Report urges action on Post Office

12 April 2012

The Government is under pressure to preserve the Post Office network with the publication of a key House of Commons committee report.

A Trade and Industry committee report will say that unless action is taken the benefits the Post Office provides to communities could be "lost forever".

The report says sub-postmasters feel a "sense of betrayal" over plans to scrap a key source of revenue in the form of the Post Office card account (POCA) by the Department for Work and Pensions.

This month the National Federation of Sub postmasters handed a four million signature petition to Downing Street calling for urgent action to protect rural post offices.

Now almost 400 MPs have signed an early day motion calling for the decision to withdraw the Post Office card account to be reversed.

Conservative MP Peter Luff, chairman of the cross-party committee, told the Daily Telegraph the committee was "very worried" about the network's future.

Most of the Government's partners in the POCA had assumed that the contract would be renewed after it runs out in 2010.

He told the paper: "This has, quite understandably, led to a lot of bad feeling among these partners and a sense of betrayal among sub-postmasters.

"We do not believe that the Government has made it clear enough that there would be no possibility that the contract would be renewed."

The report accuses the DWP of "undermining" the Post Office by removing the POCA and showed a "lack of joined-up thinking" in government.

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