Fujitsu should be banned from all UK government contracts, according to the Post Office scandal’s oldest victim.
Former subpostmaster Betty Brown, who turned 93 today (13 January), made the call after watching Fujitsu’s European boss, Paul Patterson, appear at a recent Business and Trade Select Committee hearing.
During the meeting, Fujitsu was described by an MP as a “parasite” on the British state. The supplier, which is at the centre of the Post Office scandal, makes billions of pounds from government IT contracts, but has yet to pay a penny towards the huge costs of the scandal.
Brown, with her late husband Oswall, ran branches in Stanley, County Durham, from the 1980s. Between them, they had 79 years of service to the Post Office, but they lost their branch in 2003 after using their savings to cover unexplained shortfalls showing on Fujitsu’s error-prone Horizon system.
She called on the government to stop giving Fujitsu any form of work.
“Enough is enough,” said the former subpostmaster, who recently received an OBE. “Fujitsu should stop being permitted to be involved in any new state contracts, in whatever form, until it has settled with the subpostmasters and their families. And any contract extensions or renewals should be likewise banned.”
“Two years ago, Paul Patterson volunteered to curtail Fujitsu from bidding for further work – yet this commitment has been conveniently forgotten, and in the meantime, Fujitsu have found all manner of ways of quietly continuing to take on state contracts.”
Read more: Fujitsu’s role in the Post Office scandal: Everything you need to know
In March 2024, for example, soon after Fujitsu’s self-imposed ban on bidding for UK government contracts, Computer Weekly revealed leaked internal communications that showed Fujitsu was still targeting about £1.3bn worth of public sector contracts in the UK over 12 months. Further leaked documents revealed that Fujitsu instructed staff on how to get around its self-imposed ban.
It won nearly £500m worth of UK public sector contracts in the financial year May 2024 to April 2025, despite the self-imposed ban on bidding for government contracts instigated in January 2024.
Photo: AB Brown“Enough is enough. Fujitsu should stop being permitted to be involved in any new state contracts until it has settled with the subpostmasters and their families. Contract extensions or renewals should be likewise banned”
Betty Brown, Post Office victim
In a leaked recording of a meeting in July 2025, a senior Fujitsu executive confidently said he expected things to get back to normal for the supplier’s UK public sector business. He told colleagues it would probably be another year where Fujitsu does not “aggressively” go for new public sector business.
He told them that because Fujitsu has been winning business in the UK public sector for a long time, it knows lots of people and understands the domain.
Brown said: “I have to ask, when is Fujitsu going to get off the pot? After all, it was Fujitsu who designed and sold this incompetent Horizon system to the Post Office.”
Last week, Post Office scandal victim and campaigner Lee Castleton called on Fujitsu boss Patterson to stop being a “bystander” and act like a “leader”.
Former subpostmaster Jo Hamilton, who was wrongly convicted of false accounting after encountering problems with Horizon, voiced her belief that nothing would change. “Nothing changes and nothing will,” she said. “None of them care, including Whitehall. We are naive if we think we can shame them into it.”
Computer Weekly first exposed the scandal in 2009, revealing the stories of seven subpostmasters and the problems they suffered as a result of the Horizon system (see below a timeline of all articles since 2009).