That was the release documentation.
And he said multiple times that was based on “informal chats” and “informal conversations”. He didn’t ask for details, he didn’t have any analysis done, it’s a nice cosy belief. For my sins I once was the technical owner for the billing systems for a public data network, I assumed the estate worked correctly most of the time. If we’d had multiple reports from customers about billing discrepancies I’d not have had informal chats with colleagues, I’d have triggered proper reviews of the incidents, error log reviews, code walkthroughs of potential problem areas etc. It sounds like Jenkins wasn’t actually that senior and probably couldn’t have done, but he did write witness statements which in at least one case was part of the reason a woman was jailed, and he never checked whether the due diligence was done.
All a fair shout - although it was clear that GJ saw nuance in what he was asked to examine and how, noting it was POL’s decision to limit/withhold disclosure of a great deal of material (IIRC), noting Misra’s primary/initial defence was that the monies had been stolen by staff – and her overall trial transcript is an interesting read.
But, then I ask myself, how the legal system allowed POLs behaviours to subsist, how a defence didn’t rip in to these matters, and how a judge and jury allowed/found grounds to convict.
It is all a true omnishambles and far worse.
I actually don’t think he was a malicious actor, just out of his depth. He was set up by the lawyers in two ways, not properly making him aware of what the statements he signed actually meant, and despite him not actually having an overall view of the system he was used to pronounce on the reliability of something he only knew a bit of. To be fair the lawyers probably didn’t understand the second part.
If “we” are struggling to get to grips with it in the inquiry then a jury of ‘the man in the street’ had no chance they relied on the guidance of an expert witness.
After four days of GJ - I am not sure where we are in terms of calling for blood.
Only seen snippets of GJ evidence, but ime, IT and ops maintain a bunker mentality in many an org and comms between the two - albeit Fujitsu were an external resource, often doesn’t exist because neither understand the work / purpose of the other.
The POL execs who say they didn’t understand IT may be true - the more important truth is that they should have made it their responsibility to know how the business was being recorded, not just stamps and cash, but warts and all.
The SI will never be able to cover all aspects. As a one time auditor, there hasn’t iirc, been any mention of a true assessment having been made at any stage by POL after the implementation of Horizon.
Assessing as to whether, the incidence of errors / alleged theft, had changed or even significantly changed, against the earlier paper based system.
Clearly a change of system would throw up new opportunities for the unscrupulous, but w/o analysis, it seems unknown if Horizon produced a very significant spike.
No point in speculating on what trends occurred, but without analysis; remains a significant question.
Second sight probably got closer, albeit on a limited basis.
If not analysed, another failing; if analysed then why no investigation.
I’ve seen some figures for the pre and post Horizon prosecution figures, sadly I can’t remember where I saw them (if it comes back to me in what context I saw it I’ll try a search), if my memory serves me well it was a leap of about an order of magnitude. The Post Office interpretation seemed to be that they’d always been at it, and now we can use Horizon to prove it.
Ah it will have been in Kev’s post above.
Watching 
this on YouTube the sequence of events is appearing in a slightly haphazard way ,just watched the video of GT , Wowzer there is someone who really did not understand his responsibility to his members.
The phrase “ If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem” sprang to mind , anyone who has dealt with the Ombudsman service may well understand the parallel
I thought trying to understand him was like trying to crack a 4 rotor Enigma machine:
Rotor 1 – the accent, not hard
Rotor 2 – the absence of respect for the SI, often in aggressive tone – OK, put that down to union background.
Rotor 3 – trying to understand his often ‘not on point’ responses, to see if there were nuggets in there about changes in POL’s behaviours (I think there were, but were overshadowed by diatribe).
Rotor 4 – this late edition of the rant at the end served to further scramble most of what he’d said before, such that he undressed himself intellectually and beyond.
To put in hi-fi terms, there was plenty of good quality source input around what was happening, but garbage emerged, as the CPU was severely wanting.
Or the biggest self immolation since Brunhild , but without the music
Just watched Jason Beer ask questions about a tampered witness statement
I must confess to a degree of bafflement as to how banks manage to run their affairs and systems without this degree of chaos …
Banks and building societies operate to the relatively simple computer and accounting principles of double-entry bookkeeping, and don’t have the complications of the numerous financial products and 3rd-party engagements which PO handle. Yes, banks and others operate in various markets, and for these, they have bespoke platforms, for regulatory reporting etc,
The big difference, AFAIK, and as Sir Alan experienced, is that banks et al design an ability to check and validate balancing at the front end so, for example, a simple mis-posting and/or numerical transposition would be easy-ish to spot and correct on the day. Not so with PO, as it appears legacy Horizon couldn’t be checked by SPMs. All they got was pages of data, which they then had to interpret in to transactions. Truly strange to me.
I’ve still not seen an explanation of the basis for Jo Hamilton’s supposed shortfall, as POL’s auditor couldn’t find anything wrong, and it changed somehow it seems without explanation. There’s so much talk around the BEDs, but I’ve not heard anything where they’ve pinned down a reason in some of the cases?
In some respects, FJ suffered from the same issue as POL, in that the former’s Help Desk and supposed reporting & control procedures (which GJ relied upon) didn’t appear to develop an aggregate appreciation of some small issues, which obviously continued to fester. POL did the same, in that they didn’t monitor the growth of ‘small events’ i.e. the increasing levels of prosecutions for relatively small amounts (the CFO said anything below £100k wasn’t material to them). Problem is, lots of these = big number = big issue. This, by definition, is poor operational risk management & oversight.
Perhaps a further clue - as to why Horizon didn’t work well - comes from its origins -
“Conceived in 1996 as one of the first private finance initiative (PFI) contracts, between the Post Office and the Benefits Agency on the one hand and computer company ICL on the other, the Horizon IT system had an unpromising start. It had been set up to create a swipe card system for payment of pensions and benefits from Post Office branch counters. When, in May 1999, the plug was finally pulled on what the Commons public accounts committee called ‘one of the biggest IT failures in the public sector’, taxpayers had lost around £700m. Something had to be salvaged, however. So, against the better judgement of its IT specialists, the Post Office decided to use the system to transform its paper-based branch accounting into an electronic system covering the full range of Post Office services. The new Horizon project became the largest non-military IT contract in Europe.”
(from Wikipedia)
So… in adapting the abandoned Pensions & Benefits system into what became the PO’s Horizon, even the PO’s own IT specialists didn’t think it was a good idea…!
To a certain extent I feel sorry for him, well out of his comfort zone , he should never have been made an expert witness - the blame lies much further up the food chain
Jason Beer KC vs Graham Ward - new evidence -
Frightening if GJ was the wrong person in the wrong job at the wrong time , this was a different story altogether
JB has an excellent team of researchers behind him
GW - ‘I can see how it looks … but when I deleted something… I didn’t mean it to be … deleted…’
Right. Not the Sharpest Knife…
You may be aware GJ was asked by JB KC whether he was aware of this, the underlying point being that the Benefits Agency weren’t happy with the project, so pulled the plug due to concerns over the robustness of the system. IIRC, GJ said he wasn’t aware of this, as it was a commercial matter, not in his orbit – and I’m not sure if GJ was dedicated to the project at that time.
My understanding was that this was because Swipe Cards, which the system used, were then becoming out of date - or had taken too long to develop…?
It was not called Horizon at that point (*) - the new name was for the POL Only version.
(* - I have not managed to find the original name… yet…)
Contemporaneous Government documents seem to refer to the overall project as Benefits Payment Card, with occasional references to Pathway which was the ICL subsidiary set up to deliver BPC. The block diagrams from the NAO show the ICL area as Pathway, suggesting there was no snappy code name.