The figure being bandied about for the cost of the Post Office scandal is lowering expectations on Fujitsu, because it doesn’t include hundreds of millions of pounds in costs beyond the £1.8bn bill for compensating subpostmasters.
Described as a “parasite” on the UK government by Business and Trade Select Committee chair Liam Byrne MP, Fujitsu, which rakes in hundreds of millions of pounds’ worth of government contracts each year, faces a substantial bill for its central role in the Post Office scandal. However, the bill is unlikely to fully reflect the cost of its actions and inaction.
Fujitsu’s inaction is clear. It failed to speak out about Horizon problems in support of the Post Office’s position that there weren’t any, but it took action when the Post Office asked it to give evidence in court to support its wrongful prosecutions of subpostmasters, which were based on data from Horizon.
Amid all of this, Fujitsu has made billions of pounds through the Horizon project that has run for nearly 30 years. Not to mention a large number of other lucrative government contracts. Byrne said that through its refusal to pay anything so far, the IT supplier is behaving like a “parasite” on the British state.
But as the government prepares to serve the Japanese IT giant with a bill for its contribution to the scandal, MPs’ focus on the £1.8bn figure for subpostmaster compensation could lower expectations.
During a Business and Trade Select Committee hearing, this figure was referred to frequently when Fujitsu’s European boss, Paul Patterson, was questioned about the company’s financial commitment.
Byrne asked how much of the £1.8bn Fujitsu would pay.
Patterson and onlookers might take from the meeting that the amount Fujitsu will pay will be a proportion of the £1.8bn, but overall costs are much higher.
In March 2024, Byrne said Fujitsu should pay half the costs. But half of what? If we are talking a percentage of costs, it is important that all the costs are taken into account and not just the cost of subpostmaster compensation.
If the Post Office and Fujitsu are equally to blame and must pay half each, which, taking into account subpostmaster compensation only, that is £900m each. That is an eyewatering figure, but not nearly as eyewatering as the total cost of the scandal. Even adding some of the easily quantifiable costs, it is clear that taxpayers have paid hundreds of millions of pounds more.
Taxpayers on the hook for more
The Post Office’s legal costs as a result of the scandal exceed £250m. Then there are the public inquiry costs, which add up to about £50m, and the national police investigation into the scandal costs, which also equate to around £50m.
The Criminal Cases Review Commission’s important work costs the taxpayer money. And the Post Office’s restructuring meant hiring and firing – people have been let go at a cost (usually high in the public sector), and people have been hired at a cost.
Then there are the costs associated with the IT upheaval that has occurred following the decision to dump Horizon, which triggered the scandal. Replacement projects have come and gone, as has millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money, with nothing to show for it.
As an example, the Post Office’s New Branch IT (NBIT) project to roll out an in-house system was scrapped – after millions of pounds had been spent on it. The project was canned after a government report last year found that budgets had ballooned from £180m to £1.1bn, with implementation delayed by as much as five years.
Costs related to Horizon problems go back much further, however. Last year, Computer Weekly revealed that the Post Office paid IBM about £10m when it abandoned a Horizon replacement project in 2015.
As we stand today, in terms of the Post Office’s current Horizon replacement plan, it will pay nearly half a billion pounds in total for continued Horizon support, potentially until 2033 (Lot 1), and a 12-year contract with a new system provider (Lot 2).
Even the £1.8bn figure for financial redress is likely to grow. It has already. In January 2022, Computer Weekly broke news that the government set aside £1bn to settle financial claims, but things have changed since the Post Office scandal became famous.
Parasitic relationship
During the recent Business and Trade Select Committee hearing, Fujitsu was described as a “parasite” on the UK state, raking in billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money.
Fujitsu’s Patterson repeatedly stated that the supplier would not commit to a figure until Post Office scandal inquiry chair Wyn Williams had made his final report and apportioned blame.
Patterson said Fujitsu is not a parasite on the British state and suggested the government can walk away from contracts at any time. Apart from the fact that we all know huge, multi-year, even multi-decade, IT contracts, particularly in the public sector, are difficult to break away from.
Furthermore, parasitic relationships in the main see the parasite feed off and harm the host, but there are also instances where there is some mutual benefit. Could this be preventing the government from ditching Fujitsu or forcing it to pay more?
Fujitsu has not exactly been squeaky clean since the ITV drama put its malfeasance front and centre of public debate. It made a “hollow gesture” in promising not to bid for public sector contracts until the Post Office scandal public inquiry report, but this was so weighed down with caveats that the supplier continues to drain the public purse.
Furthermore, in April 2024, just weeks after imposing a public sector bidding ban on itself, Computer Weekly revealed that a senior leader at Fujitsu was instructing staff on how to get around the self-imposed restrictions.
Then, in October 2025, Computer Weekly revealed that earlier in 2025, just after Wyn Williams published his first “profoundly disturbing” public inquiry report, which included a suggestion that the scandal had caused 13 suicides, a senior Fujitsu executive told staff the report was “not that bad”.
Not that bad for Fujitsu, maybe. You couldn’t make it up.
During the Fujitsu meeting in July last year, the senior Fujitsu executive told colleagues it would probably be another year where Fujitsu does not “aggressively” go for new public sector business. Just a year of pain?
Time to take responsibility
I will close with comments made in October by campaigning peer James Arbuthnot, who at the time demanded Fujitsu pay £700m in the interim.
He said it was no surprise that Fujitsu is waiting until the last possible moment before responding. “It should stop kicking the can down the road,” he said.
“Fujitsu has caused great harm to thousands of people, and should pay a great amount to compensate for this. It is true that others were also to blame – Post Office managers, the legal system, accountants and the government. But the Horizon system was Fujitsu’s, and it was Fujitsu which was altering the subpostmasters’ accounts behind everyone’s backs and saying that it was not doing so,” added Arbuthnot.
“Fujitsu then colluded with the Post Office in securing miscarriages of justice,” he said. “I believe that it should pay half of the costs of this whole dreadful matter, including half of the redress for the subpostmasters and half of the costs of the inquiry. An interim payment now of £700m might begin to restore its reputation, but that should be a long-term process, not helped by its silence to date. It is in its interests to be proactive about this if it wants to be in good grace with the British people.”