Plans have been announced to replace Japanese software giant Fujitsu with £491million worth of new contracts handed out to run Horizon after the mammoth IT scandal
The Post Office is finally ditching the firm behind the Horizon IT scandal.
Japanese giant Fujitsu has been handed a series of lucrative contract extensions despite being slammed for its part in one of Britain’s biggest miscarriages of justice, in which hundreds of subpostmasters were wrongly convicted of theft and fraud. It has now been confirmed that outsourcing giant Accenture has been awarded a so-called “walk in and take over” deal to run Horizon.
Another company, One View Commerce, will be tasked with developing a replacement IT system in time. But while it marks the beginning of the end of Fujitsu’s controversial role, it is still expected be involved – and likely continue getting paid – until expected end date next year.
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The contract with Accenture, expected to be signed next months, is for an initial five years, with a possible two year extension, and worth £322million including VAT. The deal with One View Commerce could run for much longer, until 2038, at a cost of £169.2million.
The Post Office claims the awarding of the contracts will “transform technology” throughout its branch network. Interviewed by the Sunday Mirror last October, Post Office boss Neil Brocklehurst said: “I’d love to get off Horizon tomorrow but it isn’t just one thing, it is about 80 different odd bits of technology plumbed together.
“This is very, very complex, we have to move at the appropriate pace. What we can’t do is move too fast and break things and put us in a worse position than we are in now. The work is ongoing, we are going to move as fast as we can, but in a responsible way.”
An attempt to replace Horizon with a system built by IBM failed in 2016, at a cost of £40million. Since 1999, the Post Office has spent £2.5billion on contracts with Fujitsu, including more than £600million on extension contracts since attempts to find new suppliers started in 2012. That is in addition to other lucrative taxpayer-funded contracts.
Hero postmaster Sir Alan Bates said at the time it was “absolute madness” that Fujitsu was still raking in tens of millions of taxpayers’ cash while victims wait for compensation. Sir Alan, who was played by Toby Jones in the hit ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office about his decades-long fight for justice, said the dodgy Horizon system should have been replaced years ago.
“Haven’t we got any other software companies in Britain?” he added. “I do wonder at times what Fujitsu has to hold a gun to the government’s head all the time to get these contracts.”
Sir Alan, from Llandudno, north Wales, said it was for “Fujitsu’s conscience” whether it continued to take the money, and that “morally” it should already be contributing to postmasters’ compensation.
The Post Office said Accenture will work closely with it and Fujitsu to transfer the “knowledge, ways of working and key people to enable them to take over operation of the Horizon system”. At the same time, they will work to build the replacement systems to “deliver a modern solution that meets the needs of postmasters and our internal teams into the future”, it said.
And it confirmed: “Fujitsu will continue to support the Horizon system during the transition until their formal exit date.”
