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Jason Beer KC has paused his questioning of former Fujitsu engineer Gareth Jenkins. 

The man described as the "IT architect" of the Horizon system spent much of the day saying he was not responsible for the system as a whole.

Instead, he said he only had some oversight on a bug by bug, branch by branch, case by case basis.

The inquiry resumes at 10.05am tomorrow. 

Scroll back through this blog to see how the day's events unfolded. 

The inquiry is shown an email from former senior Fujitsu engineer Anne Chambers. 

It was sent to John Burton who was Gareth Jenkins' direct line manager and programme manager at the company.

In the email from 1 June 2006, she said she was "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". 

Jason Beer KC asks Mr Jenkins if postmasters were being "fobbed off". 

"I have to take Anne's word for that. I didn't have a direct contact with postmasters," he replies. 

He goes on to say the Horizon system was "clearly causing problems" for them, but adds that the Post Office had been warned there could be "performance implications" if they didn't make proposed changes. 

Jason Beer KC is getting right into the technicalities here - looking at data tree build failure. 

For the Layman - it's one of the issues that contributed to sub-postmasters seeing incorrect till balances in their Post Office branches. 

One such error occurred, but not on the "live estate" (i.e. not in 'real world', rather in test conditions) and was investigated by developers, including Gareth Jenkins. 

We see a report by Fujitsu, which states that, after a week of looking into the problem, it was decided that "nothing more can be done".

Mr Beer says the developer who wrote the report seems to suggest that "in any event, a solution is to turn the machine off and on again". 

"Yes," Mr Jenkins says, but adds "I think we did actually do more than just that [when investigating]".

"I don't believe we ever saw any sign of a problem like this on the live estate," he says. 

Jason Beer KC turns to a separate topic - that of bugs, errors or defects with the Horizon system. 

He asks Gareth Jenkins, described as the "IT architect" of the system, about whether some flaws were ignored because Fujitsu were "happy to live with" them. 

"I was aware that things had not been always thoroughly investigated, but I did not believe that such things had actually caused a direct impact on the [Post Office] branch accounts at the time," he replies. 

He's asked how he was satisfied that the accounts were unaffected. 

"There were a number of cases in the early 2000s where there were unexpected events occurring and in those cases... [they were] mainly happening out of hours and therefore there wouldn't have been anyone doing anything at the branch at the time - and therefore I saw the [events] as being benign."

The inquiry is then shown an email, sent by Mr Jenkins to Brian Orzel, who was part of the Horizon development team. 

In it, Mr Jenkins asks for help to downgrade Horizon issues (labelled A, B, C etc based on severity) from Bs and Cs to Ds - given it was his belief that many of the issues "can be lived with".

We then see a response from Mr Orzel, who disagrees with Mr Jenkins, saying he would want every single fault addressed with "no exceptions". 

"I would want them ALL fixed," the email reads. 

"Are you able to recall what happened with these bugs?" Mr Beer asks. 

"I think some were 'lived with' and some were fixed, but I can't remember which ones," Mr Jenkins replies. 

He's asked then if Mr Orzel's suggestion that all the bugs are fixed was carried out.

"I suspect not, but I can't actually remember all the details."

Gareth Jenkins is holding his stance that he has been truthful in all of his expert witness statements, and says he never denied there were problems in the Horizon system. 

Jason Beer KC asks him a range of quick fire questions, including: "If you concluded the underlying issue was a bug in Horizon would you have had any hesitation in saying so?"

"No," Mr Jenkins replied. 

Asked if he would be hesitant to ask for more information, Mr Jenkins takes a long pause. 

"What I was basically saying is I could see no sign of any problems. I never said there weren't any problems, all I was saying was that I had not seen any sign of any problems," he replies. 

He reiterates statements he has made throughout the day, saying he was not asked to look at specific cases and he had given a "general level statement of the general behaviour of Horizon". 

Gareth Jenkins, former Fujitsu engineer, continues to take questions from Jason Beer KC on his work as an expert witness in prosecutions against sub-postmasters.

As our last post outlined, Mr Jenkins denied a conversation between him and Warwick Tatford, allegedly outlining his responsibilities as an expert witness. 

"Had you been made aware of your full role as a prosecution expert witness in the legal sense, in respect of each of the Post Office's criminal prosecutions and the legal duties that that role entailed, how would you have sought to have done things differently?" Mr Beer asks him. 

"I think it would have required an awful lot more effort than was actually put into the various cases," Mr Jenkins replies. 

He notes that in 2018, he and a team "did quite a lot of analysis" into the Horizon system's data, but says it "did not occur to him at the time" as strange that the team had not done so during the prosecutions of dozens of sub-postmasters. 

Mr Beer says that is "quite striking". 

"Looking back at it now, I can understand that," the former Horizon engineer replies. 

The inquiry has resumed and Jason Beer KC asks Gareth Jenkins to look at a witness statement provided by Warwick Tatford. 

He was the prosecuting barrister in the trial of Seema Misra. 

In his statement, he said he had made it clear to Mr Jenkins that he was "under a duty to provide frank disclosure of Horizon problems to the defence expert instructed in that case".

Throughout today's session, Mr Jenkins has told the inquiry he did not know his duties as an expert witness. 

"I don't believe we had that sort of conversation," he tells Mr Beer. 

"I have no recollection of being asked to talk about other bugs... by Mr Tatford or anyone else," he adds. 

"I don't believe I would have occurred because if it had, then I would have done something about it."

He says he would have "behaved differently" if he had been briefed in the way Mr Tatford has described. 

He explains that if he had understood the brief, there would have been an "awful lot more effort" put into the various cases. 

The inquiry is taking a short break and will be back at around 3.15pm. 

After going through documents about his role as an expert witness, Gareth Jenkins is asked several quick-fire questions about telling the truth in his statements. 

He says he did answer questions about the Horizon system truthfully. 

Asked if he felt any need to volunteer information about other faults or system defects, which he hadn't been asked about, he said he "didn't think they were relevant in those particular cases".

He says it wasn't a "conscious decision" not to reveal the information.

"As far as I was concerned, the system was behaving correctly in the branch at the time and I had seen nothing to show that it wasn't," he adds. 

The inquiry is looking specifically at Seema Misra's case now and Jason Beer KC points out that Mr Jenkins did not disclose "all bugs, errors and defects" with Horizon in his witness statement for her trial. 

Mr Jenkins says he "didn't think" he needed to. 

"What I thought I needed to worry about were the ones that had occurred in that particular branch at the time in question," he adds. 

The inquiry is shown a document relating to the case of Post Office operator Kim Wylie and how he signed the expert declaration.

Mr Jenkins signed an "expert's declaration" at the bottom with the words: "Standard stuff. No comment required."

He has been saying all day that he didn't understand the requirements of him as an "expert witness" in legal cases.

Pressed on what "standard stuff" meant by Jason Beer KC, he says: "I'd seen that sort of stuff in other reports and I did not see any comment was required or that it applied to me."

Mr Beer asks if he understood he had an "overriding duty to the court" and Mr Jenkins says "yes".

"I'm not clear I would necessarily have considered all those points in detail when I wrote 'standard stuff' in the end," Mr Jenkins says.

"I'd seen expert declaration before and I doubt I would have gone through each of those points in detail and considering what they had said."

He says he thought the declaration was a "standard thing".