MPs request details of taxpayer money spent with Fujitsu during Post Office scandal

Commons Treasury Committee letter sent to 21 public sector organisations asking for information on contracts in last five years

MPs have demanded to know how much public money has been paid to Fujitsu since the company’s role in the Post Office scandal was determined in court.
The Commons Treasury Committee has written to 21 public sector organisations, asking for details of any deals over the last five years.
Among them are The Treasury and HMRC, as well as the Bank of England and the Royal Mint.
The Financial Conduct Authority and the Crown Estate have also received the demand.
It comes after Fujitsu pledged not to bid for any further Whitehall contracts while the Post Office public inquiry continues.
Their faulty Horizon software caused the wrongful investigation and prosecution of hundreds of innocent sub-postmasters, in what has been described as the biggest miscarriage of justice in British history.
Fujitsu actively supported the Post Office in its prosecutions, despite internal concerns about bugs and errors in the system going back years.
In 2019, the High Court ruled that the prosecutions were wrongly based on the Fujitsu software and the company has subsequently apologised for its role.
On Saturday, Harriet Baldwin, chair of the Treasury Committee, said: “I think it’s important we can see the extent to which taxpayer money has been spent with Fujitsu since the High Court ruling as they are simultaneously assessed on their fitness to remain a government supplier.”
The committee’s letter asks for details about the value of any contracts and whether they were awarded following open competition.
It also asks if issues with the Horizon system were taken into account and what monitoring of Fujitsu’s performance was in place.
The committee has demanded replies within two weeks.
This week the public inquiry heard that Fujitsu used prosecution of sub-postmasters as a “cash cow”, with the company earning up to £20,000 a case for providing evidence to prosecute sub-postmasters.
A barrister for some of the victims said the Post Office earned £850,000 a year from the activity.
On Thursday, Fujitsu offered its “deepest apologies” to wronged sub-postmasters and their families and confirmed it will contribute to compensation payments to Post Office staff wrongfully convicted in the Horizon IT scandal.