Fujitsu acquired £315m from HM Income & Customs (HMRC) in 12 months, whereas victims of the Put up Workplace scandal, which the IT large had a hand in, are provided “derisory” compensation funds.
Based on official figures, HMRC is Fujitsu’s largest UK authorities buyer, described by some because the provider’s “UK money cow”, with about £315m paid to Fujitsu by the federal government division between April 2024 and the top of March 2025.
Laptop Weekly just lately reported that HMRC paid Fujitsu virtually £80m in March alone, however the provider’s enterprise stretches throughout the general public sector. For instance, it has contracts with central authorities departments such because the House Workplace, the Overseas Workplace, the Ministry of Defence and the Division for Training. It additionally works throughout native authorities and different public companies.
Peer Kevan Jones, a long-time campaigner for subpostmasters caught up within the Horizon scandal, mentioned: “That is outrageous. The federal government ought to cease any additional funds to Fujitsu till they at the least make an interim cost to the compensation fund for postmasters.”
The federal government is closely depending on Fujitsu, and the provider depends on authorities contracts for its UK enterprise.
Cash going a technique
The federal government introduced this week that £1bn has been paid in compensation to Horizon scandal victims to date, simply a part of the large monetary price of the scandal, with not a penny of it coming from Fujitsu. The provider is on the centre of the scandal – it was Fujitsu’s software program that prompted unexplained account shortfalls and its workers who coated them up in courtroom.
Cash is at present heading in a single route, because the Japanese provider continues to win profitable UK authorities contracts.
All of those funds got here after Fujitsu’s self-imposed ban on bidding for brand spanking new authorities contracts, introduced in January 2024. This adopted the published of ITV’s dramatisation of the Put up Workplace scandal, which raised public consciousness of Fujitsu’s involvement, inflicting a public opinion backlash.
However the provider doesn’t want “new” contracts as a result of it has current relationships all through the UK public sector. Laptop Weekly additionally revealed, through a leaked doc, that Fujitsu workers had been instructed how you can bypass the ban.
Enterprise continues to be booming for Fujitsu. Based on sources, all UK workers will obtain a bonus this yr after a gross sales goal was reached. It’s particulars like these that led peer Jones to explain the self-imposed bidding ban as a “hole” gesture.
Fujitsu is at present in talks with the federal government about how a lot cash it’ll contribute in the direction of the complete price of the Horizon scandal.
Bedded in
Fujitsu sources mentioned: “Fujitsu is simply too embedded to see its authorities enterprise collapse, however there may be already a gradual decline and a rising nervousness amongst prospects, who’re questioning whether or not Fujitsu is a reputational threat they will afford.”
“A sluggish cancellation” has begun, in keeping with the sources. For instance, HMRC started the method of breaking away from its heavy reliance on Fujitsu for IT companies with a tender value £500m designed to exit the provider’s companies. Based on the tender printed final month: “The first goal of the [programme] is to exit three Fujitsu-hosted datacentres and migrate related companies to new vacation spot platforms.”
Till Fujitsu has accomplished the correct factor, the UK authorities has received to behave in a principled method and ship a message out to the world that the UK does the correct factor James Hartley, Freeths Solicitors
Fujitsu has additionally misplaced its profitable Horizon contract with the Put up Workplace, which has been operating for the reason that Nineties and earned it billions of kilos. The contract ends within the subsequent 12 months.
The Put up Workplace will lastly change the controversial Horizon system with an off-the-shelf various. As a part of the plan, Fujitsu won’t be concerned from March subsequent yr, with the Put up Workplace additionally searching for a brand new provider to tide it over when the present Fujitsu contract expires.
And it isn’t simply the general public sector the place Fujitsu faces cuts. As revealed by Laptop Weekly in November 2024, the provider misplaced out on a contract with British Fuel proprietor Centrica after the corporate’s board, petrified of reputational harm, blocked it, regardless of the troubled provider being the popular bidder.
Final month, when requested about Fujitsu’s work for HMRC, peer James Arbuthnot, a campaigner for justice for subpostmasters for a decade and a half, mentioned: “Why on earth is the federal government undermining its personal bargaining place with Fujitsu, an organization that has but to pay a penny in the direction of the carnage it helped trigger within the Put up Workplace?”
He burdened that your complete invoice for paying again cash to the subpostmasters has come from taxpayers.
Ready recreation
The general public inquiry into the Put up Workplace scandal is anticipated to publish its preliminary report on part one, which appeared on the human affect of the scandal, within the coming months. Like its dramatisation, the report will improve media consideration and heap stress on Fujitsu and authorities departments that contract with it.
“Fujitsu leaders are nervously ready for the publication of the primary report,” mentioned Fujitsu sources.
James Hartley, a lawyer at Freeths Solicitors, which represents a whole lot of subpostmasters, mentioned Fujitsu is “conserving its head down” till the general public inquiry report comes out, at which level the federal government will in all probability “lean on it for a billion kilos”.
“Everyone knows that the federal government may rattle off an entire load of causes as to why it’s within the UK’s curiosity to maintain utilizing Fujitsu, however that doesn’t change the basic precept about doing the correct factor. Till Fujitsu has accomplished the correct factor, we might say the UK authorities has received to behave in a principled method and ship a message out to the world that the UK does the correct factor.”
He mentioned the issue is leverage. “I feel with Fujitsu, the one massive entity that might sue them is the Put up Workplace, which clearly the federal government must make occur. The rationale I feel it by no means has, and why they gained’t, is as a result of they know rattling nicely that Fujitsu’s attorneys will flip round and say, ‘Effectively, yeah, alright, we settle for these issues unsuitable with the system, however the principle reason for the general drawback was the best way Put up Workplace decision-makers acted’.”
The monetary price of the scandal goes method past compensating victims and is all paid from taxpayers’ cash. The authorized prices are large.
Each skilled concerned is getting paid. There are the attorneys negotiating compensation on behalf of the Put up Workplace. In 2018, there was a Excessive Court docket Group Litigation, described on the time as a £100m trial. The Court docket of Enchantment heard appeals towards wrongful convictions, with a whole lot of attorneys concerned. A statutory public inquiry adopted, which itself price about £50m to run, with the government-owned Put up Workplace spending in extra of £100m on authorized charges to defend it.
On prime of that, there are civil service prices so as to add to the ultimate invoice, and the price of failed makes an attempt, made beneath stress, to switch the Horizon system. The Put up Workplace, for instance, needed to abort its New Department IT undertaking after a authorities report discovered that budgets ballooned from £180m to £1.1bn and implementation was delayed by as a lot as 5 years.
The Put up Workplace scandal was first uncovered by Laptop Weekly in 2009, revealing the tales of seven subpostmasters and the issues they suffered as a result of accounting software program (see timeline of Laptop Weekly articles concerning the scandal under).
