Peter Ruddick
Business reporter, reporting from inquiry

Much of this afternoon has been dedicated to the key question surrounding the former Fujitsu engineer: did Gareth Jenkins understand his duties as an expert witness?

Remember, this matters because an expert witness has a duty to the court. A duty to be impartial and objective, even if called to give evidence by the prosecution.

After lunch, it was again put to Jenkins that he had written witness statements without looking at all the relevant data from the flawed Horizon IT system.

It was put to him by a lawyer representing sub-postmasters that he had made a conclusion about possible guilt or incompetence, rather than blaming the system.

Then it was the turn of his own legal team. They tried to question whether he had been properly told what his witness duties were.

It will be up to the inquiry chair to draw some conclusions from all he has heard.

We're going to be pausing our coverage of the Post Office inquiry until it resumes next week. Thank you for joining us.

Peter Ruddick
Business reporter, reporting from inquiry

On the final morning of four days of detailed testimony, we have had one of the most important moments of the inquiry so far.

Horizon architect Gareth Jenkins has made his defence clear. That he didn't understand his expert witness duties to the court, that he did not knowingly present one part of the story and that he was not aware of the scale of problems the IT system was facing.

With Seema Misra and her husband on one side of her, Flora Page tried to pull that defence apart.

Document after document seems to suggest Jenkins may have been aware of Horizon issues and remote access.

An email after the airing of an Inside Out programme featuring Seema Misra was also shown to the inquiry.

Gareth Jenkins' reaction? "I was pleased Fujitsu wasn't mentioned," he said.

A damning morning? Perhaps, but the witness is still insistent: this was ignorance, not maliciousness.

Emma Simpson
Business correspondent

Image source, PA Media

The questions got tougher for Gareth Jenkins yesterday, who at one point told Sir Wyn Williams, the Inquiry Chair, that he just wanted this over with.

When asked to explain the decisions he made in the case of Seema Misra, he said he either hadn’t really understood what he was being asked to do, or couldn’t explain it, and that with hindsight he would’ve done things differently.

He said he wasn’t expecting every word he wrote in an internal document to be “picked apart in the way it is now”.

Was this computer expert out of his depth or trying to distance himself from any wrongdoing?

Williams will be the judge of that.

Today it’s the turn of the barristers for the sub-postmasters to give him a grilling.

Garerth Jenkins is back at Aldwych House for his fourth and final day of giving evidence to the Post Office inquiry.

As a reminder, the former Fujitsu engineer helped design the Horizon software, which is at the heart of the Post Office scandal.

He’s currently under investigation by the Metropolitan Police on suspicion of perjury and perverting the course of justice. No criminal charges have been brought.

The software expert told the inquiry on Thursday that he felt pressurised by the Post Office over evidence he gave in the 2010 prosecution of sub-postmistress Seema Misra.

He said the Post Office "clearly" wanted him to say that "everything was perfect, and I don't think I actually said that".

However, in an email discussing the case at the time, he said Misra had "jumped on the bandwagon" in blaming Horizon for shortfalls in accounts.

Barristers representing Misra and other sub-postmasters will be grilling Jenkins today as he gives evidence for the last day.

This is a stream-only page. You can follow the latest in the inquiry by clicking the 'Watch live' button above.

You can read more about Gareth Jenkins here.

Ben King
Business reporter, at the inquiry

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.

Ben King
Business reporter, at the inquiry

At the Horizon Inquiry, the former Fujitsu engineer Gareth Jenkins was asked about an email from 2010, where he described a case of a large shortfall as “another example of postmasters trying to get away with, 'Horizon has taken my money'".

Jenkins was asked if he truly believed this was what was happening.

“I cannot remember what I believed,” he replied, and when pressed said: “I just wasn’t thinking things through properly.”

He was later shown another email where he suggested that Seema Misra, the sub-postmistress from West Byfleet, Surrey, who was jailed whilst pregnant in 2010, had read an article in Computer Weekly “indicating that Horizon was unreliable and decided to jump on the bandwagon".

He apologised for “totally inappropriate wording” which he suggested may have originated from someone else.

A key expert in a number of Post Office prosecutions from the mid-2000s to 2013, Jenkins has consistently argued that he believed Horizon was working properly and told the inquiry that the bugs he knew about at the time were not relevant to Misra’s case.

Asked if he saw his role “as a Fujitsu man” was to prove that Misra had jumped on a bandwagon, he replied: “I didn’t think the problem was with Horizon, I thought there were other reasons as to what had happened.”

Emma Simpson
Business correspondent

Gareth Jenkins is now half-way through his evidence – the longest run of questions any witness in this inquiry has faced in one go.

There’s been a lot of ground to cover given his role as one of the architects of the Horizon IT system.

But the most crucial area for the inquiry was his role as an expert witness for the Post Office in a number of criminal and civil cases.

We finished yesterday hearing how the Post Office demanded changes to a “damaging” draft witness statement Mr Jenkins had written for the case against sub-postmaster Noel Thomas.

“Did you see it as appropriate to haggle with the prosecutor over the content of your witness statement?” Jason Beer, Counsel for the Inquiry, asked.

“I didn’t see it as inappropriate at the time, but I clearly see now that it was” replied Mr Jenkins.

Mr Beer said he would be moving on to the case of Seema Misra this morning.

She was sent to prison, whilst pregnant after being found guilty of theft and false accounting. Gareth Jenkins gave evidence at her trial.

We’re back again at the Post Office inquiry, which is hearing evidence from former Fujitsu engineer Gareth Jenkins for a third day.

Jenkins helped design the Horizon software, which is at the heart of the Post Office scandal.

He’s currently under investigation by the Metropolitan Police on suspicion of perjury and perverting the course of justice. No criminal charges have been brought.

Jenkins has admitted to the inquiry that it was "inappropriate" for him to modify a draft witness statement - removing a reference to weaknesses in the Horizon system at the request of the Post Office.

His evidence about the Horizon system was used in the prosecutions of subpostmasters, including Seema Misra - who was wrongfully given a 15-month prison sentence in November 2010 while eight weeks pregnant.

This is a stream-only page. You can follow the latest in the inquiry by clicking the 'Watch live' button at the top of the page.

You can read more about Gareth Jenkins here.