The Post Office requested a four-year extension of its controversial Fujitsu Horizon system contract as the IT supplier’s European boss arrived to give evidence at the public inquiry examining the system’s role in the widest miscarriage of justice in UK history.
Paul Patterson, Fujitsu’s head of Europe, told the Post Office scandal public inquiry that any Horizon contract extension must be as short as possible and said he does not trust the Post Office.
At the inquiry hearing yesterday (11 November), Patterson’s second appearance, he was asked about the anticipated extension to the Horizon contract between Fujitsu and the Post Office.
He said the first request, for a five-year extension, came in December 2023, and there have been various requests since. “This morning, as I walked into this building, I had another request, which was for four years. So this continues to move around,” he told the public inquiry.
In April 2021, the Post Office announced that it was preparing for the end of the Horizon agreement with Fujitsu, adding an extra year to support its transition to a new system. In May 2023, it set 2025 as the target date for the completion of the project. But in April this year, Computer Weekly revealed that a further extension of the Horizon contract was inevitable.
Patterson told the inquiry he is “encouraged by” the new leadership at the Post Office who, he said, “appear to be getting more understanding and clarity on what the actual business requirements from the Horizon system will be”.
But he said he has major concerns about the continued use of the Horizon system, which has reached its “end of life”, adding that long extensions might not be possible. He said some parts of Horizon are so old Fujitsu doesn’t want to turn them off as it is uncertain what would happen if it did.
“I am very worried about it. [The extension] needs to be for the shortest possible time because this system is not meant to be continuing and it has not had any material investment for the last four years while the intention has been on the New Branch IT (NBIT) system or versions of NBIT,” said Patterson. “It is difficult to know if three, four or five years will be possible.”
Computer Weekly revealed in May this year that a review by government project management experts at the Infrastructure and Projects Authority rated the NBIT project as “currently unachievable”, with budgets ballooning from £180m to £1.1bn and implementation being delayed by as much as five years.
Last month, Computer Weekly revealed that the Post Office’s new leadership is now reviewing its project to build the NBIT software in-house and could opt for an off-the-shelf alternative. Escher is said to be the option that came out top during the bidding process, although it was rejected in favour of the in-house build option.
One major controversial aspect of the contract is about to end. In February 2025, the organisations will complete the migration of all Horizon data, including historic data, from Fujitsu to in-house Post Office systems. This means the Post Office will not need to ask Fujitsu for data to support investigations into subpostmasters with unexplained account shortfalls.
The Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry is now in its seventh and final phase, focusing on the Post Office’s current practice and procedure, as well as recommendations for the future.
Computer Weekly first exposed the scandal in 2009, revealing the stories of seven subpostmasters and the problems they suffered due to Horizon accounting software, which led to the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British history (see below timeline of Computer Weekly articles about the scandal since 2009).