Paula Vennells is history but now at the Post Office Inquiry is Fujitsu distinguished engineer Gareth Jenkins - thread 4

[nauticant]

A continuation of this thread:

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5094266-paula-vennells-was-done-the-other-week-the-post-office-inquiry-is-now-questioning-associates-and-others-thread-3

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

Even more foolishly, GJ then seeks to justify Ward's nobbling and avoids criticising what Ward did. Maybe he thinks that Ward getting into trouble will mean more trouble for GJ. If that's right, then his common sense is severely lacking.

I feel rather less sympathetic for him today than I did yesterday. Some of the things he is trying to say don't add up. I suspect his continued belief in the robustness of Horizon (and hence the guilt of the subpostmasters) is driven by an unwillingness to admit to anyone, perhaps not even himself, that he knowingly helped to convict innocent people by giving incomplete evidence.

He's gone from the "I don't understand any of this legal stuff" of yesterday to pseudo-lawyerly quibbling today to defend the indefensible and it looks bloody awful.

I also feel much less inclined to make allowances for him today. He's floundering and the line 'I accept that now but I had not thought about it at the time/can't remember why I did that ' is wearing rather thin and simply doesn't explain the glaring discrepancies Mr Beer is putting to him.

Looking at this "negotiation" of wording to create a perjured witness statement, I wonder whether there's scope for a conspiracy charge in relation to this cooperation between GJ and Ward.

I had a visit from my housing association income officer on Monday . Insisting we owe rent when we dont.

Get a load of this.

"OneSanctuary SAP is the name of a multi-million pound software system brought in by Sanctuary in 2016, designed for use by all areas of the business. It has been an unmitigated failure, and is a huge drawback of working for this company.
The issues caused by SAP are staggering and difficult to keep track of. Because SHA tried to implement SAP in a cost effective manner, they ended up vastly under-investing in critical elements. There is no tailoring of the generically presented system ('vanilla SAP'), which is an issue as social housing is a unique environment from a service delivery and CRM perspective, whereas vanilla SAP is more geared towards providing a solution for manufacturing industries. Thus, the system uses corporate nonsensical buzzwords and methods of handling accounts which absolutely do not reflect industry practice.
Here are just some examples of the more specific issues faced by staff:
No rent statements have been issued since it was implemented in August 2016, and if a resident insists on a rent statement it has to be prepared manually in a spreadsheet
The rent and calculations for accounts are hard to use, and often completely wrong. Mostly because the system was never designed to understand housing benefit payments, and this has a very convoluted workaround which a computer cannot make sense of.
SAP cannot interface with Local Authorities Housing benefit systems so payments are missed, lost or misattributed
Direct debits do not work reliably, and for a long time following the implementation did not work at all. Front line staff are now preferring standing order.
The front end system of SAP requires far more testing and money spent on it. Each customer account is a total mess of information, with no discernible way to separate notes left between differing departments, with information left by staff often going into the wrong account entirely. This needs looking at as from a compliance (DPA) point of view the breaches are serious
From a usability point of view, the view of a customers account within SAP CIC does not display appropriate information to the user (as stated before this is likely because the system was never designed to be used by a HA) and the user often has to go trawling around back end systems to find obviously relevant data (e.g tenancy start date, account balance, property type etc). This is a seemingly minor but considerable waste of resources"

And just like Horizon and the PO they will not admit that anything is wrong.

He stood at my door on Monday and pretended to look bewildered when i told him i knew all about their SAP. He also gaslighted me when i reminded him that this harassment has been going on for seven years and we have had previous letters demanding rent we dont owe and he had the gall to tell me that they were just general rent increase letters I can read. i know what they are and have kept them all. The first ones are tucked inside my 2017 diary with all the notes about their lies and obfuscation when all this started which is still going on.

Out all day, will have to catch up this evening. Thanks for time 'markers'; I'll have to try and use the speedy rerun.

Ah, GJ's pre-knowledge of Mr Beer's revelation this morning is explained. It sounds like that document was only disclosed to GJ last night and Sir Wyn therefore gave him leave to speak to his solicitor.

It gets more and more removed from expertise and an in-depth knowledge of Horizon. It was his ‘understanding’ of the system. It appears to me a bit ‘through a glass darkly’. Mr Beer asks, on one point, if that ‘understanding’ was gained from general chat. GJ: probably, yes. He knew there were things he did not know.

So, even all the things about how he all about relevance and facts don’t seem to be on solid ground either.

Mind you, he totally lost me with the bs about how he would most certainly have done things very differently if he had only received guidance about his duties and obligations. Then, oops, it was shown he had received the guidance.

It is all rather depressing. All the people who fell in with these dodgy stitch ups. From top to bottom.

But then again, I suppose there has been one or two decent witnesses. Well one, anyway.

Just want to thank you all for another thread. I read this through the day before watching in evening and know what to "look forward" to. (In "" on the basis that that phrasing makes it sound like I get joy from it, I don't the whole thing appalling but I couldn't think how else to word it!)

GJ definitely seems out of his depth, tunnel visioned and seems to tie himself up in knots with limited help from the ever wonderful Mr Beer

<lurks>

I think there is scope for a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice charge for those two and, indeed, for many more of those we have seen. In my view there should be criminal charges but I hope it isn't just the little guys. On what we have seen, I think it may be possible to sustain charges against Vennells, Perkins, van den Bogerd, Singh and plenty of others - senior executives, investigators (not really the right job title for them - they didn't investigate), lawyers (both in-house and external) and so on.

Can I ask a quick question @nauticant and @prh47bridge ?

The lawyers involved in the miscarriages, from in-house lawyers, Womble Bond Pearce and Cartwright King - there has been a lot of questions about their legal duties as solicitors/barristers.

From my layman's perspective it doesn't look like there is enough to bring criminal charges.
But, is there some sort of review to either have some of them struck off/disbarred?
Or is there some sort of authority body who will look into whether they have upheld thier legal duties as solicitirs/barristers?

Is this likely?

I too feel much more conflicted about GJ at the end of today's evidence. Yesterday I was inclining to the 'desperately naive, tunnel-visioned and so wrapped up in his tiny world of tech that he didn't see what he was saying' end of things.

Today I’m not sure. I didn’t hear the whole day (I'll catch up in a bit) but did listen up to about an hour after lunch, and there were some utterly woeful passages. 'I didn't know what 'without prejudice' meant but someone told me to write that in' - what? An adult man, a university graduate ('Distinguished Engineer', no less) working in a high-level professional job, was so utterly incurious and clueless that never for one moment did he even wonder about any of what they were asking him to do?

And the awful exchanges around the 'two paragraphs'. He cannot, cannot, surely, be serious. My internet cut out just as Sir Wyn was yet again making his second timely intervention so I need to listen from there.

For some reason I keep thinking of the famous Jeremy Paxman question, 'Why is this lying bastard lying to me?' Did GJ never, ever wonder whether Fujitsu or the PO - or indeed he himself - were, you know, the baddies?

I wonder if having worked for the same employer for nigh on 50 years it becomes impossible for someone who seems to have a very black and white approach to life to criticise them or recognise their failings in any way. Fujitsu is all he has ever known since 1973. His salary, his pension, everything is probably tied up with them. Are they funding his legal advice do we know?

The Solicitors Regulation Authority has more than 20 live investigations into solicitors and law firms who worked on behalf of Post Office (including during the period when it was still part of Royal Mail). Issues they are looking at include:

1. solicitors' management and supervision of cases; and the strategy and conduct of prosecutions and of litigation (including group litigation - Mr Bates Vs The Post Office)
2. duties relating to expert witnesses
3. disclosure obligations and improper application of privilege to protect communications from disclosure
4. issues relating to the operation of the Post Office Complaint Review and Mediation Scheme, including overcharging of claimants, use of non-disclosure-agreements and labelling of correspondence.

The Bar Standards Board, which deals with barristers, hasn't said as much about what it is doing, but says some matters have already been referred for investigation and more may follow.

In both cases it is unlikely any action will be taken until after the inquiry ends.

When a software engineer (which is essentially what he is) spends their entire career with one employer, that makes me wonder about them. They haven't been exposed to different experiences, approaches and standards that may help them to develop. They may have limited exposure to different perspectives, cultures and work environments. They may be essentially captured by their employer so that they can't see when things are going wrong or their employer is misbehaving.

When a software engineer (which is essentially what he is) spends their entire career with one employer, that makes me wonder about them

You’re right, of course, @prh47bridge - I saw today on Twitter that not only did GJ work for ICL/Fujitsu right from graduation in 1973, he continued to work for them on a consultancy basis after retiring in 2015.

In fact he stopped only in 2022. Almost 50 years.

Sorry @SparksFlyUpward, you just said that!

I contacted the Inquiry today to ask about attendance as a member of the public. They said that although they have set windows when you register a week or more in advance, they can "usually" fit people in if they make a request to attend a session coming up. It might be that it would be possible to get to go along on Friday if a request is made first thing tomorrow. Much as I'd like to go, Friday wouldn't work for me.

Obviously that would mean being about to get to Aldwych for about 9am and being able to have Friday free at very little notice.

Thank you so much @prh47bridge

That's very encouraging that there are investigations into the solicitors and barristers involved.

I don't know if it's allowed on a new thread but I've just watched Elaine cottam from nov.... Oh my god, what the hell was that?!

That might have been the most bizarre appearance of any witness. I was left wondering whether she might be cognitively impaired.

I've watched a lot of it and no one compares to her.... She appeared to have something wrong with her but whether that was the case 20 years ago I don't know. Or she's just immensely and terrifyingly thick and should never have been in such a senior role.... Its the type of thing you'd have to see to believe. God bless Jason beers restraint though I did enjoy his '... Your point?....... Yes. And your point?.....'

Gareth Jenkins Day 2: the god complex unravels – Post Office Scandal