Post Office: Tory donor and ex-Fujitsu chief’s undeclared lobbying ties revealed

My investigation last week forced government to change Simon Blagden’s register of interests. Now I can reveal he has not declared another lobbying firm whose clients won public contracts

A Conservative donor and former director of Fujitsu UK who sits on the board of a government health agency has not declared his ownership of a lobbying firm that represents clients that have won major NHS and other public contracts, this newsletter has found.

Simon Blagden was described by Fujitsu as a member of its leadership team. He left the firm in 2019, just months before hundreds of sub-postmasters won a two-year High Court legal battle against the Post Office.

Last week, I revealed that Blagden had been a paid lobbyist for a broadband company that has won £400m in contracts from Building Digital UK since Blagden was made chair of the government digital agency in June 2022. The Tory donor is paid £80,000 a year for two days a week in the role.

There were no entries for Blagden in BDUK’s register of interests. The agency added his lobbying interests to the register after my investigation. 

Now it emerges that Blagden has not declared all his lobbying interests with another government agency, the UK Health Security Agency, where he is a board member.

UKHSA’s register of interests does not include Blagden’s ownership of Larkspur International, which boasts of helping clients “to navigate the shortest distance between your outcomes and the governments and organisations on your radar” and works for firms that have won lucrative government contracts, including with the NHS.

Blagden joined the advisory board that oversees UKHSA as an unpaid non-executive in April 2022. At the time, Larkspur was a paid lobbyist for Healthcare Communications. 

The Macclesfield-based company was given more than £1.8m in contracts by NHS Trusts across the UK during the more 18 months that Larkspur lobbied on its behalf.  

Larkspur currently lobbies for Pegasystems, a US firm that won several government and NHS contracts, including, in November, a £23m Home Office contract for software to detect fraud and error in benefits payments. 

Serious problems in relying on algorithms to spot fraud have been identified elsewhere. (Including in the Post Office scandal.)

Larkspur’s former clients also include Exponential-E, a US tech firm that has won hundreds of millions of pounds in UK government contracts.

It is understood that UKHSA board members are responsible for declaring potential conflict of interests.

Labour MP Liam Byrne, who chairs the Business and Trade select committee that Fujitsu and Post Office executives appeared before this week said that “once again we have individuals who are lobbyists and Conservative Party donors appointed to public bodies - but then ‘forget’ to declare things that must be on the public record. Its simply not good government.”

Former shadow chancellor John McDonnell told me that ​"If true this failure to comply with basic declaration of interest procedures is shocking and warrants independent investigation and report to Parliament.”

Blagden has been a non-executive director of Larkspur since August 2020. He currently owns 19 per cent of the company, according to documents filed at Companies House.

Larkspur has the same Essex address as another lobbying firm that Blagden owns, Avre Partnership. Roughly half of Bladgen’s £400,000 in donations to the Conservatives have been made through Avre.

Susan Hawley, executive director at Spotlight on Corruption, said: “It seems very clear that owning a lobbying company whose clients win public contracts would be high up on the priority list to declare and this raises real alarm bells about whether conflicts of interest are being managed properly across government.”

A UKHSA spokesperson said: “Mr Blagden is an unpaid associate non-executive member of the UKHSA advisory board. He was appointed along with two other individuals in April 2022 as part of establishing the new board, in line with routine appointment processes overseen by the UKHSA chair.”

A spokesperson for Larkspur International said Blagden “is not directly involved in the daily operations of the business. As such he has not been involved in any meetings to represent Larkspur or its clients.”

Today Fujitsu - which has been heavily criticised for its role in the Post Office scandal - announced that it has suspended bidding for UK public contracts pending the conclusion of a public inquiry into the Horizon scandal.

Blagden has previously denied any involvement in the Post Office scandal and has pointed out that Post Office Horizon software was provided by Fujitsu Services, a separate organisation with a separate board from Fujitsu Telecommunications UK.

As well as roles at Building Digital UK and UKHSA, Blagden is also listed as a trade advisor at the Department of Business and Trade and as "industry chair" of PICTFOR - "the largest and most active All-Party Parliamentary Group.”

The APPG has received hundreds of thousands of pounds in corporate funding in recent years, including from Facebook, Huawei, TikTok, CityFibre and Fujitsu.