Fujitsu has grown its UK public sector business over the past 12 months despite widespread criticism for its role in the Post Office scandal.
The increase in sales for the year to April 2025 contrasts with a sharp decline in the previous year, which included an immediate backlash after ITV's dramatization of the scandal widened understanding of Fujitsu's role.
The figures suggesting the supplier's UK business has weathered the storm come ahead of a deadline for Fujitsu to publish a review of its contribution to restorative justice for post office executives affected by the scandal.
By tomorrow (October 31), Fujitsu, along with the government and the Post Office, is due to publish “a report outlining any agreed restorative justice programme” which was commissioned as part of the public inquiry into the Post Office scandal.
According to latest report from public sector market watchdog TassellBetween May 2024 and April 2025, Fujitsu made £453 million of sales to the UK public sector, 1.2% higher than the £447.5 million of deals it made in the same period from 2023 to 2024, including four months of the Post Office scandal that followed the ITV drama series.
This could signal that Fujitsu's public sector business is recovering. In the year to April 2023, the year before the ITV drama was released, its sales were around £470 million, but then fell by 5% in the following financial year during which the drama was broadcast. In January 2024 in the public eye Fujitsu banned itself from participating in the auction according to government orders.
Ministerial matters
Fellow campaigner James Arbuthnot said he was outraged to hear the figures. “Ministers of state really need to put themselves in the shoes of the deputy postmaster and ask themselves: How would I feel? Does Fujitsu's behavior really not matter? Am I glad to see that the people who conspired and sent so many innocent people to prison are being rewarded like this?”
He also questioned whether there was an alternative to contracting with Fujitsu: “Are we really that dependent on them? What does that say about our bargaining power or our resilience?”
Ministers are well positioned to apply pressure given that central government departments they run account for 98% of Fujitsu's public sector sales, according to Tassel.
Moreover, while Fujitsu's growth was small at 1.2%, it came at a time when overall UK public sector spending on technology was down 2%, according to Tassell.
The figures add 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 operations 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. He expected the situation to improve once Fujitsu agreed on the amount it would pay to cover costs associated with the Post Office scandal, but the latest figures show the firm is already rebuilding government business.
The executive's comment came in July of this year, a few days after publication of the report what connected the scandal that Fujitsu fuels13 suicides, 10 attempted suicides and 59 people contemplating suicide.
In a recording heard by Computer Weekly, a Fujitsu executive who has now left the company told colleagues: “My personal prediction [is] 12 to 18 months of this kind of change and then once we've actually contributed [towards scandal costs]I think there will be a whole process of self-cleaning and then I think we should return to normal trading conditions.
“I continue to believe that our organization in the UK is designed to serve the public sector – our delivery model, our people, our capabilities.”
At the same meeting, executive director told colleagues that Post Office Horizon's first public inquiry report was 'not that bad' despite linking IT system problems to numerous suicides.
The former executive apologized for his comments via company email: “I am deeply sorry if my words caused harm to any of the victims of the Post Office Horizon scandal. I am not involved in, and am not responsible for, Fujitsu's response to the Post Office Horizon IT department's request. This was my personal belief and shared with my team in a private and informal discussion.”
There was a mail scandal first published in Computer Weekly magazine in 2009.revealing 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.).
