Post Office Act 1953

21 Special provisions as to postal orders

(1) The Postmaster-General, with the consent of the Treasury, may authorise his officers or any of them to issue money orders in a special form to be prescribed. from time to time by him, and those money orders (in this Act referred to as " postal orders ") shall be paid in the manner and subject to the conditions prescribed by Post Office regulations and the amounts for which they may be issued and the poundage payable in respect thereof shall be such as may be so prescribed:

Provided that—

(a) the poundage payable in respect of a postal order for an amount not exceeding twenty-one shillings shall not exceed threepence;

(b) after the expiration of such period after the date of the issue of a postal order as may be prescribed by Post Office regulations, the order shall be payable only on payment in manner prescribed by the regulations of a commission equal to the amount of the original poundage.

(2) If the regulations so provide, the Postmaster-General may authorise any person holding office under the Crown to issue postal orders, and a person so authorised shall, for the purpose of the issue and payment of postal orders, be deemed to be an officer of the Postmaster-General and of the Post Office within the meaning of this Act.

(3) Any person acting as a banker in the British postal area who, in collecting in that capacity for any principal, has received payment or been allowed by the Postmaster-General in account in respect of any postal order, or of any document purporting to be a postal order, shall not incur liability to anyone except that principal by reason of having received the payment or allowance or having held or presented the order or document for payment; but this subsection shall not relieve any principal for whom any such order or document has been so held or presented of any liability in respect of his possession of the order or document or of the proceeds thereof.

(4) The enactments relating to the punishment of offences connected with stamp duties (including the enactments relating to the punishment of fraud) shall apply in like manner as if any poundage or commission chargeable for a postal order were stamp duty, and for the purposes of this subsection sections fourteen and fifteen of the Stamp Duties Management Act, 1891 (being provisions applicable to Scotland which relate to paper used for stamp duties and implements used in the manufacture of that paper) shall have effect as if the paper used for postal orders were paper provided by the Commissioners of Inland Revenue for receiving the impression of a die.

(5) The last foregoing subsection shall apply to the Channel Islands and to the Isle of Man as if the enactments therein mentioned extended to those islands in like manner as they extend to Scotland.