Nick Clegg has called on Gordon Brown to "prove" that he is a "listening prime minister" and reverse plans to close post offices across the country.

The prime minister told BBC Radio 5 Live on Wednesday: "I'm listening and I'm learning all the time.

"I think one of the things about this job is you learn all the time from the difficult decisions you have got to make."

But speaking later during prime minister's questions, the Liberal Democrat leader called on the government to "stop post office closures right now".

"Is he not ashamed of the 'grotesque chaos', to quote Neil Kinnock, of a Labour government scuttling around the country handing out closure notices to over 5,000 local post offices?" Clegg said.

Brown pointed out that "four million less people are using our post offices than a few years ago".

He said the government had put £1.7bn into helping the post office network and accused the Lib Dems of "proposing to spend huge sums of extra money without having any recognisable means of paying for them".

"That's why his shadow home secretary [Lib Dem spokesman Chris Huhne] called him 'Calamity Clegg'," said Brown.