Fujitsu was awarded billions of pounds worth of contracts under his watch, even after the company’s software was found to be at fault in the Post Office scandal.
Rishi Sunak is facing criticism after it was revealed that Japanese company Fujitsu was awarded billions of pounds worth of contracts under his watch, even after the company’s software was found to be at fault in the Post Office scandal.
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.
The FT reports: “Government procurement records show Fujitsu was involved in £4.9bn of solo and joint public-sector contracts after the December 2019 ruling, including £3.6bn during Sunak’s time as chancellor and now prime minister.
“Fujitsu provided the Horizon IT system at the heart of the biggest miscarriage of justice in modern British history and a growing political storm over the failure of successive governments to resolve the scandal.”
The revelation will create further questions for Sunak, with MPs calling for a moratorium on Fujitsu public sector contracts.
“Ministers cannot and must not reward failure any further,” said Liam Byrne, Labour MP and chair of the Commons business committee. “It’s vital there’s now a moratorium on new contracts for Fujitsu until we’ve got to the bottom of this terrible miscarriage of justice.”
The latest revelations come after former Post Office boss Paula Vennells announced that she will hand back her CBE with immediate effect following the Horizon IT scandal.
Her decision came after a petition demanding that she be stripped of her CBE over the Horizon scandal, reached more than 1 million signatures.
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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