The Fujitsu-led consortium, which includes Liz Truss ally Shanker Singham’s firm Competere, has raked in more than £500 million since 2020 developing and operating the platform, which helps firms navigate the complicated post-Brexit customs arrangements between Great Britain and Northern Ireland under the Windsor Framework.
While a new supplier will be taking control of TSS, Fujitsu retains the intellectual property rights to a core part of the existing platform, four people with knowledge of the process — including those cited above — confirmed. This means the new system will have to be built from scratch.
All of those cited in this story were granted anonymity to speak freely.
There have been calls for Fujitsu to be stripped of its public contracts while sub postmasters affected by the scandal await full compensation. In August, more than 32 MPs and 44 peers wrote to U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, urging him to block the firm from bidding for control of the TSS platform.
In October, the government accepted all but one of the recommendations from Wyn Williams’ inquiry into the scandal, published in July, which concluded that at least 13 people may have taken their own lives after being accused of wrongdoing.
There has also been public scrutiny over the running of TSS. Cabinet Office Minister Nick Thomas-Symonds told lawmakers earlier this year he was investigating industry concerns about the service. “We are concerned to hear reports that the Trader Support Service is not providing a good quality of service,” cross-party peers on the Northern Ireland Scrutiny Committee wrote in an October report.