Fujitsu received £110m from HMRC in six months despite the Post Office scandal

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Fujitsu did receive approximately £110 million from HM Revenue & Customs between April and September 2025, according to government spending figures reported by Computer Weekly. But the figure represents reported HMRC expenditure across multiple services—not one £110 million contract, Fujitsu’s profit or proof that HMRC simply ignored the Horizon scandal.

The payments show a more difficult problem: HMRC remained dependent on Fujitsu for live infrastructure, hosting, software support and legacy systems while attempting to migrate to replacement arrangements.

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What the £110 million figure actually means

The reported total covers the six months from 1 April to 30 September 2025. It should be described as payments or expenditure recorded by HMRC, rather than money Fujitsu “made” in the sense of profit.

The available evidence does not establish that the amount was:

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• a single contract award;
• entirely new business;
• all cash paid on the dates shown in transparency returns;
• inclusive or exclusive of VAT in every component; or
• the total paid to every Fujitsu group company, subsidiary or subcontractor.

HMRC’s transparency returns generally publish transactions above a £25,000 threshold, so the published data should not automatically be treated as a complete record of every transaction. Contract value, invoice value and cash paid during a reporting period can also differ.

The defensible conclusion is narrower: government spending figures showed HMRC payments to Fujitsu totalling approximately £110 million over six months.

What HMRC paid Fujitsu for

The payments covered a range of operational and technology services, including desktop services, physical hosting, infrastructure, tablet computers, software licences, software support and project work.

HMRC’s April 2025 spending return contains multiple Fujitsu entries under categories such as “IT Software Licenses and Support”, “Physical Hosting and Infrastructure” and project work. The September return likewise records payments for project mandays and software licences and support.

That mix matters. A monthly supplier payment can be a routine invoice under an existing arrangement, a payment under a newly awarded contract, or part of a temporary transition. The six-month total alone cannot distinguish those categories for every transaction.

The major new commitment: a £61.25 million CESA bridge

One clearly documented component of HMRC’s Fujitsu relationship was a three-year bridging contract for hosting and associated services for the Computerised Environment for Self-Assessment, known as CESA.

CESA is used in the collection of income tax from self-assessment taxpayers. HMRC’s procurement notice records a contract value of £61,250,958 excluding VAT, concluded on 19 June 2025. A possible six-month extension could raise the value to approximately £71.5 million excluding VAT.

The Find a Tender notice describes the arrangement as a bridge while HMRC migrated to replacement arrangements. It says CESA relied on Fujitsu’s proprietary Modern VME environment and was considered critical national infrastructure. The notice records only one tender.

This was not presented as a permanent decision to keep Fujitsu in place indefinitely. It was a continuity arrangement intended to keep a tax-collection system operating during migration.

Why HMRC could not simply switch suppliers

Legacy technology creates a practical constraint that is easy to miss in a headline about procurement. If a supplier operates an application on its own infrastructure, using proprietary software, intellectual property and specialist knowledge, another contractor cannot necessarily take over the next day.

A separate HMRC procurement notice for data-centre and project services explains that some applications remained hosted on Fujitsu infrastructure and used Fujitsu intellectual property. It says replacing the supplier before migration was complete was not technically practicable.

That rationale can be operationally and legally defensible. Abruptly removing the incumbent could interrupt tax collection, damage data integrity or create a greater risk to critical services than continuing temporarily.

It still leaves important accountability questions:

• Why had HMRC become so dependent on a proprietary environment?
• How long had migration been planned?
• Was the bridge genuinely temporary, with a funded and dated exit plan?
• Were prices benchmarked or independently assured?
• Could competition have been introduced earlier?
• Did HMRC assess the reputational and public-confidence risks after the Horizon findings?

The procurement notices explain the technical dependency. They do not, by themselves, prove that the prices represented the best value available or reveal all of HMRC’s internal risk assessments.

The Horizon contradiction

Fujitsu’s continued role at HMRC became politically and ethically uncomfortable because the company was central to the Post Office Horizon scandal. Problems in the Horizon system contributed to wrongful prosecutions and devastating financial and personal consequences for subpostmasters.

Computer Weekly has reported that the Horizon contract generated more than £2.5 billion over more than 25 years. It has also reported that taxpayer-funded financial redress to subpostmasters exceeded £1.5 billion by May 2026. Those figures provide the wider context for why new public payments to Fujitsu attracted scrutiny.

But the connection must be stated accurately. HMRC’s payments were not compensation payments, and the evidence does not show that HMRC breached procurement law merely because Fujitsu was involved in Horizon. Nor does Fujitsu’s role in Horizon prove that every HMRC system it supported suffered equivalent defects.

The real contradiction is about public confidence: the state was funding redress for victims of a scandal involving Fujitsu while another government department continued paying Fujitsu to operate important systems.

Was the £110 million avoidable or unlawful?

The available evidence does not justify either a blanket defence or a blanket accusation.

A fair assessment would examine each contract and payment against eight tests:

1. Operational necessity: Was the service needed to keep tax collection or another critical system running?
2. Technical dependency: Did the system rely on Fujitsu-owned infrastructure, software or intellectual property?
3. Availability of alternatives: Could a different supplier take over safely at that point?
4. Migration planning: Was there a credible timetable for exit?
5. Competition: Was the arrangement competed, extended or made through a permitted single-supplier route?
6. Value for money: Were rates negotiated, benchmarked and independently reviewed?
7. Supplier risk: Did HMRC reassess Fujitsu after the Horizon evidence and public inquiry?
8. Proportionality: Did continuity risks outweigh the reputational and governance concerns?

A one-tender procurement is not automatically unlawful or “uncompetitive” in the everyday sense. It may reflect a lawful procurement route where only the incumbent can safely operate a proprietary system during a transition. However, technical lock-in is itself a procurement-governance issue. It can reduce future competition and give the incumbent leverage over pricing and timelines.

HMRC’s general position, reported by Computer Weekly, was that it follows government procurement rules and seeks value for money. HMRC declined to comment directly on the specific award at the time. The published notices provide the continuity rationale, but not every detail needed to independently judge HMRC’s commercial evaluation.

There was a retreat from Fujitsu—but not an immediate ban

The story is not that Fujitsu kept every HMRC contract. In December 2025, HMRC awarded the replacement Trader Support Service contract to Netcompany UK Limited.

The award notice was published on 17 December 2025 and records a contract concluded on 16 December. Its value was £245,186,136 excluding VAT, covering an initial five-year term with options for two further 12-month extensions. The Contracts Finder record lists a start date of 16 December 2025 and an end date of 15 December 2032, including the stated extension structure.

Fujitsu losing that contract demonstrates that HMRC was replacing selected services. It does not demonstrate that Fujitsu’s entire HMRC relationship ended, that all government departments excluded the company, or that the earlier payments were automatically improper.

The more accurate picture is a gradual transition: Fujitsu remained embedded in some legacy services, bridging arrangements continued where replacement was difficult, and other major services were retendered or awarded to competitors.

What taxpayers still do not know

The six-month figure answers the basic question—whether substantial HMRC payments occurred—but leaves several issues unresolved:

• How much did HMRC pay Fujitsu across the complete 2025–26 financial year?
• Which payments were routine invoices and which followed new awards or extensions?
• How much of the £110 million was paid to Fujitsu Services Ltd rather than another group entity?
• What proportion was subject to VAT, and how was the six-month total calculated?
• When will CESA and other Fujitsu-dependent systems fully migrate?
• Did HMRC conduct a formal supplier-risk review after the Horizon findings?
• Were rates renegotiated in light of the reputational and operational risks?
• What portion of the spending was unavoidable because of legacy lock-in?

Those questions are more useful than asking only whether Fujitsu was “milking” HMRC. The payment data shows continued public spending. The procurement notices show why some spending continued. The remaining issue is whether HMRC had allowed a temporary technical necessity to become a long-running commercial dependency.

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