The Times view on the Post Office scandal: System Failure
Ministers continue to reward Fujitsu despite its role in the Horizon affair. It is time the firm was made to pay its share of compensation
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At last those responsible for the Post Office scandal — the biggest miscarriage of justice in British history — are to be held accountable. Police are now investigating allegations of fraud by the state-owned firm, whose intransigence forced postmasters to make up phantom shortfalls caused by its faulty Horizon IT system out of their own pockets. Paula Vennells, its chief executive throughout the period it issued false denials that the software was faulty, may soon lose her CBE.
Yet Fujitsu, which provided and managed Horizon — whose rollout to 20,000 post offices amounted to the biggest non-military IT contract in Europe — has hitherto escaped censure. It is time it too was made to pay for the countless lives ruined between 1999 and 2015, and
