Ex-Minister warns on Post Office card accounts

Many pensioners and other benefit recipients are finding the system for opting for Post Office card cash accounts “extremely difficult, very bureaucratic and time-consuming”, a Labour ex-health minister said today.

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, who quit in protest at the Iraq war, urged the Government to ensure a “level playing field” so claimants could, if they wished, continue to draw cash over the counter.

Junior trade and industry minister Lord Sainsbury of Turville replied at question time that the introduction of the card account had been “extremely successful”, with 430,000 people opting for it as at June 20.

Of these, 57,000 people had actually opened a Post Office card account. And it looked as if the Post Office’s estimate of three million card users would eventually be exceeded.

Lord Sainsbury described the application form as “admirably clear and simple”. But he accepted that some people would have difficulties using an automatic cash machine.

Liberal Democrat frontbencher Earl Russell said the problem was compounded by closure of post offices, including his own local office at Gladstone Park, Brent.

Lord Sainsbury replied that, even with the closure programme, most people remained within a “perfectly reasonable” distance of a post office.