Lord Stockwood (Lab)

I share and acknowledge the noble Lord’s passion for the subject. Accountability for Fujitsu will be rooted in evidence and due process. Wyn Williams’ inquiry is the proper mechanism for establishing what went wrong and who is responsible, and for the financial commitment. Fujitsu has acknowledged a moral responsibility to contribute to the costs of that redress, and Minister McDougall met with the European CEO in December last year and, in the recent Select Committee, the CEO confirmed the commitment to follow that moral responsibility with financial responsibility. To the secondary question about government contracts, Fujitsu rightly said that it will not be applying for new government contracts unless the Government ask it to, where those services are necessary. In researching this question, I imagined this would come up: the Government have 68 live contracts with Fujitsu in some critical services, which include HMRC’s self-assessment tool and the Home Office’s border control systems. Walking away from these contracts instantly would do serious damage to important public services, so this is not a viable option. However, it has committed to the new software for the Post Office being completed in the middle of next year. If we were to stop that software service today, all postmasters would have to close. That is not pragmatic, unfortunately.