Fujitsu and its no public sector bids promises... what happened to them?

Government procurement process is very involved

Comment It's easy to miss £125 million ($166 million). It could happen to anyone. Take Paul Patterson, for example. In January 2024, the director of Fujitsu Services Ltd emailed the UK government's commercial arm to confirm the Japanese tech services provider would pause bidding for public sector work after the Post Office Horizon scandal became public knowledge.

The scandal is one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in recent British history, and had recently been the subject of an ITV drama. It remains the subject of a public inquiry.

Fujitsu has said it continually told the Post Office about problems with Horizon, the computer system at the heart of the story, as its client prosecuted branch managers for accounting discrepancies that were in fact due to errors in the system.

On January 24, Patterson confirmed an earlier commitment made to Gareth Rhys-Williams, the government's chief commercial officer.

"... there is no limitation or caveat on our intention to pause bidding for work with new government customers until the Inquiry has reported... We would only bid for work with a new government customer if asked to do so," he said, according to a letter [PDF] to the Cabinet Office from Dave Riley, head of UK public sector, dated February 2024.

Imagine Patterson's surprise, then, when he learned that at the time he wrote the letter, Fujitsu was bidding for work with a new government customer, and continued to do so with no pause.

Last week, its efforts bore fruit with the award of £125 million from the Northern Ireland Department of Finance's Land and Property Services. Fujitsu won the job to create a new solution to replace an ageing, standalone land registry system, which was built by BT and was in operation since 1999.

In the letter describing Fujitsu's "voluntary action" to stop bidding for government work, Riley made clear two exceptions.

It said that “where it wishes to do so,” Fujitsu might “submit bids in respect of re-procurement exercises by existing government customers for similar goods and services where Fujitsu is the incumbent” and that it may “where appropriate, agree to the extension of existing contracts for Fujitsu goods and services.”

But the Northern Ireland Department of Finance’s Land and Property Services was not an existing customer and the contract was not an extension of an existing deal with Fujitsu. The department told The Register accepting Fujitsu’s bid was allowed by procurement law, but did not say whether it has specifically asked the company to continue bidding – which would have fallen under the "We would only bid for work with a new government customer if asked to do so" caveat.

Like The Register, Patterson and Riley must be keen to hear an explanation describing how, given its earlier commitments, Fujitsu was able to continue bidding for the Land and Property Services work in a competition which began in December 2021.

Luckily, a spokesperson was on hand.

“So the key reason here is that the procurement process started in 2022. The commitment from Fujitsu referred to new bids, partly as the government procurement process is very involved and requires resource commitment from both them and any prospective suppliers,” the spokesperson told us.

Patterson and Riley must be as surprised as The Register to learn that Fujitsu had not, in fact, committed to “pause bidding for work with new government customers,” as their communications with the Cabinet Office made clear five times. Instead, unbeknownst to them, they had only committed to stopping the launch of new bids.

Obviously, any existing bidding work with new customers must also be included in the exemptions, even though Riley’s letter didn’t mention that caveat.

It must be due to the consideration of resources. Nobody likes to waste resources. It can cost hundreds of thousands of pounds, maybe millions, to bid for large government contracts. The risk of losing that much money brings things into focus. Just like the risk of losing a house, business, or entire livelihood must feel, as perhaps Patterson would have understood when he met subpostmasters, some of whom had been wrongfully accused of stealing in prosecutions supported by Fujitsu.

In August 2014, Julie Beisner, a former sub-postmistress who met with Patterson, told Sky News he had told her he would be "super transparent" going forward.

On the subject of resources, it is fortunate that the British taxpayer seems to have enough of them to continue to pay Fujitsu for the system which failed so disastrously. A March 2025 extension to that Horizon contract has brought the total award to Fujitsu to £2.44 billion ($3.2 billion) so far.

In January last year, Patterson started his evidence to the public inquiry by saying sorry. "Fujitsu apologizes and is sorry for our part in this appalling miscarriage of justice,” he said.

If only Fujitsu had been so clear when it said it would pause bidding for government work. ®