Emergency Alert System: Fujitsu

Lord Cromwell Excerpts

Wednesday 19th April 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I do not have information on how many contracts Fujitsu plans to bid on, or indeed whether it will be successful in bidding for those contracts. All I can say is that we are pursuing the Post Office side of things extremely keenly, and I think we have moved from a very bad place into a better place with the plans for compensation. I note what has been said about Fujitsu, but I emphasise that the small contract we are talking about is very separate from the large and troublesome contract that we have all discussed on other occasions when we have been debating the awful circumstances of the postmasters, which, frankly, is probably the worst thing I have ever dealt with while I have been in government.

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

The Minister prays in aid the process of procurement, and that is quite right; let us leave aside for a moment the moral cases that some people have made. Is it not a standard part of procurement processes to have regard to performance on previous contracts by bidders? Other contracts, for example with the NHS, have been mentioned earlier in the comments this afternoon. If that is not part of our procurement process, surely it should be. If it is part of our procurement process, what on earth must the other bidders have been like?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

The noble Lord is right that we do not always get as many bidders as I would like in procurement, and one of the things we are trying to do in the procurement area is to broaden procurement so that we get more bidders. Having said that, of course he is right that those who are looking at contracts, both within departments and across government— because we have central assistance for procurement now—look at the track record of companies, but you have to do that in a fair way.