CONTROVERSIAL post office closures in Plymouth will not lose Labour votes, Business Secretary John Hutton has claimed.

Speaking at the Labour conference in Manchester the Cabinet minister acknowledged shutting branches, which sparked public anger and protests in the city, was 'massively difficult and unpopular', but said he did not believe it would damage the party's electoral fortunes, and insisted the situation had to be tackled in the face of the plummeting number of people using the post office.

Failure to take action would have threatened the future of the entire network, he said.

And in a remarkably candid comment Mr Hutton admitted he had looked like a hypocrite when he tried unsuccessfully to save a branch in his own constituency from being shut.

Closures in Plymouth form part of a radical Government overhaul of the network, which will see 2,500 branches shut across the country.

The Government argues four million fewer people a week are using post offices than just two years ago, with the network losing £3.5million a week.

Ministers point out that £1.7billion of subsidy is being made available to maintain the network that remains.

However, anger over closures continues, and this week saw hundreds of postal workers protest outside the Labour conference in Manchester, calling on the Government to halt the shutting of branches.

Speaking at a fringe meeting, Mr Hutton said: "It was a massively difficult closure programme. I know full well how unpopular that closure programme was; every Member of Parliament could stand up here and tell you that."

He said the inescapable fact was the Government paid a huge subsidy to 'keep thousands of post office branches open that, frankly, would not otherwise stay open.

"We do that, rightly, because we understand the social significance of a post office," he said.

"Every week there were four million fewer people going into the post office, because there are other ways they can go about their business. Most of that is done online. It's simply impossible to say to people, 'We are not going to give you that opportunity to transact your business with the Royal Mail online; we are going to make you go to a sub-post office'. We can't do that.

"That is not the world that we live in now; we had to make this change. I know there are people who wish we didn't have to, but in Government sometimes you have got to actually bite the bullet.

"People are going to resist these changes and I'm not criticising them for doing so. I tried to save one of the post offices in my constituency because I didn't think the access criteria had been met. It made me look like a hypocrite; of course it did, and that's what everyone else said.

"I was actually trying to say, 'Look, these are the rules we have set down and I didn't think they were being followed.' but I couldn't save it, and I'm the Secretary of State.

"Does it mean Labour is going to lose parliamentary seats? I doubt it. I don't believe it will."