A barrister representing the Post Office in a High Court legal battle stated that if a tainted Fujitsu expert witness had been called, lawyers for subpostmaster claimants would have had a strong case in court. The barrister, Anthony de Garr Robinson KC, also mentioned that former Fujitsu IT chief architect Gareth Jenkins would have been “killed at trial” if he had testified.
De Garr Robinson was part of the Post Office’s legal team during the Group Litigation Order (GLO) in 2018/19, where hundreds of former subpostmasters sued the Post Office for blaming them for accounting errors caused by the Horizon computer system. Jenkins, who had been deemed an unreliable witness, was not called to give evidence in the case due to concerns about his credibility.
Despite his expertise on the Horizon system, Jenkins was not called to defend the Post Office in the GLO. In a witness statement to a public inquiry, De Garr Robinson described a meeting where they were advised against using Jenkins as a witness due to his misleading evidence in criminal prosecutions.
Jenkins is currently under investigation for potential perjury in relation to evidence given in subpostmaster trials. He will appear before the public inquiry to address these issues. The Post Office scandal, first uncovered by Computer Weekly in 2009, exposed the challenges faced by subpostmasters due to issues with the Horizon software.