In six months alone, Fujitsu has made just under £110 million from its IT services contracts with HMRC as the supplier continues to evade punishment for its role in Horizon Post Office scandal.
Sir Alan Batesa former campaign manager who led the fight against the Post Office said more questions seem to be being asked about the “wildly exaggerated” compensation he received than about the huge sums of taxpayer money flowing into Fujitsu.
According to government officialsBetween the start of April and the end of September this year, Fujitsu received £110 million from HMRC in exchange for IT services.
The six-month figure exceeds will double the total cost of the £48 million public inquiry into the Post Office scandal. between 2000 and 2024; and twice as much Estimated cost of Operation Olympos £50 millionThe National Police is investigating the scandal. Includes bills for desktop services, physical hosting and infrastructure, tablets, and software licensing.
While this is around £20m less than the same period last year when Fujitsu was paid £129m, a potential sign that HMRC is cutting back on work with the supplier, it demonstrates the government's reliance on Fujitsu. The State Department has been described as Fujitsu's cash cow in the UK, but the controversial supplier also works with a large number of public sector organizations as well as government departments. For example, it has contracts with government departments such as the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Education. He also works in local government and other public services.
According to Public Sector Market Observer TasselFujitsu made UK public sector sales of £453 million between May 2024 and April 2025, 1.2% higher than the £447.5 million it generated in the same period from 2023 to 2024.
Fujitsu's Horizon system was at the center of a scandal in which subpostmasters were blamed and punished for billing shortages caused by computer errors. Hundreds of people were wrongly convicted of crimes based on data from the faulty system, many of them sent to prison. Many other people's lives have been ruined as a result of the enormous financial cost, with the system linked to 13 suicides and 10 attempted suicides. But only this month Fujitsu received a contract from the government post office worth a further £41 million and an option for a further 12 months.
Bates questioned why Fujitsu isn't being put under more pressure given the taxpayer funds it continues to receive, saying: “It seems strange why so many people are interested in my settlement, which has been greatly exaggerated, but hardly anyone is paying attention to the large sums thrown at Fujitsu. Is the government going to keep handing over all this money to Fujitsu before they know how much it is going to pay to cover the costs of the scandal?”
Read more: Fujitsu's role in the Post Office scandal: everything you need to know.
The government figures add further weight to Fujitsu's claims that, despite the negative impact of its association with the Post Office scandal, the company will return its UK government business to normal in around 12 to 18 months after a period of “change”.
This was the view of a member of Fujitsu's senior management. In a recording heard by Computer Weekly, a member of the executive team said he expected to see the situation improve as Fujitsu agrees the amount it will pay to cover the costs of the Post Office scandal. The executive's comment came in July of this year, a few days after publication of a public inquiry report what connected the scandal that Fujitsu fuelsto suicide.
His comments also indicate Fujitsu's lack of understanding of the damage the supplier has caused to people's lives. Further evidence of this emerged in April 2024, just months after Fujitsu promised not to participate in tenders for public sector contractsComputer Weekly reported in a leaked presentation that Fujitsu sales staff were presented with a flowchart instructing them on how to bid for government contracts during a self-imposed IT vendor ban.
But there are signs that HMRC is ready to split from Fujitsu amid public pressure over the scandal. The most visible of these occurred in May, when the department began searching for a supplier for a 10-year data center exit (DCE) contract that begins next April. contract worth £500 million.designed to log out of some Fujitsu services.
According to the tender: “The main goal of the DCE program is to exit the three Fujitsu-hosted data centers and move related services to new target platforms.” Amazon Web Services is the only active provider for the contract.
Computer weekly first exposed the scandal in 2009revealing the stories of seven subpostmasters and the problems they faced due to Horizon accounting software, which led to the biggest miscarriage of justice in British history (see below for a timeline of Computer Weekly articles on the scandal since 2009.).
