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Fujitsu boss has been a Post Office scandal bystander for over a decade

IT supplier’s European boss was kept up to date with challenges to the Horizon system, but like others, remained silent

Karl Flinders
By
Published: 06 Jan 2026 9:30

In at least 2013, Fujitsu’s current European boss, Paul Patterson, was part of a senior group of executives at the IT supplier monitoring and downplaying press coverage of challenges against the Horizon system.

Post Office scandal victim and campaigner Lee Castleton has called on Patterson, who faces MPs in a select committee meeting today, to stop being a “bystander” and be a “leader”. Another victim of the scandal, Jo Hamilton, said she expects the same “bullshit” from the likes of Patterson, as in previous hearings.

Patterson has form watching on and taking no action. An internal email from 2013, sent to him, now published by the Post Office scandal public inquiry, reveals Fujitsu’s ardent support of the Post Office’s position that Horizon was robust. It highlights the supplier’s leaders’ unwillingness to speak out or delve deeper to end what became the widest miscarriage of justice in UK history.

He was included in an email from 2013, where a member of the group described a Computer Weekly headline, which stated that an investigation into Horizon errors revealed concerns, as “alarmist”.

The current European boss, as well as the then UK CEO, Duncan Tait, received the email directly. Patterson joined Fujitsu in early 2010 in a senior sales role. He became European boss in 2019.

The email sent by Simon Carter, at the time a senior sales and marketing executive at Fujitsu, alerted senior executives to press coverage about the problems with Horizon.

The email played down concerns and is an early example of the internal culture at Fujitsu, which meant the Post Office scandal was able to unfold unchallenged. The correspondence, which was released by the public inquiry, read: “Folks. You may already have seen this, but there are (at least) two stories on the wires about the Post Office story. In both cases the headline is far more alarmist than the story itself.”

The Computer Weekly headline, Post Office Horizon system investigation reveals concerns, was for an article reporting an investigation into Horizon which revealed areas of concern.

According to a source, the attitude to play down the scandal remains today, as evidenced by comments made by recently departed sales boss Ron Abraham, when discussing the initial report of the Post Office scandal public inquiry, which was revealed by Computer Weekly. He was forced to apologise after describing the findings of the first Post Office public inquiry as “not that bad”, despite it linking the scandal to 13 suicides.

Getaway driver

Fujitsu has sat in the background for over two decades as the Post Office wrecked the lives of subpostmasters who had problems with the software they were forced to use. It only came forward when the Post Office needed support on its wrongful prosecutions of subpostmasters, which were based on unexplained account shortfalls appearing on Horizon.

In the 2013 Fujitsu email sent to Patterson, Carter wrote: “As you know from a media perspective, we have agreed with the customer that we will not comment on this story unless given permission to by them. But at this stage based on these articles, I don’t think we want to or need to.”

Fujitsu declined to comment on the email when contacted by Computer Weekly.

Read more: Fujitsu’s role in the Post Office scandal: Everything you need to know

Castleton, a former subpostmaster who was made bankrupt after being blamed for unexplained shortfalls, believes Patterson continues to fail in his duties to scandal victims.

“Patterson has been in a position now for much longer than any other head,” he said. “The Post Office CEO is new to the role, as is the minister. Patterson should be a leader, not a bystander. It is the same denial playbook. They denied faults, they denied remote access, they denied wrongdoing and they deny the damage they have done to innocents. 

“Playing the ‘I won’t admit anything’ card ‘until I have no choice’ is abhorrent and not the honest way forward. It’s integrity and honesty that is needed, not denial and obstruction.”

Hamilton, who was wrongly convicted of false accounting, is not expecting much from the select committee meeting today. “Nothing changes and nothing will,” she said. “None of them care, including Whitehall. We are naive if we think we can shame them into it.

“I was at the first select committee in 2015, and it’s the same bullshit answers and nothing changes.”

Carter’s email

Computer Weekly contacted Carter, the email’s author, who had previously worked at the Post Office. He did not recall writing the email, but he accepted it reads like an email he would have written.

“I was never made aware of anything that suggested a lack of robustness in the Horizon system … but that was not my role in the company – my role was to simply highlight media coverage as it came to light – on any topic,” said Carter.

He told Computer Weekly: “My choice of words should be seen in context. What I said in the email was that ‘the headline is more alarmist than the article’, by which I meant that anyone glancing at the headline would infer something more concerning than they would get from reading the whole article that was much more factual in nature.

“In no way was I seeking to make any personal comment about the issue in question – simply that the headline was strong, but the content was more in line with what has been reported elsewhere,” he added. “It was a factual statement by me.”

By this time, Seema Misra, Janet Skinner and many others had served prison sentences after wrongful convictions based on flawed Horizon evidence, and Sir Alan Bates and campaigning former subpostmasters had established the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance.

Carter said: “With hindsight, ‘alarming’ may have been a better word to have used than ‘alarmist’ [to describe the headline]. As you can see, the email appears to have been written at 10pm at night, so my choice of vocabulary may not have been perfect … for the avoidance of doubt, I have followed the media coverage like most UK citizens and am appalled by what is being reported as happened at the time. It is shocking and my heart goes out to every person affected by it.”

The Post Office scandal was first exposed by Computer Weekly in 2009, revealing the stories of seven subpostmasters and the problems they suffered due to the accounting software (see timeline of Computer Weekly articles about the scandal below).

Timeline: Computer Weekly articles about the scandal since 2009

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