NORTH East Hampshire MP James Arbuthnot has voiced fears that new Government rules stopping people from collecting benefits in cash from post offices will lead to the disintegration of village communities.

The MP undertook a tour of local villages, including Odiham, South Warnborough and Crookham, to speak to sub-postmasters about the changes, which are being gradually introduced from this month onwards.

Around 15 million people who collect their benefits and state pensions using order books or giros will not be able to do so in future, with all payments having to be paid into an account by 2005.

While it will be possible for customers to set up a new post office card account in order to make cash withdrawals, Mr Arbuthnot said the process was "horrendously bureaucratic". He claimed that people would be discouraged from continuing to visit their local post office.

He told The Gazette: "I wanted to find out from the sub-postmasters who I visited what their thoughts were about the future, given that many people will no longer be collecting their benefits from post offices, and there was a general consensus of strong concern.

"Post offices often form the centre of the communities that they are based in, for example in South Warnborough I saw the most marvellous vibrant, thriving shop that worked not just as a shop and benefits-dispensing place but as a sort of village community centre and social services."

Mr Arbuthnot said elderly people, who are frequent visitors to post offices, would miss out on meeting people if they no longer collected their benefits, and there would be less chance of someone noticing something wrong in the event that they did not turn up as usual.

Mr Arbuthnot said: "This means that the whole village community becomes less cohesive.

"If the Government's push to pay all benefits into bank accounts is successful, our villages will begin to decay and disintegrate and that is profoundly worrying."