MPs on the Treasury Committee are requesting that 21 public sector organisations, including the Royal Mint, the Bank of England and the Financial Conduct Authority, disclose details about any contracts that they have granted to Fujitsu since the Post Office computer scandal in 2019. In the scandal, prosecutions were wrongly brought based on Fujitsu’s faulty Horizon IT system. The extent to which taxpayers’ money has been spent on the company is being scrutinised. One estimate believes that Fujitsu has secured over £4bn of business from the government in the past five years, even after the defects involving Horizon were revealed.
Only 93 wrongful convictions were eventually overturned from the scandal, and thousands of victims have still not received compensation settlements. In November, the government announced plans to exonerate and compensate victims, following an ITV drama about the scandal that generated public outrage. Fujitsu has expressed regret for its involvement and said that it will not bid for further government contracts until the public inquiry into it is completed.
Harriett Baldwin, who chairs the Treasury Committee, says the public outcry was fully justified and that Fujitsu has many questions to answer. Baldwin has stated that it is critical that they can see the extent to which taxpayer funds have been spent with Fujitsu since the High Court’s ruling because the company is simultaneously evaluated on its fitness to continue doing business with the government. The letter from the MPs calls for a response within a fortnight and requests details on the value of the contracts, if they passed through an open competition, the extent to which the company’s role in the scandal was taken into account, and whether contracts were cancelled at any stage
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