‘Simon Blagden, who stepped down as non-executive director at Fujitsu UK in 2019, was made chair of the government agency responsible for delivering faster broadband and mobile coverage in 2022.’
A Tory donor and former director of Fujitsu, which has been implicated in the Post Office scandal that resulted in hundreds of former workers being wrongly prosecuted for theft and fraud, was rewarded with a job running the government’s broadband rollout – three years after his old firm was found to be at fault.
OpenDemocracy reports that ‘Simon Blagden, who stepped down as non-executive director at Fujitsu UK in 2019, was made chair of the government agency responsible for delivering faster broadband and mobile coverage in 2022.’
The scandal, often described as the biggest miscarriage of justice in modern British history, resulted in hundreds of subpostmasters wrongly prosecuted for false accounting, theft and fraud.
The Post Office accused around 700 subpostmasters and mistresses of fraud and theft, denying that its Horizon IT system was to blame for the financial discrepancies in the company’s finances. Between 1999 and 2015 it relentlessly pursued operators, despite knowing that from at least 2010 onwards that there were faults in the centralised accounting software.
Fujitsu was the supplier of the controversial Horizon IT system at fault and in December 2019, a landmark ruling by the Court of Appeal found that the company’s software contained bugs and errors that wrongly flagged branches over financial discrepancies.
Three years after the court ruling, Blagden was appointed chair of Building Digital UK (BDUK) by then digital secretary Nadine Dorries, who praised his “wide breadth of experience” including 14 years working at Fujitsu.
OpenDemocracy reports: “Blagden is being paid £80,000 for two days a week during his four-year term as chair, according to the government’s announcement.
“The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology today said Blagden had been “in no way involved” with the Post Office scandal.”
Blagden, who, along with companies he is associated with, have donated £376,000 to the Tories since 2005, is now in charge of overseeing a £5bn government programme aimed at supporting the rollout of gigabit broadband to areas that would not be commercially viable.
His closeness to the government as well as being awarded such lucrative contracts will lead to yet more questions for the Tories and Rishi Sunak.
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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