It was announced at the weekend that the Government would continue giving the so called “post office card” contract – which allows sub post offices to hand out pensions and other welfare benefits worth £900 million a year – to the Post Office Ltd instead of handing it to a private sector contractor.

The commission from some payments is often the difference between profit and loss for rural post offices which are often the only shop in thousands of villages.

But the watchdog Postcomm said yesterday that despite this respite, thousands more post offices would still close because they would go bankrupt or because it was becoming extremely difficult to recruit new sub post-masters when older ones retired.