Peter Ruddick
Business reporter

"I don't think any action was taken" is a pretty damning statement from Rodric Williams.

One of the exchanges between the senior Post Office lawyer and Jason Beer KC, counsel to inquiry, was all about the so-called expert advice of Gareth Jenkins.

Her was a Fujitsu technician whose statements were often used in court when prosecuting sub-postmasters.

In a long back and forth, Williams talked through a 2013 document which confirmed both he, and the Post Office, were aware those statements were problematic.

Williams was asked what happened as a result. Was this raised to the Post Office board?

Was the mediation scheme, and the sub-postmasters involved, informed? Was this raised to the Criminal Cases Review Commission?

The answers were either versions of "no" or "I don't recall".

If action had been taken, would justice have been served sooner?

Still on the handwritten document, Beer asks Williams why he was discussing if Fujitsu IT employee Gareth Jenkins may be a "tainted witness" with another lawyer, given that he is not a criminal law expert.

"I don't know," Williams initially replies, before saying that he remembers why - that one of the outcomes of the Second Sight report was dealing with Fujitsu and that he had been asked to help with that.

Beer follows up by asking what happened as a result of a discussion over what the Post Office had done to instruct Jenkins?

"I don't think any actions were taken," replies Williams.

Beer presses further, asking whether there was "any introspection" by the Post Office about its responsibility following the revelations about Jenkins.

Williams says he "would think so", adding that he would have asked for advice on what to do next.

Asked next what was done to take the issue forward, he says he is not aware of anything.

Earlier the BBC caught up with former subpostmaster Lee Castleton, who was left bankrupt in 2007 after losing a legal battle with the Post Office.

Castleton was falsely accused by the PO of stealing £25,000 from the branch he managed in Bridlington, East Yorkshire. He was later played by the actor Will Mellor in ITV's drama about the scandal.

In the clip below, he tells us that he welcomes today's evidence revealing the Post Office's "back office" communications:

The inquiry now looks at a handwritten document, which Williams confirms he wrote.

Beer goes through the note and asks Williams to read it out loud, asking questions at various points about what he meant. It's a slow process as Williams often struggles to read his own handwriting.

In one section, Williams wrote that "reports didn't contain all they should have". A note underneath says that as a consequence cases would have to be reviewed to find out if a case against a particular defendant "was prejudiced by absence of info".

Image source, Post Office Inquiry

Based on some notes in the document, Beer asks whether it is correct to say that without the Second Sight review the Post Office would have continued its prosecution as it was, assuming Horizon was working - as Fujitsu IT employee Gareth Jenkins said it was.

Williams agrees the Post Office would have.

Beer goes on to ask whether another section shows Jenkins had told Second Sight about certain bugs with Horizon that he had not initially disclosed and if Williams was wondering what else they might discover?

Williams replies that he can't be sure, but that it could be the case.

Rodric Williams has just been asked if the Post Office only discovered that Jenkins may have not fully disclosed historic defects in Horizon in witness evidence, after the Second Sight report was published.

Shown an email he wrote in 2013 saying he would put the Post Office on record with Fujitsu about issues raised with Horizon, Williams acknowledges that seems to be the case.

Asked what had been done by the Post Office back in 2013 to make that deduction Williams replies: "We didn't do anything."

Here's the moment this morning when the inquiry heard an apology from Rodric Williams.

Referring to his witness statement, Williams reiterates that he hopes people affected by Horizon find closure from the inquiry.

"I hope for myself personally too," he adds, which you can watch in full below:

Ben King
Business reporter

Former sub-postmaster Lee Castleton has called for Rodric Williams to be "removed" from the process of administering compensation.

Williams is currently a Head of Legal in the Post Office’s Remediation Unit. The remediation unit handles appeals from sub-postmasters, compensation and redress.

He admitted to the inquiry that he had a senior role within the unit which deals with compensation, and had "previously" dealt directly with it.

Castleton told the BBC:

He did not call for him to lose his job - though he did say there should be “hopefully some accountability at the end point" of the inquiry.

Castleton was the former sub-postmaster of the Bridlington office who tried to defend himself in the High Court and was bankrupted when he lost. His story was featured in the ITV drama, portrayed by actor Will Mellor.

Williams is still being grilled over concerns around the evidence given by Gareth Jenkins to aid in sub-postmaster prosecutions.

What steps were taken to bring up concerns with the senior Fujitsu employee with the company, Beer asks.

After asking for the question to be repeated, Williams says he had looked into drafting a letter with lawyers from the firm Bond Dickinson to bring it to their attention.

He says he worked with Bond Dickinson to work out "how to raise the issue" with Fujitsu, and adds that one option on the table was drafting a letter to IT the firm.

The inquiry has just discussed formal advice written by the Post Office's own lawyer Simon Clarke in 2013.

Beer asks Williams if he formed a view that the Post Office could no longer maintain that Horizon was robust, or had been robust, in light of Clarke's opinion shown to the inquiry - which you can see below:

Image source, Post Office Inquiry

"No, I didn't," says Williams.

Beer then asks Williams why concerns about Gareth Jenkins, the former chief IT architect at Fujitsu, weren't taken to the police.

Williams says he doesn't know and doesn't recall any discussion about this.

Beer asks again if there was any investigation into Jenkins, based on Clarke's advice.

"I don't recall," answers Williams.

Williams has just been quizzed over advice provided in prosecutions by Gareth Jenkins - a Fujitsu tech expert who helped build the faulty Post Office Horizon system.

Jason Beer KC, counsel to the inquiry, asks if Williams had come to the view that past convictions based on this evidence "were unsafe or at least were potentially unsafe"?

Williams said he has never been able to form a view on this but the "right people seem to have raised it" and would know what to do with it.

A recent BBC investigation into Jenkins found he was asked by a Post Office prosecutor to consider changing his testimony to avoid a "damaging concession".

Jenkins rephrased parts of a report on the Horizon IT system after advice from barrister Warwick Tatford.

The evidence was used in the 2010 case against postmistress Seema Misra, who was wrongly jailed while pregnant.

Read more here.

The inquiry is now looking again at the Post Office's approach to disclosure.

Beer reads from an email sent in July 2013, where Williams writes that issues with Horizon and those impacted will be shared across various units during a weekly conference. He also requests representatives from several teams to attend.

Drawing from his witness statement, Williams says this was to raise visibility across the business and that the Post Office's criminal lawyers were keen to have a record of Horizon issues for disclosure.

Beer asks if the Post Office had always been expected to retain and record information that might be relevant to its "prosecutorial function".

Williams says it seemed to him to be a pragmatic and necessary development because of the position the Post Office was in.

Beer presses Williams about whether the Post Office knew about the bugs in Horizon, as well how they affected the people who were being prosecuted or had their contracts terminated.

Williams says the impact of the bugs was being shared with criminal lawyers "who would advise on what the impact of that would be on prosecutions".

Beer then asks if Williams got any sense of the Post Office reacting as though the report by Second Sight was "revelatory of matters it did not know about".

"Yes, I had that impression," Williams replies.

Williams looks very uncomfortable during an exchange about when the Post Office became aware of the the three bugs in the Horizon accounting system, as well as their relevance to prosecutions of sub-postmasters.

"I had no idea what the impact on prosecutions might have been when I was being asked to find information about the bugs," he says.

Beer asks again about the Post Office having a report about three bugs, how did that affect the criminal proceedings that were brought against people?

"It was important to find out... but it was being found it from what I could see," Williams says.

Image source, Post Office Inquiry

The inquiry has been shown evidence of a review, carried out in in July 2013, into the management of and exchange of information with the Second Sight review.

The evidence shows Post Office staff were discussing sensitive and legally privileged information, including emails showing they talked about how to make sure this information didn't reach those it wasn't meant for.

Beer asks Williams why that inquiry was carried out.

Williams is at first puzzled by the question, but then says he "imagines" that it was due to issues with potential shredding or suggestions of shredding of documents.

Pressed on it, Williams says he is not aware of a "formal review", but he says he thinks it was at the time when there had been reports of shredding of minutes from meetings.

Beer next quizzes Williams about whether the public status of the Post Office was considered during the mediation process.

The counsel to the inquiry asks Williams whether public authorities "may have to behave differently" than private companies when they come into contact with the law.

"That's not a not a concept I'm familiar with," the Post Office lawyer replies.

Williams adds that there was a sense of the Post Office's wider role because it was present in communities across the country, and that it was therefore important to do the right thing.

Beer points out that this consideration was not reflected in Williams's witness statement.

The inquiry continues by examining how information was provided to Second Sight, the forensic accountancy firm which found bugs in the Horizon system.

Evidence presented to the inquiry suggests Williams questioned the release of privileged information to the company.

Williams had written that were "risks" to disclosing the information without a clear framework about how the documents could be used.

Counsel to the Inquiry Jason Beer KC asks him if this was a strategy that would apply in ordinary litigation. Williams replies by saying that he would think so.

Williams goes on to say the prospect of being sued was "always sitting there" and that it "always felt litigation was around the corner".

He adds that concern about the release of information came from the point of view of possible legal action.

The inquiry has returned from lunch and is continuing to hear evidence from Rodric Williams - a senior in-house lawyer for the Post Office.

Here's a recap of what we have heard so far today:

• Williams called a former sub-postmaster who was trying to warn others about Horizon a "bluffer" in a 2015 email to colleagues
• He had told colleagues "we don't need to do research on Horizon", and if sub-postmasters did not like it "they can choose not to provide services for us"
• The inquiry was shown Williams's response to a 2014 email from a BBC journalist, saying that the questions the Post Office was being asked were "getting ridiculous"

• The Post Office lawyer said he did not believe there was an "obligation" on the Post Office to do market research on Horizon's users
• He said there was a "bunker mentality" among Post Office staff over the way the media treated the Horizon scandal
• Williams said he felt "something was up" when he was invited to film a 2015 BBC interview and feared the programme would feature postmasters' complaints
• He added that he felt the Post Office felt "got at" by the media

We've been hearing about the unexplained shortfalls sub-postmasters and mistresses were experiencing - so while we wait for the inquiry to resume, let's take a look at what went wrong with the Horizon IT system.

It's the responsibility of those running Post Office branches to balance their accounts, which had previously been done on paper, but in 1999, Fujitsu's Horizon was introduced.

Almost immediately there was an increase in the number of staff experiencing accounting shortfalls which they could not explain.

Many reported that the Horizon system made it look like money was missing when it wasn't.

Jason Coyne, an IT expert, was instructed to examine the computer system in 2003 and reported "concerning discrepancies". Coyne said there "was clearly defective elements of its hardware, software and interfaces, and the majority of errors noticed in the fault logs could not be attributed to the sub-postmaster".

Coyne said the Post Office data was "unreliable" but he was ignored, sacked, and then discredited.

While the inquiry is taking a lunch break, let's hear from Seema Misra, one of the wrongly convicted former sub-postmistresses who has been speaking to the BBC.

"All the people who are responsible for the scandal, we need to put them behind bars," Misra told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

Misra was eight weeks pregnant with her second child when she was sentenced to 15 months in prison in 2010.

She says she wants to see proper accountability.

"I was sent to prison without any facts and evidence. I was innocent. And here we have facts and evidence and people are still roaming freely," Misra adds.

Williams is also asked whether the Post Office considered suing Second Sight for defamation.

Second Sight was appointed in 2012 by MPs and the Justice for Sub-postmasters Alliance to conduct an independent investigation.

Williams says he wasn't aware of that instruction.

But he goes on to say he remembers being asked to get a media lawyer to look at it as "defamation was used" in terms of the grounds there may be for it - in light of "reputation management".