s trial: “Nice one Gareth. Looks like you now have a sideline of resident expert witness in future Post Office fraud cases.” The inquiry heard that Jenkins was used as a witness in a number of prosecutions after 2010.
He said he now realised that “he didn’t understand what an expert witness was” or its “legal niceties”.
The inquiry continues.
