Fujitsu has bagged billion-pound Government contracts despite its known involvement in the Horizon software scandal. The Mail has the story.
Fujitsu received an estimated £1.4 billion worth of deals with Treasury-linked organisations since the High Court ruled that there had been numerous bugs and errors in its Horizon software.
The Japanese communications firm is set to have received more than £3.4 billion through contracts running with Treasury-linked organisations since 2019 despite its role in the Post Office scandal, MPs have found.
More than £2 billion worth of contracts were agreed before 2019 and remained active in the following period, the Commons Treasury Committee said.
HMRC has awarded the company eight contracts worth £1.39 billion since the ruling in 2019, while a further six contracts pre-dating the ruling remained active after 2019 but have since ceased.
The FCA agreed deals worth around £630 million dating back to 2007 which continued to run after the High Court judgment, and still maintains six contracts worth a combined total of around £9 million.
The Bank of England confirmed it had one contract worth £417,000 from 2019 which expired on August 9th 2020.
The committee had asked all organisations whether Fujitsu’s role in the Horizon scandal was considered during the tendering process and whether they thought about ending the deals in light of the scandal.
But it said the only response it had received about possible termination had come from the FCA, which confirmed it considered winding down a contract with the firm due to poor performance but decided to retain its services.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: According to a 2010 letter reported in the Mail, Sir Ed Davey lauded the “integrity” of Fujitsu’s deeply flawed Horizon computer system, even after campaigner Alan Bates had alerted him to its catastrophic failings.
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There does not appear to be any mention of contracts with DWP. Probably another few billion there. And doubtless lots of other government departments.
That’s peanuts compared to what they spent on PPE that ended up in the bin.
It’s not their money (the bureaucrats’ that award these contracts), so why would they take care on how they spend it?
Will anyone ever be held to account for reckless spending? Not in a million years. I doubt ever in the history of the civil service did anyone lose their job for a poor spending decision costing the tax payer billions let alone millions.
Use the wrong pronoun though…
Apparently, they’re still prosecuting postmasters based on Horizon shortfalls.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/10/post-office-scandal-horizon-ongoing-demand-money-fault/
How on earth can the FCA spent £630 million on IT. That is incredible, or it would be except the public sector judges itself on how much it can spend.
shocking.
Software companies that can do these huge contracts are not ten a penny. You will see the same names cropping up time and again, that’s just a fact of life. As I was often told in my long computing career, you can have it right, you can have it on time, you can have it to budget. Pick two, maybe you’ll get one of them. The amount of money wasted on grand, bespoke systems, not just for government but the private sector too would make your hair curl.
I am not a computer/software career person but I was told if one such example involving an NHS system in the south west that was effectively a licence to print money – by a person right in the thick of it…. Utter fraud.
I too have been involved with computer systems and agree with you. There have been many companies actually bankrupted trying to implement grand computer systems. Most companies do not have the in house expertise to know when they are being taken for a ride. Just look at Canada’s Federal Government payroll system from IBM. It didn’t work. They couldn’t even pay themselves. It cost billions to fix. Most private companies would have been bankrupted.
I read somewhere that Fujitsu were awarded the contract for the mobile telephone emergency alert system.That was an astounding success, too 🙄
It seems to be the norm that the more cock-ups companies make, the more likely they are to be awarded high value contracts from the public purse. Honesty and value for money is not a necessity.
No reason then why Fujitsu shouldn’t bear the entire cost of the Post Office compensation scheme.
Oh, and it can transfer a few £million to HM Treasury as well to cover the cost of taxpayer-funded prosecutions based on its faulty Horizon system.
Sadly, RTSC that is just plain common sense and that disappeared years ago. Or has it ever existed?