Zoe Conway
Employment correspondent, reporting from the inquiry

The stakes couldn’t have been higher. It was 2006 and sub-postmaster Noel Thomas’s case was coming up in a Crown Court. His legal team argued the Horizon computer system was to blame for the shortfall in his branch accounts.

Gareth Jenkins was asked to give his expert opinion to the court. In a witness statement he said that "system failure" could be to blame.

But the statement was re-written twice at the request of Graham Ward, an investigator at the Post Office. He said the phrase "system failure" had go as it suggested problems with the Horizon computer system were normal, could cause the Post Office embarrassment in court, and could support the sub-postmaster’s claim that the system was to blame for the losses.

Today at the inquiry Gareth Jenkins was asked whether he thought it was appropriate that his language was "haggled over".

He said that at the time he thought it was appropriate because the Post Office wanted to use less emotive language.

Noel Thomas was convicted of false accounting. He was sentenced to nine months in prison.

The day's questioning of Gareth Jenkins is over - with the hearing finishing a bit earlier than the published time.

Counsel for the Inquiry Jason Beer KC says he can finish his questions for Jenkins on Thursday - with chairman Sir Wyn Williams saying they will resume at 09:45 in the morning.

We'll bring you our correspondent's analysis of the evidence from today in a short while.

The inquiry is back from its lunchtime pit-stop and former Fujitsu engineer Gareth Jenkins is back in the witness chair.

It's the second day of his evidence to the inquiry into the Post Office scandal - where hundreds of staff were wrongly convicted of crimes due to flaws in the Horizon IT system his then-employer designed.

Evidence today has been focused on his role as an expert witness in the private prosecutions brought by Post Office Limited.

You can stream the afternoon session by hitting Watch live in the banner at the top of this page.

Emma Simpson
Business correspondent, reporting from the inquiry

We’ve dived into a lot of technical evidence this morning.

One key question - what did Gareth Jenkins, who played a key role in designing the Horizon IT system, know about remote access?

This was the ability of some Fujitsu staff to secretly alter branch accounts. He says he always knew remote access was theoretically possible, but it didn’t often happen. And when it did, it left a trace. That wasn’t correct. “I now understand it wasn’t always done in the way I thought it was done,” he told the Inquiry.

Ian Henderson, one of the independent investigators from Second Sight, has given evidence that Mr Jenkins told him in 2012 that sub-postmasters’ accounts could be changed without their knowledge. He denied this.

Jenkins said he only found out about the ability of staff to “hijack” branch users' IDs when he saw the evidence of Fujitsu whistle-blower Richard Roll in the High Court battle in 2018.

Asked about what he did to find out the answers on remote access, Jenkins said he had a lot of “informal chats” and relied on what he thought he knew.

Proceedings at the Post Office inquiry have taken a break for lunch. We'll be back streaming Gareth Jenkins' evidence live from 13:35 BST.

Azadeh Moshiri
Reporting from outside the inquiry

Seema Misra, one of the sub-postmistresses wrongly convicted in the Post Office scandal, had just wrapped-up an interview with me this morning, when this happened:

Just as we’d stopped broadcasting, Gareth Jenkins walked in through the inquiry doors. Unbeknownst to Misra, the man who had acted as an expert witness in her wrongful prosecution was right behind her.

Moments beforehand she told me she’d read his apology but it “didn’t make sense” to her.

She asked: “What is he apologising for?”

Misra said how difficult it is for her to come to the inquiry and relive one of the darkest periods of her life. She was sent to prison when she was eight weeks pregnant and gave birth to her second son while wearing an electronic tag.

Despite that, she comes here because she wants answers. Yet, mere inches away from him, Misra still doesn’t feel she’s getting the answers she’s looking for.

Emma Simpson
Business correspondent, reporting from the inquiry

Image source, PA Media

It’s day two of questions for Gareth Jenkins, the former Fujitsu engineer and one of the architects of the flawed Horizon IT system.

Today we’re going to be hearing more about his role as an expert witness, including the case of Seema Misra. She was wrongfully convicted and sent to prison whilst pregnant.

This was a case the Post Office needed to win. She had pleaded not guilty resulting in a full trial.

He should have disclosed he knew of a bug affecting other branch accounts when he gave evidence in court.

In his witness statement released yesterday Mr Jenkins said he was “truly sorry” about her plight. But he insisted he didn’t lie in his evidence. He blamed the Post Office and their lawyers for not adequately explaining his duties for this crucial role.

In several cases, they’d attempted to “put words in my mouth’”. He described himself as a “technician”, but his evidence was pivotal in helping the Post Office defend the flawed Horizon software.

The evidence he’s put before the inquiry is being tested now.

Good morning and welcome back to our live coverage of the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry.

Today we'll be hearing the second day of evidence from former Fujitsu engineer Gareth Jenkins (you can read a summary of his session yesterday in the posts below).

We won't be providing regular text updates on this page but you can follow the inquiry live from 10:05 BST by pressing the Watch live button above.

That's the end of the first of four days of evidence from former Fujitsu engineer Gareth Jenkins.

He will face many more questions at the Post Office inquiry before the week is up. Here is what we've learned in the last few hours:

• Jenkins repeatedly insisted he did not understand he was classed as an 'expert witness' in court, and therefore potentially expected to reveal more of what he knew about Horizon errors

• He accepted he saw documents which set out the legal obligations of an expert witness - but said he didn't know they applied to him
• Jenkins was also asked about being advised to change his evidence by Post Office lawyers, which he said he did not find unusual at the time

• He said he couldn't recall being instructed to disclose known Horizon bugs to Seema Misra's lawyers, despite the Post Office lawyer who prosecuted that case insisting he was told
• Another Fujitsu engineer warned in 2006 that Horizon's performance was "plainly inadequate" and they were "fobbing postmasters off"

You can read more on this story here. Thanks for joining us. We'll be back tomorrow from 10:05 BST for the second day of Jenkins' evidence.

The inquiry is shown an email from another Fujitsu engineer, Anne Chambers - we heard earlier she reluctantly testified in court for the Post Office in the Lee Castleton case.

In the June 2006 email, she described Horizon's performance as ranging from "slow to horrifically slow" and warned that "the impact on postmasters is horrible".

She continued: "I'm not at all happy about fobbing postmasters off and telling them that the system is working as designed when it is plainly inadequate for the job."

Chambers also expressed anger that it had "taken six months" for the Post Office to even begin considering whether it would pay for upgrades.

Asked if he agreed with that assessment, Jenkins tells the inquiry: "I would have to take Anne's word on that" because he didn't deal with branch managers directly.

Asked if the requested improvements were made, he replies: "I honestly can't remember."

Jenkins effectively had two roles the inquiry is interested in - first, as a witness in court, and second, as an engineer.

In the final part of today's evidence we're hearing more about the latter. Jenkins is being asked about bugs which Fujitsu knew about from 1999 onwards.

On one occasion, Beer puts it to Jenkins that when an error was found during test conditions of the software, the solution that engineers came up with was "to turn it off and on again".

Jenkins says: "Yes, but I think we did more than that.".

Was this an honest misunderstanding or a cover-up?published at 16:04 British Summer Time 25 June

16:04 BST 25 June

Peter Ruddick
Business reporter, at the inquiry

We have been keenly awaiting Gareth Jenkins' appearance because so many people in this scandal have claimed he was the man "in the know".

However, I am struck that time and again today his defence has been that he was never responsible for the system as a whole.

From Horizon issues to legal proceedings, Jenkins says he was only asked to get involved on a bug by bug, branch by branch, case by case basis.

At one point, Jason Beer KC powerfully referenced the oath witnesses that have to be taken in court. Did Gareth Jenkins tell "the truth", but not "the whole truth"?

We got a denial then but we keep coming back to this general topic. Was this narrow, partial focus an honest misunderstanding or was there an ulterior motive to cover things up?

We're now moving on to questions about bugs, errors and defects discovered in the Horizon programme.

The inquiry is shown an email from 2001 where Jenkins said some bugs could be "lived with" and "some were fixed" at a later date.

Next, an email is shown from 2005 in which Jenkins was asked for help after a Horizon error was identified.

It read: "Needless to say this problem(s) cannot be reproduced at will."

Beer puts it to him that this was an instance of Fujitsu discovering a bug it didn't understand, but Jenkins says he doesn't think they ever found evidence it was a major issue.

The lawyer then asks Jenkins for some technical explanation on bugs, which is met with laughter in the room when it becomes clear Beer perhaps knows about the law more than he does computers.

Image source, POST OFFICE HORIZON IT INQUIRY

We're now getting into the details of one of the most controversial episodes in Jenkins's time at Fujitsu - the prosecution of Seema Misra.

The inquiry is shown written evidence from barrister Warwick Tatford, who acted for the Post Office in the trial of wrongly convicted sub-postmaster Seema Misra.

Tatford wrote that he told Jenkins he was "under a duty to provide a full disclosure" of known Horizon errors and bugs to Misra's lawyers at the time of that case.

Jenkins now says he has "no recollection of such a discussion", adding: "I don't believe it would have occurred."

Sean Seddon
Reporting from the inquiry

We've heard a lot about what is expected of an "expert witness" in court, during today's evidence.

Usually in court, people are called as witnesses because they saw something happen or might have some limited information important to a case.

An expert witness is called because they have a deep knowledge of their subject and, as such, they have some extra duties which go beyond the basics.

The CPS defines expert witnesses as having a duty to "help the court to achieve the overriding objective by giving opinion which is objective and unbiased".

That duty is "owed to the court" - in other words, overrides any sort of loyalties to any side in a court case, even the one which puts them forward.

The CPS adds that expert witnesses are obliged "to disclose to the party instructing them anything (of which the expert is aware) that might reasonably be thought capable of undermining the expert’s opinion or detracting from their credibility or impartiality".

Jenkins' defence today is that he didn't understand he was considered an expert witness, and therefore didn't understand he would have been legally obligated to volunteer a full picture of Horizon's faults.

Beer is now asking if it ever occurred to Jenkins that the Post Office was "tweaking" his evidence for their own purposes.

The BBC previously revealed how Jenkins was advised by a Post Office lawyer to rephrase parts of a report on the Horizon IT system to avoid a "damaging concession".

Jenkins says he was aware of the changes but thought it was just to "make them more readable".

Beer replies: "Are you really saying... what happened was a tidying up exercise?"

Jenkins repeats that he didn't feel at the time the changes to his wording fundamentally altered the substances.

"At the time I didn't see it as being anything strange or unusual," he adds.

He goes on to say he resisted changes on some occasions which made him "uncomfortable".

Image source, POST OFFICE HORIZON IT INQUIRY

The inquiry is shown a document annotated by Jenkins, from 2013, relating to a case against sub-postmistress Kim Wylie.

That document contained a lengthy declaration setting out the legal obligations on being an expert witness.

Underneath it, Jenkins wrote: "Standard stuff. No comment required."

He clarifies to the inquiry lawyer that he meant "I had seen similar stuff before... I didn't think it (those obligations) applied to me, wrongly".

Asked if he thought his role as a witness was "narrow" - in other words, to comment on limited documents or events - he says he did.

Jenkins adds: "No one told me I needed to do more than that."

The inquiry is back after lunch and Jenkins is being pressed further on what he understood his responsibilities to be as an "expert witness".

Jenkins has suggested this morning he didn't understand he was being put forward as an expert witness - and as such, didn't appreciate the serious legal obligations expert witnesses have when giving evidence in court.

They include being independent and working to help the court, not the prosecution or defence.

Jenkins is shown a document setting out the responsibilities of an expert witness and accepts he would have read it at the time.

But he says its significance would not have struck a chord with him because he didn't understand he was viewed as an expert witness.

Inquiry counsel Jason Beer asks if it would have occurred to him then that he may have had extra responsibilities.

"It maybe should have done but it didn't," Jenkins replies.

A short time ago, we heard Jenkins tell the inquiry that the Post Office and its lawyers "put words into my mouth", in some cases where he was called on to give expert evidence.

He's asked why his analysis was requested so often if he was not the "chief architect" of Horizon.

"I don't know, is the simple answer," he says.

Jenkins says it was probably because he had a good "overall knowledge" of Horizon due to his years of working on it, but says it wasn't formally part of his job, despite it taking up considerable time.

Did he feel under pressure from the Post Office or lawyers to give evidence which defended the Horizon system in cases which could have revealed bugs and errors?

Jenkins replies: "There were certainly cases where they tried to put words into my mouth I didn't want to say."

The inquiry's lawyers have waited a long time to get Gareth Jenkins in front of them and he's been subjected to hours of tough questioning. Here are the main's points from the day so far:

• Jenkins defended the Horizon system and maintains he believes it was robust - but accepted he "should have been doing more research" about errors, in hindsight
• He rejected the suggestion he was the Horizon system's "chief architect", though accepted he knew it inside out
• Jenkins says he felt under pressure from the Post Office to give evidence in court cases and felt they sometimes were trying to "put words into my mouth"
• He said he was never made aware about his duties as an expert witness in court
• In his written statement, Jenkins apologised to former sub-postmistress Seema Misra, who was wrongly jailed in part because of his evidence, saying what happened to her was "tragic"

We'll be hearing more questioning from 14:00 BST.