A Tory donor and former director of the tech giant implicated in the Post Office scandal was rewarded with a job running the government’s broadband rollout – three years after his old firm was found to be at fault.

Simon Blagden, who stepped down as non-executive director at Fujitsu UK in 2019, was made chair of the government agency responsible for delivering faster broadband and mobile coverage in 2022.

More than 900 postal workers were wrongly convicted of false accounting and fraud by the Post Office between 1999 and 2015 because of faulty software developed by the Japanese company.

Blagden left Fujitsu UK, where he was described by the company as a member of its leadership team, just months before 555 sub-postmasters won a two-year High Court legal battle against the Post Office.

The judge in the case found Fujitsu’s Horizon software – used to manage transactions, accounts and stocktaking – had been defective, and referred Fujitsu to the director of public prosecutions for possible criminal investigation.

A former senior developer who worked for Fujitsu on the Post Office IT system told ComputerWeekly in 2021 that he had made his superiors aware of bugs at the time and urged them to scrap it – but that they chose to launch it anyway.

Yet in 2022, three years after the court ruling, Blagden was appointed chair of Building Digital UK (BDUK) by then digital secretary Nadine Dorries, who praised his “wide breadth of experience” including 14 years working at Fujitsu. Blagden is being paid £80,000 for two days a week during his four-year term as chair, according to the government’s announcement.

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology today said Blagden had been "in no way involved" with the Post Office scandal.

The appointment means Blagden is now responsible for overseeing a £5bn government programme aimed at supporting the rollout of gigabit broadband to areas that would not be commercially viable.

Since 2005, Blagden and companies he is closely associated with have donated £376,000 to the Conservatives. These include two firms where Blagden and his wife were the only directors: Pietas Ltd, a firm that Blagden was a director of from 2000 until its dissolution in 2020, and Avre Partnership Limited, where Blagden and his wife have been the only directors since 2014.

Blagden personally donated £5,000 to the Tories in 2020, according to the Electoral Commission political finance database.

His reward with a lucrative public post in the midst of an ongoing public scandal will likely raise eyebrows with the justice campaigners who secured the promise of quashed convictions and payouts, as well as an ongoing public inquiry into the miscarriage of justice.

Blagden, who also served as a non-executive chair of the smaller Fujitsu Telecommunications sub-company, was awarded a CBE for services to the economy in 2016. By that time, an independent investigation commissioned by MPs and campaigners had already concluded that possible miscarriages of justice had occurred as a result of Fujitsu’s software.

Blagden was also made a member of the UK Health Security Agency advisory board in April 2022.

openDemocracy approached Blagden for comment through Larkspur International, where he is a director, and has not yet received a response.

Profits before people?

After Fujitsu was referred to the director of public prosecutions, the case was handed to the Metropolitan Police. The force launched an investigation into perjury in January 2020 and interviewed two former Fujitsu employees who had acted as expert witnesses – but no charges were brought.

Fujitsu executives will face questions from MPs at an inquiry into the Post Office scandal next week over whether they put “profits before people”. Government minister Kevin Hollinrake has said the Japanese company should pay compensation to victims.

Fujitsu said it was “fully committed” to supporting the inquiry into the Horizon IT scandal.

“The inquiry has reinforced the devastating impact on postmasters’ lives and that of their families, and Fujitsu has apologised for its role in their suffering. Fujitsu is fully committed to supporting the inquiry in order to understand what happened and to learn from it. Out of respect for the inquiry process, it would be inappropriate for Fujitsu to comment further at this time.”