'Architect of Horizon system' apologises over past comments

FORMER Fujitsu engineer Gareth Jenkins on Thursday (27) apologised for emails in which he accused Post Office IT scandal victim Seema Misra of “jumping on the bandwagon” in questioning the reliability of Horizon system, a day after he admitted that he knew that the computer system could be accessed remotely.

Jenkins was giving evidence for a third day to the ongoing public inquiry when he 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, who is often referred to as the architect of the faulty Horizon IT system, was an expert witness for the Post Office at her trial.

He told the inquiry that her prosecution by Post Office management had been “fairly chaotic”, agreeing that he felt “uncomfortable” and put under pressure by Post Office management over the case.

The inquiry was shown an email dated March 1 2010 from Jenkins to a Post Office executive in which he wrote that Misra had “decided to jump on the bandwagon” to blame Horizon in her court case.

Jenkins told the inquiry, “It was totally inappropriate on my part and I apologise.”

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.”

This comes a day after Jenkin stated that he knew the computer system could in theory be accessed remotely by its staff for nearly two decades before realising it was happening in practice.

Jenkins told the inquiry he knew that remote access to the Horizon IT system by Fujitsu staff was technically possible from about 2000, shortly after its introduction across branches, but said he believed at the time it was “controlled, recorded and visible” to post office operators. He did not realise it was being used in practice until 2018.

Jason Beer KC, counsel to the inquiry, asked Jenkins when he first became aware that staff at the support service centre in Fujitsu’s offices in Bracknell, Berkshire, were able to remotely access branch accounts and insert transactions.

“I always knew it was theoretically possible … until 2018 I did not realise [they] were actually doing it,” Jenkins replied, adding that he understood any interventions were not done “very frequently”.

Beer asked, “If they were doing it in the hours of business when a sub-postmaster was logged on, their work might be attributed to him or her?”

“I accept that, yes,” Jenkins replied.

Earlier on Tuesday (25), his first day of giving evidence, Jenkins admitted he changed crucial expert court testimony at the request of the Post Office during wrongful prosecutions of branch operators.

Jenkins was questioned about changes made to his draft witness statement in the criminal prosecution of the post office operator Noel Thomas when a Post Office investigator had struck out words which Jenkins had written about the system failures being “normal occurrences”.

Jenkins accepted that the Post Office had “applied pressure” on him and was asked whether he thought it appropriate his language was “haggled over” and replied he was “happy with the wording we ended up with”.