How does Fujitsu have so much power over the governments (Labour and Tory)?
Fujitsu provides IT services to government departments including the Home Office, Foreign Office, Defra and the Ministry of Defence.
Contracts include the Police National Computer, the Government’s flood warning system and the national emergency alerts system launched last year.
In August, the Mirror revealed Fujitsu had been handed a £1m contract to provide computer services for HS2.
In 2002, Fujitsu was one of the lead contractors on the NHS’s Programme for IT to digitise records.
But the scheme failed at a cost of at least £10billion to the taxpayer, according to the National Audit Office.
In 2011 the contract was terminated, with the NHS claiming the systems did not work.
The company then sued the Government for £700million.
A clause in its deal meant that disagreements went to the London Court of International Arbritation, a privately run arbitrator.
Accounts suggest the firm got all but £71m of its claim.
In 2015 Fujitsu won a five-year deal worth over £550million to modernise MoD telecoms called ModNet Evolve, one of two contracts that would “bring savings of £1billion which will be directly reinvested by the MoD in defence capability”.
Four years later the system was £210m over budget and two years behind schedule, while a report warned “cost and time overruns could well worsen”. The problems the contract was meant to resolve have still not been eliminated, with a Public Accounts Committee report last year assessing the system as “unachievable”.
In 2019, Fujitsu took the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to the High Court because the FCO awarded a £350million IT outsourcing contract to its rival, Vodafone.
The four-year ECHO 1 deal was to supply voice and data services to 550 embassies and other British government posts in 170 countries.
Fujitsu also wanted “damages reflecting the loss of profit”, “wasted bid costs”, interest on damages and costs the court awarded plus a court order to oust Vodafone. Fujitsu won.
The FCO cancelled Vodafone’s deal and gave one to Fujitsu in 2021.
In 1998, the Government signed a contract with ICL/Fujitsu for a new IT system to streamline more than 300 magistrates courts.
The 10-year deal was worth £146million but the firm was unable to deliver a system that operated properly. An independent review in February 2002 found Fujitsu had made “too many mistakes”, including a poor analysis of requirements and unrealistic cost estimates. It also noted frequent personnel changes.
But Fujitsu demanded even more money and threatened to withdraw from the project.
The firm ended up being given a new government contract for £390m over eight years, for doing less than the original scheme and no longer even delivering the core software.
