Post Office Card Account

Peter Luff
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions for what reason the Pensions Service is informing individual state pension claimants in correspondence that the Post Office Card Account service will no longer be available from 2010; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Plaskitt
[holding answer 5 June 2008]: While the existing Post Office card account contract ends in March 2010, there will be a successor product, and DWP is in the process of tendering for a supplier.

I am aware of a recent occasion where an individual customer was mistakenly given incomplete information and we are writing to the person concerned to apologise.