Ex-PR boss questioned over former Ellesmere Port subpostmaster

Mark Davies told the Horizon IT inquiry this week the request for a lawyer’s assistance, seen in an email chain among Post Office bosses, was because he wanted guidance on reporting suicide.

Previously the inquiry heard The Post Office offered "staged payments" to the widow of Ellesmere Port subpostmaster Martin Griffiths so the grieving family couldn't pursue a legal claim he had been hounded to his death.

Mr Griffiths was an experienced subpostmaster at the Hope Farm branch in Great Sutton. He took his own life in 2013 after being blamed on large shortfalls which he said were down to software errors.

'Devastating'

He had written to Post Office agent contract manager Glenn Chester in July of that year, explaining he had been "accused of wrongful accounting", to more than £39k between February 2012-May 2013, "an average of £600 per week".

He added: "This surely cannot be correct, but the notifications from the Post Office state that this is the case," and his plans for retirement had to be postponed, while the "financial strain" on him and his family was "devastating".

Mr Griffiths was notified he was to be sacked from the Post Office branch that month. His mother Doreen Griffiths subsequently wrote a letter to Mr Chester on July 31 to say she and her husband had been providing financial support for the "so-called shortages", her son "has been under severe pressure" and said the sacking was "very harsh".

The inquiry heard Mr Griffiths' parents had been inputting "tens of thousands of pounds" from their life savings to "balance the books".

Lead counsel for the inquiry Jason Beer KC said there had been a £50k armed robbery at the Hope Farm Post Office branch on May 2 that year, where two masked men raided the branch, one with a sledgehammer and the other with some kind of metal bar. Mr Griffiths was hit on his left hand during the robbery. The robbers were later caught and jailed for eight years.

He added the Post Office initially held Mr Griffiths "entirely culpable" for the robbery "for breaching procedures", ordering him to repay £38k (about £15k had been recovered from the robbers). That amount was later reduced to £7,500.

'Media lawyer'

Mr Griffiths attempted suicide on September 23, 2013. He was taken to hospital and sadly died three weeks later.

Post Office bosses were informed of the tragic development on September 23. In the email chain that followed, Post Office communications director at the time Mark Davies wrote: "Given the potential media element please can we line up a specialist media lawyer in case we need urgent advice this evening?"

Counsel to the inquiry Julian Blake asked Mr Davies about that comment on day 137 of the inquiry on Tuesday, May 14.

Screen grab taken from the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry of former communications director Mark Davies.

He said: "Was instructing a “specialist media lawyer”, when Martin Griffiths, at that point, was dangerously ill in hospital, part of a culture that was open to challenge at the Post Office?"

Mr Davies responded: "This was a deeply tragic and terrible case and everybody at the Post Office, when we read that email, was deeply, deeply shocked and a number of conversations took outside of email about it and, obviously, the natural human instinct of every single person who heard about that story was to be deeply, deeply shocked.

"In terms of specialist media lawyer, my role within the Post Office was to be the communications director, and there was a very strong likelihood of communications media coverage in relation to this tragic case, and I was very conscious of the media guidance that exist around the reporting of suicide or – as it appeared in this case – attempted suicide and wanted to make sure we had somebody on hand who would be able to give us some guidance about those matters."

Mr Blake asked: "Was lining up a specialist media lawyer really intended just to deal with the way that Mr Griffiths is described: the suicide issue? Was it not protecting the Post Office from negative publicity?"

'Cover up' denied

Mr Davies replied: "My thinking in lining up the specialist lawyer was around the point around the guidelines in terms of reporting suicide."

The former Post Office communications director said he has asked himself whether the company might have been “the baddies” throughout the Horizon scandal but insisted the business “tried to do the right things”.

Mr Davies told the Horizon IT inquiry that he conceded some of the numerous emails he had written “blaming the journalists” who were campaigning on the issue “look ludicrous” with the benefit of hindsight.

Concluding his witness statement, Mr Davies denied he had sought to “cover up issues with Horizon”.

He said: “I did not, as been alleged, seek to ‘cover up’ issues with Horizon – indeed quite the opposite.

“But because I did not have access to all the facts, I clearly played a part in prolonging the pain and injustice for those innocent people who were wrongly accused or whose convictions were unsafe.

The Post Office has come under fire following the ITV drama Mr Bates Vs The Post Office, which put the Horizon IT scandal under the spotlight.

More than 700 subpostmasters were prosecuted by the Post Office and handed criminal convictions between 1999 and 2015 as Fujitsu’s faulty Horizon system made it appear as though money was missing at their branches.

Hundreds of subpostmasters are still awaiting full compensation despite the Government announcing those who have had convictions quashed are eligible for £600,000 payouts.

The inquiry continues.

• Anyone with mental health issues can contact MIND's infoline on 0300 123 3393, email info@mind.org.uk or text 86463 anytime between 9am to 6pm, Monday to Friday. Alternatively, contact Samaritans at any time. You can call 116 123 (free from any phone) or email jo@samaritans.org.