Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that charities, churches, voluntary organisations and community groups can continue to deposit cash into their bank accounts via the Post Office without the need for trustees or volunteers to hold a debit card on the organisations account.

Under the Banking Framework Agreement, banks choose which services they wish to offer through the Post Office network. Manual deposit services, where customers can deposit cash using a paying-in slip without a debit card, still exist for those banks under the framework who take up this service and are not being phased out.

The Post Office does not own the customer relationship or the banking products, and therefore neither Government nor the Post Office can mandate how current accounts operate or what arrangements banks put in place for cash deposits without the use of a debit card.