The Post Office has reportedly inked a £180 million deal to continue using Fujitsu’s scandal-hit Horizon system for another five years. The Mail has more.
Japanese firm Fujitsu’s faulty software was behind more than 900 sub-postmasters being wrongly prosecuted after shortfalls were incorrectly reported on their accounts.
The Post Office had been looking for a replacement system for next year, but it is now expected that Fujitsu will continue operating in branches for five more years. …
Richard Trinder, who manages the campaign group Voice of the Postmaster – which supports victims of the Horizon scandal – said: “We want the new system to be the right one when it does come in, so we understand that there needs to be a new system.
“However, it would have been nice to Fujitsu to do this work for free and donate the £180 million to victims of the scandal.”
Fujitsu’s current contract was due to end by March 2025, the deadline which the Post Office had hoped to replace its IT system by.
But it was reported this week that the Post Office has pushed this deadline back to 2030. It also asked for £1 billion of additional public money from the Treasury as it finds it difficult to create a sufficient in-house system.
It comes as the huge police inquiry into the Post Office scandal will use 80 detectives and be on the scale of a “major murder or terrorism investigation” it was reported this week.
While over 20 potential suspects at both the Post Office and Fujitsu have already been identified, decisions on whether charges will be brought are unlikely before 2026, the Guardian first reported.
And while the police have already asked for extra funding from the Government to the tune of £6.75 million to fund the huge operation, investigators are yet to be recruited to staff the probe, it added.
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