Fujitsu will pay bonuses to UK staff this year despite the ongoing controversy around its involvement in the Post Office scandal and its delayed contribution towards the resulting costs.
The Japanese supplier has not committed to an amount it will pay towards the billions of pounds UK taxpayers have had to pay as a result of the scandal. Nor has it made an interim payment, despite repeated demands from campaigners.
Following information from a source about the latest staff bonuses, Computer Weekly contacted Fujitsu for comment.
A company spokesperson said: “We offer competitive packages to our colleagues across the country, which are benchmarked against industry standards. Our highly skilled workforce is focused on continuing to deliver critical services for the UK.” Fujitsu UK staff also received bonuses last year.
Peer James Arbuthnot, who has campaigned for justice for subpostmasters for over a decade and a half, said: “Fujitsu do, of course, have to pay their staff. But they also have obligations – which are financial, as well as moral – to give redress to the subpostmasters they have so dreadfully wronged.”
Arbuthnot, who last year demanded Fujitsu pay £700m in the interim, added: “It is high time Fujitsu management in Japan, as well as the UK, recognised that honour requires more than words and kicking the can down the road.”
In January 2024, in the immediate aftermath of ITV’s dramatisation of the Post Office scandal, Fujitsu’s then European boss, Paul Patterson, told a Parliamentary select committee hearing that the company was “morally obligated” to contribute to the costs related to the Post Office Horizon scandal faced by UK taxpayers. But more than two years on, it has still not paid a penny.
Patterson’s words were described as a hollow gesture by campaigners, including peer Kevan Jones.
Jo Hamilton, a former subpostmaster from Hampshire, who was wrongly convicted for false accounting, said: “Morally, the right thing to do would be to contribute to the Horizon carnage now, but they are a morally bankrupt company, so it doesn’t surprise me at all.” Hamilton had her wrongful conviction overturned in a landmark court case in April 2021.
The Fujitsu spokesperson said: “We are engaged with government regarding Fujitsu’s contribution to compensation.”
Astounding cost to UK taxpayers
UK taxpayers have funded over £1.5bn in financial redress to subpostmasters alone, with more still to come.
Taxpayers have also footed the bill for the Post Office’s huge legal costs. For example, a response to a freedom of information request from a campaigner known on X as Monsieur Cholet revealed that from 2020 up to and including 2025, the Post Office spent £83m with law firm Herbert Smith Freehills for support as its legal representative at the public inquiry, and £3m on its support for Post Office witnesses with their statements to the inquiry.
But legal costs associated with the Post Office scandal total much more, extending into hundreds of millions. It spent £100m of taxpayer money defending itself in the 2018/19 group litigation order, where a group of subpostmasters, led by Sir Alan Bates, proved the Post Office’s Horizon computer system was to blame for unexplained errors that subpostmasters were made responsible for. Taxpayers also funded the legal costs of subpostmasters who were victims of the scandal when making their compensation claims.
Then there is the public inquiry, which cost about £48m between 2000 and 2024 – the financial statement that covers 2025 has not yet been published. Taxpayers are also funding a nationwide police investigation, Operation Olympos, which is expected to cost over £50m.
Millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money was spent on replacing Fujitsu’s controversial Horizon system, much of it wasted on failed attempts as the Post Office, under huge public and government pressure, rushed into projects before the current plan was in place.
Due to delays in replacing the Horizon system, Fujitsu has continued to win contracts with the Post Office, also worth hundreds of millions of pounds.
Computer Weekly first exposed the scandal in 2009, revealing the stories of seven subpostmasters and the problems they suffered as a result of the Horizon system.
