UP to 300 postal workers' jobs in Gwent are under threat as Consignia seeks savings of £1.2 billion a year.

Post Office workers union leaders last night warned Welsh MPs around 2,000 jobs must go in Wales - part of 30,000 to be axed in the UK.

And Gary Watkins, secretary of the Gwent branch of the Communications Workers Union, told the Argus it could mean Gwent's 900-strong workforce being reduced by 300. Mr Watkins said Consignia had expanded the Bristol sorting office at the expense of centres in Cardiff and Swansea.

He said: "They could just as quickly bring work across the Severn Bridge as out of it." Jonathan Evans, company secretary of Consignia, refused to say what the impact of the job cuts would be on Wales.

He said: "How that would impact on different parts of the country it would be wrong for me to say."

But Ken Hanbury, regional secretary of the union, told the all-party Welsh affairs committee last night: "In Wales we could be losing 2,000 jobs."

Mr Evans said Consignia would ask for permission to raise the price of a first class stamp from 27 to 28p but said that would only save around £200 million. He said for Consignia to break even stamp prices would have to rise by six or seven pence.

Moelwyn Jones, head of Welsh affairs for Consignia, said the whole of the mail in the South-west and Wales could be processed by Bristol with an impact on savings. He said: "Cardiff would not be able to manage all of the mail from the South-west."

Mr Evans insisted: "Please don't see that in any way as being anti-Welsh or pro-English. There is no question that Wales is being ignored or forgotten."

But Julie Morgan, Labour MP for Cardiff North and wife of Wales' First Minister Rhodri Morgan, told Consignia chiefs: "It is dispiriting to see this work going eastward when things like devolution are going westward."

Union leaders complained they had no input in decision making. "We don't get to see the managers," Mr Hanbury told the Welsh MPs.