‘Post Office Horizon scandal pushed me to brink of suicide

A former sub-postmaster from East Yorkshire says he was pushed to the brink of suicide by he Post Office IT scandal and has called for those responsible to face punishment. Gary Brown, 68, was wrongly accused of theft when his branch faced huge financial discrepancies created by the faulty Horizon software. He watched as hundreds of pounds go missing from their books, before the problem "spiralled out of control" and reached GBP32,000.

He claims that he was "forced" to admit he'd lost all the money and pay it back to the Post Office by selling his home for GBP125,000 less than its value - to avoid spending two years in jail. Now, Gary claims former Post Office chiefs have "blood on their hands" over the scandal, which has rocketed back into the public eye thanks to the ITV[1] drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office. Gary spent 14 years running a post office in the idyllic village of Rawcliffe, near Goole[2], with his wife Maureen, 66, while living in a six-bed home above the shop with their two kids.

He had cashed in his life savings to achieve his dream of taking over the branch in August 2000. That dream turned into a nightmare due to the faulty Horizon software system - which saw 736 branch managers wrongly convicted of theft or other financial offences. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has called the scandal "one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in our nation's history."

Today, Gary has to take up to 14 different pills a day to counter various stress-related illnesses, which he blames on the experience. He said: "Everybody is pointing the finger at [ex-Post Office chief executive Paula] Vennells, and she deserves everything she gets, but there were a lot more people involved.

"I'd weed them all out, but I don't think it's going to happen. It will cost too much money to do that. They've got blood on their hands, a lot of them.

They nearly had mine on their hands." Maureen, who saw her husband battle horrific health issues during the decades-long scandal, said there wasn't a punishment worthy enough for those responsible. She said: "People have died because of it, and [other] people have died not necessarily directly because of what's happened, but it has exacerbated it."

Having taken over the village Post Office in 2000, Gary initially enjoyed the work. "I loved it. The people were so friendly. I changed completely when I came to Rawcliffe.

I was a lot calmer. It was a brilliant atmosphere in that shop, I loved it." However, Gary, who left school with no qualifications and previously sprayed tanks for a living, immediately felt out of his depth while trying to master Fujitsu's Horizon IT system.

Then, roughly three years into owning the business, he noticed large losses mounting up on the software each time he would balance his weekly takings. "On a Wednesday, when we used to balance, more than once - maybe five, six or seven times - I was physically sick worrying about what was going to turn up. I was on the helpline, phoning them every day ...

I was just completely and utterly out of my depth. "When we went from balancing weekly to monthly, it went haywire then. That's when the losses started going really bad - hundreds of pounds at a time."

The couple were forced to cover the missing money through their pay cheques - meaning that there were times when they earned nothing in a month. Gary said the stress led him to try to take his own life by driving through a series of red lights in Doncaster in around 2010. He said: "I thought, 'I just can't take it anymore.' I remember thinking, 'If I pass away, Maureen will get some insurance money - I might as well just finish.' So I just put my foot down and went through two or three sets of traffic lights on red.

I can remember missing a lorry and then pulling over on some waste ground. "Then a lady came up to me and asked me how I was. I just sat there for ages, just crying my eyes out.

I couldn't see the end in sight. It was a lucky escape." By 2014, the missing balance on their account hit GBP16,000.

It jumped to GBP32,000 when Gary finally called in auditors. Internal investigators from the Post Office interviewed him and he was forced to "admit" that he did not know what had happened to the huge sums of missing cash. He was later told by a national union executive representative that the only way to avoid jail would be to sell his home and pay back the money as soon as he could.

Gary said: "We put the house on the market within days. We felt we had no option. "The pressure that you are put under is unbelievable.

When they were phoning me up, they didn't say, 'Mr Brown, have you got any news on the money, please?' "It was 'Have you got that money yet?' I said, 'Well, there's nothing we can do about it, it's going through the solicitors.' It was phone call after phone call all the time." The couple sold their home for GBP225,000 - GBP125,000 below its value - and the Post Office agreed not to pursue a legal case after they paid them GBP32,000.

They then bought a small 'two up, two down' home around 100 yards from their old property, which they had to fully refurbish. But the years of stress took their toll on Gary, who was left unable to work due to physical and mental health issues. He said: "I'm still suffering with depression, anxiety, fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue.

I'm on about 12 or 14 tablets a day for all the effects of it." Gary and Maureen were later awarded an interim compensation payment of nearly GBP32,000 from the Post Office. The pair put the money back into their local area by helping to launch a radio station, called Phoenix Community Radio, which now has 17 volunteers.

The scandal - which unfolded between 1999 and 2015 - was thrust back into the spotlight by the ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office, sparking a national outcry. Gary is not the only local sub-postmaster to have suffered. His Bridlington[3] colleague Lee Castleton said the scandal took him "as near death as I am ever likely to go"[4], while former Hull sub-postmaster Janet Skinner was wrongly convicted and jailed[5].

Gary said the TV drama's real-life former sub-postmaster Alan Bates, who helped raise awareness of the scandal, should be given a knighthood. He said of Alan: "He's been absolutely tremendous, and he shouldn't just get an OBE or MBE, he should get a knighthood for what he's done. He's saved a lot of people's lives."

Reporting by Douglas Whitbread of SWNS.

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References

1. ^ ITV (www.hulldailymail.co.uk)
2. ^ Goole (www.hulldailymail.co.uk)
3. ^ Bridlington (www.hulldailymail.co.uk)
4. ^ took him "as near death as I am ever likely to go" (www.hulldailymail.co.uk)
5. ^ was wrongly convicted and jailed (www.hulldailymail.co.uk)
6. ^ here (tinyurl.com)
7. ^ here. (bit.ly)