A COACHLOAD of campaigners from East Lancashire will travel to London tomorrow to join a national protest over plans to switch benefit payments from post offices to banks.

Sub-postmasters and their supporters claim the move will be a "death blow" to thousands of town and rural post offices across the country.

The coach will set off from Barrowford at dawn tomorrow and pick up supporters across East Lancashire before making the journey to the capital to join a predicted 2,000-strong protest meeting.

Mick Rigby, sub-postmaster at Barrowford, is East Lancashire branch secretary of the National Federation of Sub Post Masters. He said: "If they switch benefit payments it will affect every post office in the country. If it happens it will close an awful lot of post offices. "The 5,000 job losses they're talking about at Rover will be chicken-feed in comparison with the losses this could cause. Some post offices get 30 or 40 per cent of their income from pensions and benefits. No business in this country can stand to lose that kind of income and survive. If you take that much out post offices will become unviable to run."

Mr Rigby said switching benefit payments to the banks would also have a knock-on effect, especially in rural areas such as Ribble Valley, where the post office is often the only shop in a village.

"Benefit payments are not the only thing sub-post offices do. Many of them have had to branch out into other things, but it is one of the big earners, especially in rural areas," he added.

Campaigners from across the country will meet in the Methodist Central Hall in central London and be addressed by MPs. They also plan to hand in a petition signed by three million people to 10 Downing Street.

Following Prime Minister's question time campaigners will lobby their MPs asking them for their support in fighting the payment switch.

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