Vince Cable

No sooner has the recent round of post office closures been agreed than a major new uncertainty has been created by the Government decision to switch the POCA, Post Office Card Account - used by pensioners and benefit recipients to draw their monthly payments - from the Post Office to Paypoint which operates out of convenience stores.

It is estimated that around a third of the income of many post offices comes from the POCA and Post Offices benefit additionally from the 'footfall' of shoppers.

Vincent Cable MP said that he was "absolutely aghast at the foolish, short-sighted decision. We have, in my constituency, just lost 3 post offices after losing another five in recent years. The network has effectively halved and now faces further cuts as some postmasters will no longer have viable businesses without POCA.

"What will cause a great deal of ill-feelings is that those postmasters who closed under the recent closure programme received compensation but those forced to close, in future, will not. I expect some of them to stager on; but the hope that a viable, stable post office network would be preserved is disappearing."