WITNO1200100
WITNESS: MARY MCCRORY PHILP
STATEMENT NUMBER: WITNO120_01
EXHIBITS: WITN0120_04/1 to WITNO120_01/7
DATED: 6" May 2022
POST OFFICE HORIZON IT INQUIRY
FIRST WITNESS STATEMENT OF MARY MCCRORY PHILP
1, MARY MCRORY PHILIP will say as follows:
A
1. On September 19, 2001, I, Mary McCrory Philp and my mother Mary Logie
purchased the Post Office at 26-28 High Street,
Auchtermuchty, Fife KY14 7AP. This was via a mortgage for the building and
goodwill of the Post Office branch and the associated general and fancy goods
store. It included a three-bedroomed home above the commercial premises. At
the same time a legal partnership of Mary McCrory Philp and Mary Logie Philp
was registered in the courts. In addition, I, Mary McCrory Philp, was an executor
of my mother’s estate. She was the Sub-Postmistress from September 19,
2001, until 2006. She died on January 6, 2018.
2. My mother was to be Sub-Postmistress and I worked in the shop and behind
the PO Counter. I was expecting to be made redundant from my job as.a
journalist at the Daily Express. However, this did not happen and I organised
the shop’s newspaper delivery service and things like the moming bread roll
delivery before going to my full-time job, working behind the PO counter on
days off and Saturdays.
3. My mother therefore was trained in situ whilst the PO was open and operating
by staff from the PO's Scotland HQ. She was given five full days’ training and
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told by her trainer to rely on the PO helpline following that. I attended a PO
National Lottery/Horizon training course in Hamilton, North Lanarkshire when
the Lotto was introduced to Post Offices. The training given was helpful only up
to a point, and certain aspects of the Horizon System remained unexplained,
rendering our questions and queries unanswered and misunderstood.
. Within weeks of us taking over, the branch began to record shortfalls of varying
amounts from a few pounds to thousands of pounds. Very occasionally, the
branch would record a surplus of within £10-£20, but the vast majority of
incidents recorded shortfalls. The weekly ‘tally’ as it was called, was on a
Wednesday and that rapidly became a dreaded day of the week. The tally
would be run again and again into the small hours of Thursdays and when there
were shortfalls, the missing amounts were never the same twice.
. Firstly, my mother thought she hadn’t been trained properly and demanded that
staff attend at the branch to try to discover what she was doing wrong. The staff
instructed her to re-run the process and to scan everything in again, which was
time consuming. These visits were usually only for a day, or part of a day, and
after about three of them over the space of a couple of months, they concluded
they could see nothing wrong and she was told she was on her own. When the
shortfalls continued, she rapidly concluded that there was something wrong
with the Horizon system. She told the PO repeatedly that they needed to check
Horizon but was told nobody else was reporting the same.
. As early as September 2001, she was contacting the Postmasters’ Federation
local representatives repeatedly by phone and asking if anybody else was
having the same problems but was also told she was on her own and was made
to feel like they believed she was taking cash. I recall with 90% accuracy that
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the local representative for our area was the Sub Postmaster based in the
nearby town of Lundin Links.
7. On the last visit by PO HQ personnel, she was told that her family must be
taking money from the branch safe. The result was either my mother or I
sleeping with a huge bunch of keys under our pillows. In desperation my mother
hired a private detective in the hope that he could find others having Horizon
problems. Nobody he approached admitted having any. He offered to try to find
someone who would speak about Horizon at Fujitsu, but the cost was
prohibitive given the shortfalls having to be covered. She consulted our family
solicitor, Cameron McKenzie at a firm called Smith & Grant, who noted her
concerns. Fast-forward to 2021 and he told me he had another client with the
same problems but could not divulge that at the time due to client confidentiality.
What effect did these issues have on your relationships with your family,
friends, colleagues, and local community?
8. I moved out of the PO accommodation with my three children after the PO
suggested that one of the family must be taking cash from the safe and added
an extra 30 minutes on to my already long days. The situation caused immense
stress for my mother and for me. The frustration of nobody being prepared to
listen, the absence of being able to prove it was Horizon that was causing the
shortfalls and the inference that we were stealing took its toll on everyone’s
health and family relationships. In particular my mother had been a police
officer. She was brought up strictly by a Victorian father and she was honest
and proud and concerned with her reputation all her life.
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What were the consequences of being required to make good apparent
shortfalls shown by the Horizon IT System?
9. We managed to cover the shortfalls but the financial consequences of making
good the shortfalls were huge. Money was borrowed from family members, two
loans were taken out and left partly unpaid, money from the attached shop was
put in and I was handing over large chunks of my salary. I earned around £2000
per month at the time. The shop’s stock levels suffered. The PO salary covered
the business mortgage and bills, but paying the shortfalls meant nothing was
left over. I had difficulties paying the mortgage for my own separate home due
to paying into the PO. In loans and borrowings from family and banks there was
£56,000 accrued between 2001-2006. Other amounts were paid to the PO from
salaries and shop takings.
How were you affected when alleged to be responsible for shortfalls or
discrepancies shown by the Horizon IT System?
10. The allegations from PO HQ staff were terrifying. My mother, in particular, was
very badly affected by the accusations, inferences and the complete injustice
of the situation. She was unable to sleep and often reduced to tears on
Wednesdays when the weekly reckoning hit. I can remember the gut-wrenching
feeling of dread going to the branch on a Wednesday after my work. Would
there be a shortfall? How were we going to pay it? How was my mother going
to be as a consequence?
What were the consequences of being held responsible for shortfalls and
discrepancies shown by the Horizon IT System?
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11. The final consequence came early one Thursday morning. I think this was in
Summer 2006 (PO records would confirm). PO HQ auditors arrived at the
branch around 7.30am. They demanded to be let into the branch. They
immediately went to the cash drawer. The night before there had been a £94
shortfall and rather than stay up half the night and re-run the tally my mother,
honest as ever, wrote a £94 personal cheque and put it in the drawer, thinking
she was making sure the branch was not suffering a cash shortfall. That,
however, was her downfall. She was immediately told she was suspended,
because it was taken to be proof that she was mis-accounting and fraudulently
making good money she had withdrawn from the PO. I recall her walking out of
the branch and crossing the road to her car and being chased across the road
by an auditor (I cannot recall his name). She was told aggressively the only
reason she was not being prosecuted was because of her age (65).
12.Thursday was pension day. The branch remained closed and very quickly
rumours began to circulate because the pensioners could not collect their
money. When the branch re-opened there were PO HQ staff behind the counter
and we had to run the shop being looked at and whispered about and
sometimes, openly challenged and called names “thief” “fraudster” “how could
you do that, robbing our village Post Office...” it was horrific, and the fact that it
was a small village made everything much worse. Within a month or so, the
franchise was passed on to a local mini supermarket, and the retail business
disappeared as it had been entirely intertwined with the PO. My mother, at her
own cost, hired an architect, and the property was subsequently sold with
planning permission to make the whole building domestic. It was the worst thing
that happened to my mother in her long life, apart from the death of my father
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aged 36. If it was ever spoken about she would be in tears, or close to them.
She did not work again. She never got over being wrongly accused.
What effect did it have to be accused of committing criminal offences
because of shortfalls and discrepancies shown by the Horizon IT System?
13.The Post Office purchase was originally to replace my employment as a
newspaper journalist. My mother had retired from her business as a florist but
was bored and enjoyed being at the centre of a community. She was branded
a thief and a fraudster, humiliated and because of this did not work again. She
could easily have carried on working for at least another 10 years if not more.
When I was not made redundant, I carried on with my journalism career and it
was decided that the PO would be my retirement plan — either by continuing the
business or selling it. We were robbed by Horizon of not only the immediate
shortfall cash, but by loss of salary, loss of business, loss of property and loss
of reputation. Had I not been able to continue with my journalism career, we
would not have survived the financial effects of what Horizon and the PO did to
us. Auchtermuchty is a thoroughfare to the M90 motorway which leads to the
Forth Bridge and to Edinburgh and Glasgow and the south from Fife. To date I
have used country roads to by-pass it because I still feel the effects of the
humiliation of wrongful accusation and the unjustified judgement of the
community there, brought about by the PO and Horizon. These feelings will
never leave me.
Further details specific to financial loss and compensation
14.The cost of making good, alleged shortfalls shown by Horizon:
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(i) Amounts paid from profits, savings or other business — many thousands
from the salary, shop and my personal unassociated salary. (I cannot
guess the figure).
(ii) No deductions were made by PO because all shortfalls were paid,
(iii) I Bank loans amounted to £36,000 taken out by family members
(iv) I £20,000 was loaned to us by a family member from their own savings.
Thousands were taken out of the shop and the Post Office salary. I put
thousands of pounds into shortfalls from my own salary.
(v) No assets were sold to make good shortfalls
15.Financial losses caused by action taken against you in reliance upon Horizon
data:
(i) Sale of branch — property was sold with Planning Consent to turn the
entire building into a domestic property. There was loss of the business
goodwill. The mortgage was settled, with no profit. The cost of an
architect and legal fees was approx.£1500 which would have been a
loss.
(ii) The PO salary was £26,000 and loss of earnings for 10 years, which my
mother would have worked for, is £260,000. The shop would have
reasonably traded at a profit of £20,000 or more — loss for 10 years is
£200,000. (All assuming I did not carry the business on).
(iii) I The family member who took out loans of £36,000 was unable to keep
up payments. We were unable to pay the loans and as a result there was
a default of £18,000. That family member, who was 18 years old at the
time, has never been able to obtain a mortgage or credit as a result.
(iv) Interest payments unknown.
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(v) There were no legal defence costs as criminal proceedings were not
brought (because my mother was considered by PO to be too old to be
jailed, they said).
Compensation — The Historical Shortfall Scheme
16.1 was unaware of the Historical Shortfall Scheme. The PO has said that it
contacted all those affected by Horizon. However, my mother had been dead
for 21 months on August 14, 2020, when the scheme closed. The short three-
month window it was open for was during a serious Covid-19 lockdown which
only allowed people in Scotland out of their home for essential reasons. That
meant a quick visit to a supermarket once a week for me. Therefore, I was not
buying newspapers on a daily basis and did not see any newspaper advertising
about the scheme. I do not know if the PO adverts appeared in the Scottish
editions of newspapers. I was watching the news on TV much more than I
usually would, but the Historical Shortfall Scheme did not appear amidst wall-
to-wall Covid coverage.
17.Post-lockdown I saw an article from an executive of the Postmasters’
Federation appealing for information about the Horizon system. I emailed the
Federation and was sent the application form. I was told to go ahead and apply
and fill in the details to the best of my ability and not to worry about paperwork.
I was initially concerned that with no paperwork, I had no way of proving what
had happened. I was told the PO held all the information about branches and
the Human Resources history of former sub-postmasters. Keith Richards of the
Federation told me that they were trying to work out what to do about the
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“stragglers” like me to have them accepted into the scheme. See email
correspondence (Exhibit WITN0120_01/1).
18.1 submitted my form in the first week of May 2021. See Email correspondence
with the Post Office Historical Shortfalls Scheme (Exhibit WITN0120_01/2). I
heard nothing until the first week of July 2021. To my dismay I was told that I
was time-barred from applying. It says: “In order to ensure that we are able to
progress those applications within the scheme in a fair and timely manner, we
are unable to accept any further applications into the Scheme. We do recognise
that this will likely be disappointing news for you but hope that you understand
the reason for our decision and wish you all the best.” See email
correspondence with the Post Office Historical Shortfalls Scheme dated 15 July
2021 (Exhibit WITN0120_01/3).
19.My stance on this is that they stole our money. They destroyed my late mother’s
life. We lost a great deal of cash through, in my view, the criminality of the PO
hierarchy and the Horizon System changed the path of our lives. We were not
the thieves, the PO was. They took our money literally with menaces — pay or
be criminalised, suffer financial and mental and reputational ruin. I replied
asking exactly where they had sent the notification of the scheme to, (see my
email reply to Post Office Historical Shortfalls Scheme dated 15 July 2021
(Exhibit WITNO120_01/4)), and sometime later, they gave my late mother’s
address which had been sold nearly two years earlier (see email reply from the
Post Office Historical Shortfall Scheme dated 4 August 2021 (Exhibit
WITNO0120_01/5)). I do not know which system they used to trace victims, but
as a journalist I do know that they must have used a defective tracing
system/company and would be bold enough to suggest they paid far too much
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for it. Any tracing agency worth its salt would have discovered my mother was
deceased and the property sold.
20.A while later I was sent a further email saying that my case was being reviewed
(see email correspondence with the Post Office Historical Shortfall Scheme
dated 28'" September 2021 (Exhibit WITN0120_01/6)), but I remain unsure if
that means they are considering if it will be looked at by them despite being
apparently time-barred or whether they are considering whether to accept it or
not. I contacted my MP, Peter Grant, who has asked many Written
Parliamentary Questions about how many people have been excluded due to
missing the application window. I met for a meeting with him via Microsoft
Teams on August 2™, 2021. I have been told a definite 172 applicants were
rejected, and that there is a possible 195, that it was not proving easy to pin the
number down with ministers/the scheme. He also raised my case in the
Commons during a sub-postmaster debate and asked the minister to agree no-
one should be excluded. He has written to the minister and awaits an answer.
So, I do not know if I am being considered by the Historical Shortfall Scheme.
21.The exclusion adds the ultimate insult to injury. I am the angriest I have ever
been in my life at the injustice. Whilst I appreciate my mother was not made to
suffer in jail the inhumane way she was treated by the PO put her in a prison of
shame and humiliation and injustice for the rest of her life. Without my MP and
his team and their dogged determination to represent my position I would feel
completely isolated from any hope of justice. I have agreed to every request to
participate in media coverage here in Scotland to try to further the message
that nearly 200 of the Horizon victims have been wronged again by the PO by
being told they will not even have their case considered — because of the
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scheme’s failure to trace them and an inadequate advertising campaign when
people were unable to leave their homes to buy newspapers in the midst of a
pandemic lockdown, I have asked for Senior Counsel legal opinion about
raising a case in the Court of Session. See email correspondence with the Post
Office Historical Shortfall Scheme dated 25 January 2022 (Exhibit
WITNO120_01/9) in which I raise this as a possibility. This will use every penny
of my small pension pot, and a bit more besides, but I feel I owe it to my late
mother to prove her correct about Horizon and what it did to her.
22. Horizon and the PO robbed us of our money; they robbed us of our dignity and
our name, and they robbed us of the final years of what remained to my mother.
The irony and the insult of first, being made to apply to have our money back,
then refusing that application because of their victim-tracing failure is beyond
belief. The injustice is too much to bear.
Statement of Truth
I believe that the facts stated in this witness statement are true.
b
inne NeCRORY PHILE
Print full name: MARY MCRORY PHILP
Dated: 6™ May 2022
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Index of Exhibits to
WITNO1200100
First Witness Statement of Mary McCrory Philp
WITNO0120
No. I Exhibit Number Document Description URN
1 WITNO120_01/1 I Email correspondence with Keith Richards, I WITN01200101
2 WITN0120_01/2 I Email correspondence with the Post Office I WITN01200102
Historical Shortfall Scheme, 10 May 2021
3 WITNO120_01/3 I Email correspondence with the Post Office I WITN01200103
Historical Shortfall Scheme, 15 July 2021
4 WITN0120_01/4 I Email reply to Post Office Historical WITNO1200104
Shortfall Scheme, 15 July 2021
5 WITN0120_01/5 I Email reply from Post Office Historical WITNO1200105
Shortfall Scheme, 4 August 2021
6 WITN0120_01/6 I Email correspondence with the Post Office I WITN01200106
Historical Shortfall Scheme, 28 September
2021
7 WITNO120_01/7_ I Email correspondence with the Post Office I WITN01200107
Historical Shortfall Scheme, 25 January
2022