Fujitsu may be forced to foot bill for Post Office scandal

MINISTERS are considering chasing Fujitsu for millions of pounds in compensation for the victims of the Post Office scandal.

Around £138million has already been paid to victims and hundreds of others are still waiting, with the bill being covered by the taxpayer.

More than 700 Post Office branch managers were convicted after Horizon, the faulty accounting software created by Fujitsu, made it appear as though money was missing from their shops.

However, Post Office bosses are still using Fujitsu, with the firm being handed a £37million contract just two months ago to keep data centres powering Horizon running for two more years.

Yesterday, Kevin Hollinrake, the minister who oversees the Post Office, vowed to quicken the pace at which sub-postmasters can overturn convictions and get compensation. He said in the Commons: “The time for quibbling is over. It is a case now of action, action on this day, and delivering that by overturning convictions.”

He added that the Government would consider urging Fujitsu to help cover compensation if a public inquiry into the scandal concludes the firm carried some blame for what happened. Ministers are leaning towards a mass exoneration of all those convicted in the scandal, which would speed up the process of convictions being overturned, The Daily Telegraph understands, but are seeking advice from senior judges before announcements on next steps.

Just 93 sub-postmasters have had their convictions quashed and many are still awaiting full compensation.

Downing Street said yesterday that Rishi Sunak would “strongly support” a review into whether Paula Vennells, the former chief executive of the Post Office, should be stripped of her CBE.

At a press briefing, the Prime Minister’s spokesman was asked whether Fujitsu should pay for some of the compensation owed. The spokesman replied: “I’m unable to fully opine at this point. But obviously it should not be the taxpayer alone which picks up the tab for Horizon compensation.”

The remark comes amid mounting calls for Fujitsu to contribute in some form to the compensation.

Jonathan Reynolds, the shadow business secretary, told MPS: “If it is found that Fujitsu knew the extent of what was occurring there will have to be consequences that match the scale of the injustice.” Lord Arbuthnot, who sits on the Horizon Compensation Advisory Board, also calls for Fujitsu to pay up in an article inside today’s Telegraph.

Large amounts of public money is still being handed to Fujitsu, with the company awarded public sector contracts worth £3billion since 2013.

A Fujitsu spokesman said: “The current Post Office Horizon IT statutory inquiry is examining complex events stretching back over 20 years... and Fujitsu has apologised for its role.”

More than 100 new potential victims of the Post Office Horizon scandal have now come forward after an ITV drama about the issue. Neil Hudgell, a lawyer acting for former sub-postmasters, said his firm had heard from “in excess of an additional 100 people” since Mr Bates vs The Post Office aired last week.

To those who say “self-driving cars will be perfectly safe”, I ask: “Would you ride one that operates on Horizon?” There was an outbreak of new year unity in the Commons during a statement on the Post Office scandal – horror at the lives destroyed by a bug-filled computer system, disgust at the Post Office’s bizarrely ruthless persecution of innocent people.

Did the organisation not wonder, asked Peter Bottomley, why its sub-postmasters were “suddenly going crooked on that scale”?

Its zealous prosecution of 736 citizens makes one wonder if, instead of exchanging currency and selling stamps, we ought to put the Post Office in charge of the police service. Alas, I’m not sure we have enough jail cells to keep up with their sense of mission.

The Government and Labour both praised the ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office, which seems to have galvanised popular opinion.

Jolly good it was, too: a triumph of writing and acting. Its storyline, said Bottomley, illustrates “the titanic error of the belief in technology” – and for all of us wary of online banking, or the supposed security of social media, it confirms that relying upon something highly complex that few understand only leaves the punter more vulnerable.

There’s no replacement for keeping old-fashioned ledgers. In fact, after watching the Horizon drama, I’m tempted to start keeping my money under the mattress.

It was every moment of “computer says no” nightmare elevated to an epidemic, and how poetic that it took the very old-fashioned medium of television, that Elizabethan antique that sits in the corner gathering dust, to make us aware of the dangers that we face.

But the success of Mr Bates vs... is a “bittersweet” moment, said the SNP’S Marion Fellows – after all, some journalists and politicians have been hammering away at the issue for years, with scant attention.

I’m told that last time it was debated, the chamber was sparsely attended. On this occasion, the Tory benches were near-full, and about 30 Labour MPS dragged themselves away from din-dins to have their say – the Commons schedule having run into the evening because of an earlier, very long ding-ding about Israel.

The Gaza statement had been packed to the rafters with Lefties. Of course. I’ll never understand the Left’s obsession with injustices committed overseas in preference to the outrages being perpetrated by our own state against our own people.

Had one of the post offices been located on the West Bank, or the counter of a Whsmith in East Timor, the scandal would have been a socialist cause célèbre. John Pilger would’ve made a film about it.

Back to reality: how rare, and nice, to hear Labour’s Jonathan Reynolds compliment the Government’s Kevin Hollinrake’s handling of compensation for the victims. But then just as compassion unites the House, so does a tinge of guilt.

Why, some ask, didn’t Keir Starmer intervene in the Horizon scandal when he was director of prosecutions? Why did Ed Davey refuse to meet Alan Bates, the leader of the campaign, in May 2010?

The latter protests that he was lied to by the Post Office, but isn’t it the business of ministers to insist on contact with the public – to find out the facts for themselves?

It’s funny how the Lib Dems are still recovering from the trauma of their five minutes in government a decade ago, still haunted by their brief experiment in responsibility.

Oh, they’re very good at winning by-elections and knocking over polystyrene “blue walls”, but on this occasion they were as horribly “establishment” as everyone else.

David Davis, the eternal voice of reason, said the Government must “accelerate investigatory procedures of the real villains” – ongoing cases mean he couldn’t use names, but “we know who they are” – and several MPS observed that it might be time to question the honours received by people associated with the scandal. Sir Ed Davey did not attend the debate.

‘Its zealous prosecution of 736 citizens makes one wonder if we ought to put the Post Office in charge of the police’ ‘Had one of the post offices been on the West Bank, the scandal would have been a socialist cause célèbre’