Son blames Post Office bosses for suicide of his father

The son of a postmaster who killed himself after he was wrongly accused of stealing said he ‘100 per cent’ blames the Post Office for his father’s suicide.

Martin Griffiths, who died aged 58, had run his branch in Cheshire for 14 years before shortfalls appeared in 2009. He was ‘hounded’ over £100,000 of ‘missing’ money while suffering from depression – and his son Matthew, 37, said this is why Mr Griffiths, threw himself in front of a bus in 2013.

He told the BBC‘s File on 4: ‘I 100 per cent completely blame the Post Office.’

The public inquiry into the issue will begin in London this morning. The Post Office said it is ‘doing all [it] can’ to address the scandal for the victims. 

The postmaster was one of over 3,000 victims wrongly accused of taking money from their own tills, when a glitch in the computer system, called Horizon, was actually to blame.

Some served jail sentences, others were left financially destitute and at least four are believed to have taken their own lives.

Horizon, which was used by the Post Office for tasks such as transactions, accounting and stocktaking, was first introduced in 1999 and problems started appearing shortly afterwards.

Sub-postmasters complained about bugs in the system after it reported unexplained shortfalls, some of which amounted to many thousands of pounds.

But Post Office bosses ignored the warnings, systematically persecuted its own staff and then spent tens of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money defending its assertion the Horizon system was ‘robust’.

Following a series of damning judgments bosses finally capitulated in December 2019. The cost to the taxpayer of the scandal in legal fees and compensation is now expected to swell to £1billion.

Martin Griffiths bought his post office in 1995 and unexplained shortfalls in his branch accounts started appearing in 2009.

They quickly blew a huge hole in his life savings as he ploughed more and more into the system to balance the books – but it was to no avail.

Between January 2012 and October 2013 a £57,000 black hole appeared in his accounts without explanation, forcing Mr Griffiths to turn to his parents. In total the family paid more than £100,000 to the Post Office.

To make matters worse, two armed robbers wearing balaclavas attacked his branch in May 2013, smashing his hand with a crowbar and stealing £54,000 from the safe.

The Post Office showed little sympathy, sacking him two months later on the basis that he had failed to manage his accounts or the branch’s security properly. They even said he was culpable for some of the stolen cash.

The news sent him into a spiral of depression. In September, at the age of 58, he stepped in front of a bus, leaving a note apologising to his family and telling them he loved them.

Matthew Griffiths told BBC File on Four: ‘The Post Office was constantly chasing my dad and hounded him for money. He became a shadow of his former self. He just had no sort of passion to do anything. I couldn’t even recognise him by the end.

‘He drove to work on this normal route, pulled over into a layby and waited for a bus to come past and stepped out in front of it.’

Mr Griffiths was placed into an induced coma for three weeks before the doctors recommended turning off the life support machine.

An inquest held in September 2013 found Martin intentionally took his own life.

Two years later Martin’s widow, Gina, was pressured into signing a gagging clause in return for an undisclosed settlement.

She was given just a few hours to read a report on her late husband’s case and consider a cash offer. She agreed, leading to claims she was silenced.

The Post Office said: ‘We are in no doubt of the human cost of the Horizon scandal and are doing all we can to fairly address this for victims.’

Over 70 postmasters have seen their convictions overturned, and a third of the 2,300 applicants to a compensation scheme have received offers of cash.

This weekend Post Office bosses pledged that all postmasters claiming under its compensation scheme will receive offers by the end of the year.

Around 900 of the 2300 applicants have been made an offer, the post office confirmed.

File on 4: A First Class Scandal is broadcast tomorrow at 8pm on BBC Radio 4.

Postal victims’ payout offers by December 

All victims of the Post Office’s IT scandal will receive compensation offers by the end of the year, bosses have pledged.

Chief executive Nick Read said that ‘good progress’ was being made with the scheme, which hands payouts to postmasters wrongly convicted in the Horizon fiasco. Around 900 of the 2,300 applicants have been made an offer, the Post Office confirmed.

The Government has been forced to fund the compensation bill as the Post Office’s sole shareholder – with the total expected to run past £1billion.

Hundreds of postmasters were bankrupted, jailed or driven to suicide after being wrongly accused of stealing from their tills between 1999 and 2015.

In fact the money that seemed to be ‘missing’ was as a result of glitches in the company’s computer system.

Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, Mr Read also said the Post Office was ‘historically too insular and too remote’ which let down ‘too many of its postmasters’.

Referring to the public inquiry into the IT scandal, which starts today, he added that testimonies from affected postmasters would make for ‘uncomfortable listening’ for the Post Office.

He continued: ‘For the postmasters concerned, giving this evidence will be hard. They have already endured much. There will be difficult memories to raise… But we need to hear it.’