§ Mr. HealdTo ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions pursuant to his answer of 15 July 2003,Official Report, column 160W, what the current indication of the final number of Post Office card accounts is, rounded to the nearest 100,000; on what data his statement that the final number would be significantly above 3 million was based; if he will place the data in the Library; and if he will make a statement. [127584]
§ Mr. PondIt is impossible to predict accurately how many customers will eventually choose to open a Post Office card account as this will be based on customer choice. But based on current take-up, with around a million having said they want to open a Post Office card account, the card account is proving very popular and we now expect the total number of card accounts to exceed our operating assumption of 3 million.