Fujitsu was paid £80m by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) in March alone as its public sector business continues unabated, despite its involvement in one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in UK history.
In the first quarter of this year, the IT giant received about £123m of taxpayers’ cash from HMRC alone, but although talks have begun, it is yet to commit to an amount it will pay towards the costs of the scandal it fuelled.
According to the latest HMRC spending figures, which include all contracts worth over £25,000, the department’s £80m spending with Fujitsu in March included more than £48m for mobile phones and tablet computers.
Other HMRC spending with Fujitsu in March included about £4.9m for other IT hardware, £4.9m for physical hosting and infrastructure, £4.6m for IT software licences and support, and £1.7m for desktop services.
March was a bumper month. In comparison, January saw HMRC pay £25m to Fujitsu, which was its largest supplier that month in terms of value. It paid the supplier £18m in February, where it was the second largest supplier to HMRC, behind fellow IT giant Capgemini.
The £123m paid in three months reveals growing spend with Fujitsu. According to government figures, HMRC spent about £240m with Fujitsu over the whole of 2024. Fujitsu could land over half a billion pounds in contracts from HMRC alone this year as the UK public sector continues to reward the supplier.
The huge numbers come despite Fujitsu’s self-imposed pause on bidding for government contracts after its role in the Post Office scandal became more widely understood. Fujitsu supported the Post Office when it blamed and prosecuted subpostmasters for unexplained account shortfalls, which were caused by software errors it was aware of.
Fujitsu has finally agreed to negotiate its contribution towards the huge costs of the scandal. In March, the government announced there was an agreement to begin talks on compensation. Fujitsu has previously stated it would wait until the public inquiry’s conclusion before committing to talks. The public inquiry has finished its public hearings, but as yet there is no date for the publication of the report from chair Wynn Williams.
Jo Hamilton, a subpostmaster in South Warnborough, Hampshire, between 2003 and 2005, who had a wrongful conviction for false accounting overturned in 2021, said: “It seems to me that Fujitsu is filling its boots with cash while it can, because its days are numbered.”
Peer James Arbuthnot, a long-time campaigner for justice for subpostmasters, who was previously Hamilton’s MP in North East Hampshire, said: “Why on earth is the government undermining its own bargaining position with Fujitsu, a company that has yet to pay a penny towards the carnage it helped cause in the Post Office?”
The government is not just failing to get a contribution from Fujitsu – it is actually paying money to Fujitsu James Arbuthnot, Conservative peer and former MP
He stressed that the entire bill for paying back money to the subpostmasters has come from taxpayers. “The government is not just failing to get a contribution from Fujitsu – it is actually paying money to Fujitsu, which is digging in its position in order to contribute as little as it can.”
He listed some of Fujitsu’s decisions that enabled the Post Office scandal. “Let’s not forget it was Fujitsu that was altering the subpostmasters’ accounts remotely, while denying it was doing it and not keeping a record of what they were doing. It was Fujitsu that, knowing of the bugs and faults in their software, were swearing on oath in court that those bugs and faults did not exist. And it was Fujitsu that then watched the subpostmasters be convicted as a result of Fujitsu’s lies, and stood back as thousands of lives were ruined,” he said.
“It’s time for this to stop,” he added.
An HMRC spokesperson said: “We work with hundreds of suppliers – big and small – and our contracts are publicly available to view through Contracts Finder or Find A Tender. The size and complexity of our IT estate means that multiple partners are involved in building and maintaining almost all of our systems and services.”
Former subpostmaster Scott Darlington, who had his wrongful conviction for false accounting overturned in 2021, is still waiting for his full financial redress.
“It’s the usual story. I mean, for some reason, the government doesn’t mind handing out huge amounts of money to different legal teams, corporations, Fujitsu and all that, but when it comes to paying us, they really seem to resent everything about it. They will try and knock you down £50 here and there and stuff like that.”
Computer Weekly first exposed the scandal in 2009, revealing the stories of seven subpostmasters and the problems they suffered due to Horizon accounting software, which led to the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British history (see below timeline of Computer Weekly articles about the scandal since 2009).
