Paula Vennells was done the other week, the Post Office Inquiry is now questioning associates and others - thread 3

[nauticant]

A continuation of this thread:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5081592-paula-vennels-being-questioned-at-the-post-office-inquiry-followed-by-others-thread-2

When the hearings are going on, live-streaming can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/@postofficehorizonitinquiry947/featured

All of the previous hearings can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/@postofficehorizonitinquiry947/videos

Jason is evidently!

Also, in the proceedings, GJ is represented by Clair Dobbin:

3rblaw.com/barrister/clair-dobbin-kc/

GJ didn't understand the difference between prosecutions for crimes and civil proceedings for recovering money. It seems not just re the PO but at all. Crumbs.

GJ didn't understand the difference between prosecutions for crimes and civil proceedings for recovering money.

For a techy guy and not a lawyer, there is no reason why he should have been. The problem arose when he was put up as an expert witness. It should have been explained to him at that point.

I think GJ is a techy with very limited interest or curiosity about the bigger picture. But many IT engineers are just like this

Surely though, if they're coming in to a grilling like this, they'd have some interest around their own involvement?

Meant to say outside their own involvement!

Oh sure. I'm thinking about how it was at the time - PO staff would assign him questions to answer or to give his thoughts on the IT system - but I don't (at the moment at least) get the sense that he was a part of the PO's scheme to cover up Horizon. He just answered the questions about "his" system in a fairly straight forward way. The management then chose to put their own spin and filter his answers.

The big issue for me is his total lack of independence as an "expert" witness - he was obviously biased towards Horizon

This is the Anne Chambers "Afterthoughts" document mentioned by GJ:

https://www.postofficehorizoninquiry.org.uk/file/1945/download?token=LF9YC0Bl

It's an interesting read of what the experience was like as a technical person to be bounced into legal proceedings.

Almost full on this thread x really interesting discussions as always. Have it on on the background but can’t always concentrate fully

I can't watch the live feed but I am following Nick Wallis' live tweets. The impression I get is of someone who had no idea of the duties of an expert witness and had been misled by Post Office's in-house lawyers. Someone who was insufficiently curious about matters and too ready to blame user error (a common failing in software engineers in my experience). Someone who wants to defend the system with which he was involved. Someone who perhaps wasn't as senior as Post Office contended. And someone who was aware of the need to defend his employer.

Maybe he committed perjury - that isn't clear. But he should never have been advanced as an expert witness. Even if he had been made aware of the responsibilities of an expert witness, it would have been inappropriate as he was a Fujitsu employee, not an independent expert.

In following his evidence and the fact that he is now exposed to criminal prosecution, I did wonder about the duty of care owed to him as an employee, when his employer seemed to play a part in the mess he ended up in.

Although I don't know how any limitation period would work in terms of GJ clamiing against Fijitsu.

@nauticant Anne Chambers after thoughts are very interesting.

There are plenty of people who believe that Anne Chambers should be strung up but I think they completely misunderstand the invidious position she was put in. In a way, the "Afterthoughts" document has a kind of whistle-blowing character.

If you're in the mood, have a look at the testimony she gave to the Inquiry. That's also really interesting.

At the moment the only claim he may have would be for legal costs he is incurring. It wouldn't surprise me to find that Fujitsu are covering his legal fees, at least for this inquiry.

He's a Core Participant so the costs, to some degree, might be borne by the Inquiry.

Did PO/Fujitsu give him the "Distinguished Engineer" title to make him sound more senior and difficult to challenge than "Gareth from IT"? I also wonder where the practice of calling him "Dr Jenkins" originated.

Bang on.

He didn't take much notice of anything, did he? Skim-read documents etc. He knew, not that he appeared to care, that people were being prosecuted and could be imprisoned, but was so effing casual.

He certainly seems to have been incurious/naive to a remarkable degree

He comes across as an honest but very naive guy who genuinely thought his duty only extended to telling the truth, not the whole truth. He was asked narrow questions and he stuck to the brief. I think PO must have been delighted to find such a witness. He was exploited by them and I have to admit to feeling slightly sorry for him.

I think a lot of it may have to do with the way he came into being a witness. He was not trained for this role and in reality it was a huge extra job that was dumped on him at short notice with no apparent time budget to do it alongside his "real" job.

I think the way it was put to him was that he needed to answer some specific questions from the legal team. And that is exactly what he did - answered the precise questions but didn't go beyond them.

Unlike some of the other professional expert witnesses we have seen in the inquiry - I don't think that he got any proper training as to what was required and indeed the lawyers who should have laid out expectations were among those pressuring him to change his testimony to benefit the PO

What was required was for him to be handled by legal counsel in Fujitsu or appointed by Fujitsu who could hold his hand and guide him. It seems that there were Fujitsu counsel around but that they kept their distance. The fact that he was being controlled by counsel working for Post Office who had their own agenda and had didn't have the interests of Fujitsu, and certain not those of Jenkins, at heart was a major part of how this part of the scandal happened.

The fact that Gareth Jenkins was asking Jarnail (I don't know how to open a word document) Singh for guidance on being an expert witness shows the extent of the problem.

But agree that the Fujitsu legal team were terribly passive and the PO took total advantage by contacting him directly and cutting out Fujitsu management and legal team.

A bit of a dry day today but at the end of proceedings Beer said he'd be going into the Seema Misra case tomorrow. That should provide a real world context of what Jenkins was saying and what the real world impacts were.

Tomorrow starts at 10.05.