Peer offended as gross sales figures recommend Fujitsu has weathered Put up Workplace scandal storm
Fujitsu grew its UK public sector enterprise during the last 12 months regardless of widespread criticism for its function within the Put up Workplace scandal.
The gross sales enhance for the yr to April 2025 is in distinction to a pointy decline within the earlier yr, which included the quick backlash after ITV’s dramatisation of the scandal widened understanding of Fujitsu’s function.
The figures, which recommend the provider’s UK enterprise has weathered the storm, come on the eve of the deadline for Fujitsu to publish an overview of its contribution to restorative justice for subpostmasters affected by the scandal.
By tomorrow (31 October) Fujitsu, together with the federal government and the Put up Workplace, should publish a “report outlining any agreed programme of restorative justice,” which was ordered by the Put up Workplace scandal public inquiry.
In keeping with the most recent report from public sector market watcher Tussell, between Could 2024 and April 2025, Fujitsu made gross sales price £453m to the UK public sector, which was 1.2% greater than the £447.5m of offers completed in the identical interval from 2023 to 2024, which included 4 months of the Put up Workplace scandal backlash that adopted the ITV drama collection.
This might sign that Fujitsu’s public sector enterprise is recovering. Within the yr to April 2023, the complete yr earlier than ITV’s drama, its gross sales had been price about £470m however then dropped 5% within the following monetary yr throughout which the drama was broadcast. In January 2024, below the general public gaze, Fujitsu banned itself from bidding for presidency contracts.
Ministerial questions
Campaigning peer James Arbuthnot mentioned he was angered on listening to the figures. “Authorities ministers actually ought to put themselves within the sneakers of a subpostmaster and ask themselves, ‘How would I really feel? Does Fujitsu’s behaviour actually not matter? Am I blissful to see the individuals who colluded in sending so many harmless folks to jail, rewarded on this method?’”
He additionally questioned whether or not there isn’t any various to contracting Fujitsu: “Are we so depending on them? What does that say about our bargaining energy, or about our resilience?”
Ministers are properly positioned to use stress, provided that, in line with the Tussell figures, the central authorities departments they run accounted for 98% of Fujitsu’s public sector gross sales.
Moreover, though Fujitsu’s progress was slender at 1.2%, it got here at a time when general spending on know-how by the UK public sector declined 2%, in line with Tussell.
The figures add weight to claims inside Fujitsu that, regardless of the adverse impression of its hyperlink to the Put up Workplace scandal, the corporate will get its UK authorities enterprise again to regular inside about 12 to 18 months after a interval of “flux.”
This was the view of a member of Fujitsu’s high group of executives. He anticipated to see issues enhance after Fujitsu agreed the quantity it can pay in direction of the prices of the Put up Workplace scandal, however the newest figures present the agency is already recovering authorities enterprise.
The manager’s remark got here in July this yr, days after the publication of a report that linked the scandal, which Fujitsu fuelled, to 13 suicides, 10 tried suicides and 59 folks considering suicide.
In a recording heard by Laptop Weekly, the Fujitsu chief, who has now left the corporate, advised colleagues: “My private prediction [is] 12 to 18 months of this type of flux, after which as soon as we’ve really made the contribution [towards scandal costs], I feel there would be the entire self-cleaning course of, after which I feel we must be again to regular buying and selling phrases.
“I nonetheless really feel as an organisation within the UK, we’re constructed to service the general public sector – our supply mannequin, our folks, {our capability}.”
In the identical assembly, the manager advised colleagues the primary Put up Workplace Horizon public inquiry report was “not that dangerous,” regardless of it linking the IT system’s issues with quite a few suicides.
The previous government apologised for his feedback through an organization electronic mail account: “I’m very sorry if my phrases have induced hurt to any of the victims of the Put up Workplace Horizon scandal. I’m not concerned in, or accountable for, Fujitsu’s response to the Put up Workplace Horizon IT inquiry. This was my very own private hypothesis that I shared with my group as a part of a personal and casual dialogue.”
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 Horizon accounting software program, which led to essentially the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British historical past (see beneath timeline of Laptop Weekly articles concerning the scandal since 2009).
