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Banks could have their own counters in post offices under a scheme being devised by Abbey National to encourage the government to scrap its plans for a universal bank. Jim Anderton, take note. The proposal, which the high street bank hopes to discuss with ministers soon, would see post offices offering a range of banking facilities such as cheque payments and cash withdrawals. Andrew Pople, Abbey National's managing director of retail banking, said it was still "an embryonic idea" but described a possible scenario where the bank is the last one in town. "Why doesn't the local post office take it over and run it as a single unit?" he said. Mr Pople insisted that the plan would not see branch closures by the back door."Even if it was closure by the back door, it's got to be better than closures altogether," he added. However, a spokesman for the Communication Workers Union, which represents 180,000 postal workers, accused the banks of looking to the taxpayer to prop up their operations. "It's a government subsidy for the high street banks in terms of giving them access to sites. The government might as well subsidise the Post Office instead." Abbey will promote the idea as an alternative to the post office-based universal bank which the high street banks are reluctant to support, claiming that it could carry the stigma of a "poor people's bank" and be expensive to run. The idea has been spawned from Abbey National's early experience of franchising its own branches. It is the first constructive proposal devised by any of the banks since they refused to participate in the scheme for the financially excluded. The universal bank is designed to solve two problems for the government. It throws a lifeline to the post office net work as the government axes one of its main revenue streams - by paying social security benefits directly into bank accounts. It also tackles the issue of providing accounts to people who do not have access to financial services facilities. But the banks are reluctant to back it, seeing it as a costly plan and a duplication of the government's efforts to tackle social exclusion as the banks are already cooperating with Treasury instructions to provide basic, no credit bank accounts for the financially excluded. Mr Pople plans to raise the issue at a meeting with ministers next month. He calls for the meeting in a letter, obtained by the Guardian, in which he insists that the bank already has accounts for the socially excluded and for which the bank has 650,000 customers. "If they want to talk about the basic bank accounts we will use it as an opportunity to raise the franchise idea. We've got experience of the franchising and may have a proposal which is a bit of a win-win for every one," Mr Pople says. "We've got basic bank accounts and got large numbers of customers for them, and the Department of Social Security has been referring customers to us anyway," the letter adds. Mr Pople sees the plan as giving the government a viable economic use for post offices, that will also bring in useful cash for the Post Office. Alan Johnson, the trade minister with responsibility for the Post Office,last night reiterated the government's commitment to developing a universal bank but said Abbey National's proposal could be part of that scheme. The Post Office is due to present its business plan for the universal bank to the DTI next month and is devising a new brand for the accounts while at the same time trying to quash the banks' concerns about the cost of the plan.n end to poverty. These foot-soldiers are mobilisi
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