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Outbyte Driver Updater FREEFix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Outbyte PC Repair FREERepair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →In a report published on 4 April 2022, Computer Weekly said Fujitsu had won two UK government contracts worth a combined £434m—£250m from HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) and £184m from the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO). The headline rounded that figure to £430m. The awards came while taxpayers were funding the financial consequences of the Post Office Horizon scandal and Fujitsu had not, at that point, been asked to contribute to compensation.
The later record is more complicated than either “business as usual” or “Fujitsu paid nothing”. Government departments continued using Fujitsu for technically dependent legacy services, including Horizon, while redress passed £1bn. By March 2026, Fujitsu had agreed to help fund a restorative-justice programme, but the government said that arrangement was separate from any eventual contribution to financial compensation.
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What were the £430m contracts?
| Department | Service | Reported value | Timing and source |
|---|---|---|---|
| HMRC | Replacement of an in-house service | £250m | Reported in late March/early April 2022 by Computer Weekly |
| FCDO | Networking and communications services | £184m | Reported in late March/early April 2022 by Computer Weekly |
| Total | £434m | Rounded to £430m in the headline |
Those two values are attributed to the 2022 report; the later official notices cited here do not independently reproduce them. A contract value is also not necessarily cash already paid: it can represent the agreed value over a contract term.
Computer Weekly also reported that, after including the two deals, government spending with Fujitsu since 2013 exceeded £3.5bn. Its figures included £3.1bn in public-sector contracts between 2013 and 2021, plus reported recent deals with HMRC, the Home Office and the Ministry of Defence. These are figures from that contemporary report, not a single audited total of all government payments.
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Why was Fujitsu at the centre of the controversy?
Fujitsu supplied the Horizon system used by the Post Office to record branch accounts and identify alleged shortfalls. The scandal involved wrongful prosecutions and convictions, financial losses, business failures and serious personal harm to subpostmasters. The statutory Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry is examining more than two decades of implementation, failures and decision-making.
It would be inaccurate to say that software defects alone explain every part of the scandal or that Fujitsu alone caused it. The inquiry covers the roles of Fujitsu, the Post Office, government, lawyers, executives and other institutions. Horizon was a central technical component in a wider institutional failure.
What was the taxpayer paying for in 2022?
Computer Weekly reported that, by January 2022, the Post Office had received more than £1bn in taxpayer subsidies for its Horizon compensation scheme. That was a contemporary figure and should not be confused with the later totals for redress, legal costs, operating support or any eventual amount recovered from Fujitsu.
By 9 June 2025, the government said more than £1bn had been paid in financial redress to more than 7,300 postmasters across several schemes. That milestone describes payments to victims; it is not the complete economic or human cost of the scandal and does not establish how liability will ultimately be divided between the state, the Post Office and Fujitsu. See the government’s update at gov.uk.
What did MPs and campaigners say?
In the 2022 report, Conservative peer James Arbuthnot argued that the government should take Fujitsu’s connection to the scandal into account. Labour MP Karl Turner said departments should not procure from Fujitsu until it guaranteed funding for compensation. Alan Bates, the campaigner and former subpostmaster, described the awards as astonishing and expected the government eventually to seek a contribution.
Those statements are political and campaign criticisms, not findings that the contracts were unlawful. The reporting is available in Computer Weekly’s original article.
Why did government work with Fujitsu after the scandal?
The official explanation is technical dependency rather than a clean bill of health for the supplier. Departments still relied on Fujitsu infrastructure, proprietary technology and operational knowledge while applications were being migrated or replaced.
HMRC’s £220.3m contract
An HMRC procurement notice records a £220.3m contract concluded on 19 June 2025 for data-centre and project services. It was awarded without prior competition, with one tender received. HMRC said it was migrating and replacing applications, but Fujitsu operated some of them on its own infrastructure and in its data centres. The notice cited technical continuity and Fujitsu’s intellectual-property rights: another supplier could not take over before the migration was complete. Read the notice and its detailed justification at Find a Tender and the notice PDF.
Horizon’s continuing extension
The Post Office’s 2025 notice extended the Horizon agreement from 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2027, with a possible further six-to-12-month extension. The stated reason was that procurement and transition to the replacement New Branch IT system were not complete. The notice is at Find a Tender.
An earlier notice described Horizon as a highly complex legacy platform containing five systems—financial services, banking, government services, mails and retail—and referred to transition support, access to specified Fujitsu intellectual property and an orderly transfer to new suppliers. See the 2021 notice.
Were the contracts illegal?
The sources available for this account do not establish that the two 2022 awards were illegal. Nor does the later HMRC notice say that its no-competition route was outside procurement law. It relied on provisions allowing a contract without a prior competition where only a particular operator could provide the service for technical reasons or to protect exclusive rights.
That legal explanation answers how the later contract was procured, not whether the government made the best policy choice. It leaves separate questions about supplier-risk assessments, migration planning, value for money, public confidence and the leverage available when seeking redress.
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Has Fujitsu paid compensation?
In the April 2022 context, the answer reported by Computer Weekly was no: Fujitsu had not been asked to contribute to the compensation bill.
The position had changed in one respect by the government’s March 2026 update. Fujitsu, the Post Office and the Department for Business and Trade agreed to jointly fund and support a restorative-justice programme for up to five years. The government expressly said that Fujitsu’s financing of that programme was separate from its contribution to financial compensation, which would be agreed after the Williams Inquiry reported. The update is published at gov.uk; the distinction is also explained in the government’s redress announcement.
As at 16 August 2026, no final Fujitsu compensation sum is established in the cited government material. Restorative-justice funding must not be presented as the same thing as compensation paid to redress financial losses.
What has changed since the 2022 story?
- Redress has grown: the government reported more than £1bn paid to more than 7,300 postmasters by June 2025.
- Dependence continued: HMRC awarded the £220.3m 2025 contract on technical-continuity grounds, and Horizon remained under Fujitsu arrangements through March 2027 while replacement work continued.
- Inquiry recommendations moved into implementation: the government published its response to Volume 1 of the inquiry report and maintains a recommendations dashboard at gov.uk.
- One redress route closed: the Horizon Shortfall Scheme closed to new applications on 31 January 2026 after its deadline was extended for vulnerable claimants. The government’s update is at gov.uk.
- Restorative justice was added: Fujitsu joined a government and Post Office funding arrangement, while the separate question of financial compensation remained unresolved in the cited update.
The wider procurement problem
Why continuity can be rational
- Critical services may depend on proprietary infrastructure, software and intellectual property.
- Immediate termination can create security, operational and migration risks.
- Official notices state that some services could not be transferred before replacement systems were ready.
Why “business as usual” remains troubling
- Large new awards can undermine public confidence in government accountability.
- Supplier lock-in may weaken negotiating leverage over compensation and remediation.
- Departments must show that supplier conduct, resilience and reputational risk were considered—not only technical compatibility.
- Repeated extensions can turn a temporary bridge into long-term dependence.
The evidence supports a criticism of dependency and accountability, not a blanket claim that every Fujitsu contract could have been cancelled instantly. The central policy question is whether government allowed legacy systems and weak transition planning to leave it with no credible short-term alternative.
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“Fujitsu bags £430m” describes a real April 2022 story, not a new 2026 award. The reported contracts totalled £434m, and they were announced while taxpayers were carrying the immediate financial consequences of Horizon. Since then, government spending and Horizon extensions show that technical dependence continued, even as the inquiry and redress programmes advanced.
The fairest conclusion is therefore two-sided: continuity may have been operationally necessary, but necessity does not settle the accountability question. Fujitsu’s later restorative-justice commitment is significant, yet it is not a published final compensation settlement. Until procurement, migration and liability are fully resolved, the Horizon scandal remains a test of whether government can both operate critical infrastructure and hold its suppliers to account.
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