The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Post Office ‘robbed us of mother’ s final years’
AFife woman said she believes her mother was “targeted” by Post Office bosses after she raised concerns about their faulty IT system.
Mary Philip, who ran the post office at Auchtermuchty, was wrongly accused of stealing money and suspended by auditors in 2006.
In fact, she had been pumping tens of thousands of pounds of her own money into the business to cover alleged shortfalls.
Yesterday her daughter – also called Mary Philip – told a public inquiry in Glasgow that her mother died in 2018, aged 83, before the catastrophic failures of the Horizon IT system were exposed.
“She died not knowing, but she was correct all along,” said Ms Philip.
“I think my mother would have been relieved, probably delighted to have been vindicated.”
Victims of the Horizon scandal have told the inquiry how their lives were devastated by the software system.
Introduced in 1999, the computer set-up led to hundreds of subpostmasters and subpostmistresses being faced with unexplained losses, which they were obliged to make good on.
Ms Philip told the inquiry she and her mother ploughed approximately £70,000 back into the system. They had to take out loans and borrow from family members.
“There was some months when I was struggling to pay my own mortgage at home,” she added.
She said her mother, a former police officer, initially blamed herself when the office computer kept showing discrepancies.
Ms Philip, who worked with her mother at the PO counter, said: “Every time she had a shortfall she would report it. She told them there was an issue with Horizon.
“And every time she was told: ‘Well, nobody else is having a problem’.
“They said that someone in your family was probably taking money out of the safe during the night.”
The inquiry heard that Ms Philip began sleeping with the post office keys under her pillow.
Asked by Jason Beer QC, counsel to the inquiry, why she did this, she replied: “I had teenage children and I didn’t want them accused of robbing the safe.”
Mr Beer said “matters came to a head” one morning in summer 2006, when auditors arrived.
“They demanded to be let in,” Ms Philip said. “They went straight to the cash drawer.
“The night before there had been a £94 shortfall and my mother had written a personal cheque to cover it.
“She thought she was doing the right and honest thing.
“But this cheque was taken as proof of false accounting and she was immediately suspended. She was told she would be better resigning.”
Ms Philip said her mother walked out and headed to her car.
“One of the auditors actually chased after her and told her she wasn’t being prosecuted because of her age. He said it quite aggressively.”
Asked how her mother was affected by the accusations, Ms Philip said: “She was devastated. She knew she had done nothing wrong.”
The day after her mother was suspended, the branch was taken over by post office staff.
“We had to listen to the locals speaking about us,” Ms Philip said.
“Some of them were very vociferous in their condemnation because the moment pensions stopped being paid out, the village gossip machine started up.”
She heard comments such as “thief” and “fraudster”.
“They robbed us of the final years of what remained of my mother,” she added.
“I think I’ve come to the conclusion that my mother was targeted by auditors because she was making such a noise about the Horizon system.”
The inquiry continues.