by The Foreign Office has warned Sir Tony Blair that scrapping the Horizon scheme would damage relations with Japan, the Telegraph can reveal.
The former prime minister ordered officials to press ahead with the Post Office’s new IT system despite it being said to be “plagued with problems” and independent IT experts having found the a firm behind “failing to comply with good industry practice” in its handling. of the project.
Documents released by the Cabinet Office show that Sir Tony’s decision came after Sir David Wright, the UK ambassador to Japan, warned that the Japanese-owned firm building the system would fail and would have “major implications … for bilateral ties” with Tokyo.
Sir Geoff Mulgan, Sir Tony’s Number 10 adviser and now a professor of public policy at University College London, told the Telegraph that the reluctance to strain relations with Japan had a “big impact” on Horizon’s decision-making.
The revelation raises fresh questions about the then Attorney General’s decision to continue the troubled scheme, which Labor inherited from the Conservatives after coming to power in 1997.
Flaws in the system have caused problems for thousands of sub-postmasters for more than a decade and resulted in the biggest miscarriage of justice in British history.
A spokesman for Sir Tony said Britain’s relationship with Japan was “one of a number of factors” considered when he decided to go ahead with Horizon, but his “main concern was the technical capability of the system”.
Government documents show that in 1998 ministers and officials in the Labor government were concerned that Horizon was lagging behind and, according to an official note from Sir Geoff, was “problematic”.
A Treasury document submitted to the then Prime Minister on April 22, 1999, entitled “ICL Pathway: list of failures” stated that “independent reviews of the Horizon project by external IT experts have concluded ( latest this week) that ICL Pathway. [the subsidiary building the system] that they have failed and are failing to achieve industry best practice in taking this project forward, in their software development work and in their management of the process.”
All versions of the software released so far have been subject to “bugs and problems”, the document said.
But Sir Tony made it clear that the project must be scrapped, and Jeremy Heywood, his principal private secretary, told ministers the following month that the prime minister was trying to “jeopardize the entire future of ICL” avoid The Government decided to proceed with a ready version of the project.
Now it can be revealed that the decision came after an intervention by Sir David in which Sir Tony was warned that the cancellation of the agreement with ICL, which Fujitsu owns, would lead to “major internal difficulties within Fujitsu and the collapse of ICL”. .
This warning came in an urgent dispatch written in December 1998, which stated at the top: “COUNCIL OFFICE SHOW UP TO PS/NO 10” – a reference to Sir Tony’s private secretary in Downing Street.
Sir David warned that “we have a big and potentially damaging problem on our hands.” He described a meeting where Michio Naruto, vice-president of Fujitsu and chairman of ICL, expressed concern about the risk of the Government withdrawing from the scheme.
Naruto said he “repeatedly pointed out that the failure of the project will have serious consequences for Fujitsu’s international position, will lead to major internal difficulties within Fujitsu and the collapse of ICL”, adding: “Any threat to the continued viability of ICL would be with major implications for UK jobs and bilateral ties.
“The ripples that would be created would damage politics at home and the strong position of the United Kingdom here in relation to our European competitors. This is already being undermined by perceptions that central Europe is moving beyond the single currency. We can do without more trouble.”
Sir Geoff said it was hard to overstate “how important Japanese investment was in the 1980s, and in the 1990s, it almost saved British manufacturing. So the stakes were pretty high, and that was definitely an important factor.”
He added: “It was my suggestion, despite that, I still thought [Horizon] should be canceled and started again. I think Alistair Darling had a similar attitude.”
According to evidence from a former senior trade department official, in early 1999 Downing Street made it clear to ministers and officials that Sir Tony was “not looking for an exit outcome from Horizon or ICL”.
A spokesman for Sir Tony said: “As was fully demonstrated by the correspondence published within the Government, Tony Blair as prime minister took seriously the issues raised about the Horizon contract, which was behind schedule in the past he took office but he considered. critical to savings in the benefits system.
“After Mulgan’s warning … Mr Blair wrote on that note: ‘I would favor Option 1 [pressing ahead] but for Geoff’s statement that the system itself is flawed. There definitely needs to be a clear view on this.
“Talk to me about that: ie reading the enclosed paper, it all focuses on the financial market. But the risks are quite fair, probably coming down on the side to continue. It is the system itself that is at its core.”
The spokesman quoted a note from Mr Heywood saying that the Prime Minister’s only concern was to agree a viable system that would deliver what the Government really wanted”.
“An independent panel of experts called for a technical assessment of the viability of the project, which concluded that it was viable,” said the spokesperson.
“So at every stage the issues were taken seriously and investigated … The implicit idea that Tony Blair received warnings and ignored them is wrong.
“It is now clear that the Horizon product was seriously flawed, leading to tragic and completely unacceptable consequences, and Mr Blair has his deepest sympathies with all those affected.”
