According to information disclosed by The Telegraph, the Foreign Office warned Sir Tony Blair that canceling the Horizon plan would damage relations with Japan.
The former prime minister ordered officials to continue using the new Post Office IT system despite being told the system was “plagued by problems” and independent IT experts said the firm behind the system had “failed to meet good industry practice”. of the project.
Documents released by the Cabinet Office show Sir Tony’s decision came after Sir David Wright, the UK ambassador to Japan, warned that canceling the deal would lead to the collapse of the Japanese-owned firm building the system and would have “profound consequences”. For bilateral relations with Tokyo”.
Sir Geoff Mulgan, Sir Tony’s No 10 adviser and now professor of public policy at University College London, told The Telegraph that reluctance to strain relations with Japan “had a huge impact” on decision-making processes regarding Horizon.
The revelation raises new questions about the then Prime Minister’s decision to pursue the problematic plan Labor inherited from the Conservatives after coming to power in 1997.
Faults in the system caused problems for thousands of deputy postmasters for more than a decade and led to the biggest miscarriage of justice in British history.
A spokesman for Sir Tony said the UK’s relationship with Japan was “one of a number of factors” taken into account when he decided to proceed with Horizon but his “primary concern was the technical capacity of the system”.
Government documents show that in 1998 ministers and officials in the Labor government were concerned that Horizon was significantly behind schedule and was “plagued by problems”, according to Sir Geoff’s official memo.
A Treasury document titled “ICL Pathway: list of failures” submitted to the then prime minister on 22 April 1999 stated that “independent reviews of the Horizon project by external IT experts (most recently this week) have all concluded that the ICL Pathway has failed”. [the subsidiary building the system] “They have failed to move this project forward in both their software development efforts and process management and fail to meet good industry practices.”
The document stated that every version of the software released to date has been subject to “bugs and issues.”
But Sir Tony made clear that the project should not be shelved, and his chief private secretary Jeremy Heywood told ministers the following month that the prime minister wanted to avoid “putting the whole future of ICL at risk”. The government decided to move forward with a simpler version of the project.
It can now be revealed that the decision followed Sir David’s intervention, in which Sir Tony was warned that canceling the deal with Fujitsu-owned ICL would “lead to major internal difficulties within Fujitsu and the collapse of ICL”.
The warning came in an urgent message written in December 1998; at the top it read: “CABIN OFFICE PLEASE GO TO PS/NO 10” – a reference to Sir Tony’s private secretary in Downing Street.
Sir David warned that “we have a huge and potentially damaging problem ahead of us”. He described a meeting in which Fujitsu vice president and ICL president Michio Naruto expressed concerns about the risk of the Government withdrawing from the plan.
He said that Naruto had “repeatedly emphasized that the failure of the project would have serious repercussions on Fujitsu’s international standing, leading to major internal difficulties within Fujitsu and the collapse of ICL” and added: “Any threat to the continued viability of ICL would be detrimental to business in the region.” “It will have a profound impact on us.” For the UK and bilateral relations.
“The ripples created will damage both domestically and politically the UK’s strong position vis-à-vis its European rivals. Perceptions of moving away from the center of Europe through the single currency are already weakening this situation. “We can do this without any further problems.”
Sir Geoff said it was hard to overstate “how important Japan’s inward investment was in the 1980s and almost saved British manufacturing in the 1990s.” “So the stakes were quite high and that was definitely an important factor.”
He added: “Despite this, my advice is that I still considered it. [Horizon] It would have to be canceled and restarted. “I think Alistair Darling has a similar view.”
In early 1999, Downing Street made clear to ministers and officials that Sir Tony “was not seeking an outcome that involved leaving Horizon or ICL,” according to a former senior official at the business department.
A spokesman for Sir Tony said: “It is clear from correspondence published within the Government that, as prime minister, Tony Blair took very seriously the issues raised in relation to the Horizon contract, which were behind schedule when he took office but were vital for savings in the benefits system.” has importance.
“After Mulgan’s warning… Mr Blair wrote in that note: ‘1. I prefer the option [pressing ahead] but for Geoff’s statement that the system itself is flawed. Of course, there must be a clear view on this issue.
“Talk to me about this: so when you read the attached article everything focuses on the financial settlement. But the risks there are pretty even, probably decreasing towards continuation. The essence of the matter is the system itself.”
The spokesman noted a note from Mr Heywood saying the prime minister’s “only concern is that a workable system can be agreed that will actually deliver what the Government want”.
“There was an independent panel of experts who were asked to make a technical assessment of the viability of the project and this panel concluded that the project was feasible,” the spokesman added.
“Therefore, at every stage, matters were taken seriously and investigated… The implicit notion that Tony Blair received warnings and was ignored is absolutely wrong.
“It is now clear that the Horizon product was seriously flawed, leading to tragic and completely unacceptable consequences, and Mr Blair has deep sympathy for all those affected.”