0845 Phone Lines (DWP)

Henry Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 21st November 2012 Commons Chamber

[John Healey]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s support for my argument. He is right that thousands of people in his constituency, in mine and in the Minister’s will be affected by those premium-rate lines and the rip-off call charges that people can suffer. The cost of the call takes a big chunk out of already stretched budgets. That can put people off making calls to get the help they need.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[John Healey]

I was not aware of the hon. Gentleman’s interest in the debate beforehand, but I will of course give way.

[Henry Smith]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. He will know from his time as shadow Health Secretary, which was more than a year ago, that phone lines are a problem not only for the Department for Work and Pensions, but for the health service. Contrary to Department of Health advice, many general practitioner services still have 0845 numbers. Surely the solution is to use geographical or 0300 numbers.

[John Healey]

I am glad I gave way and welcome the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. He is right, because guidance was issued in 2009—regulations were put in place in 2010, but they have not been enforced.

If it gives the hon. Gentleman any comfort, I ran a campaign in my local area because GP surgeries in Barnsley and Rotherham were using 0845 numbers for people who wanted access to the surgery. I am happy to say that all 16 of those using the numbers in Barnsley have switched to the landlines that the hon. Gentleman advocates, as have 22 out of the 24 GP centres using the numbers in Rotherham. I should tell the Minister, as the hon. Gentleman has, that change is possible and can be done. It requires the will of the Department for Work and Pensions, just as it does the will of the Department of Health and the NHS.

On calls to the Department for Work and Pensions, Mr Roger Clark of Goldthorpe put it to me like this:

“We cannot afford to do this out of our benefits with the cost of gas, electricity, water, food and fuel being so expensive”.

Quite simply, the Department is hitting the people that it is there to help. The situation is getting more serious. Many people now rely on mobiles. One in six people live in homes without landlines. Ninety-two per cent. of adults have a mobile phone, and the number is increasing.

The Secretary of State told me in writing in the summer:

“Jobcentre Plus is subject to the Department’s telephony numbering policy, which is that all calls should be free to our 0800 numbers to claim…State pension…Pension credit…Jobseekers allowance…Employment and support allowance…Emergency payments or crisis loans.”

That is correct, but it is misleading. Those are a small minority of dedicated DWP phone lines. As the Minister confirmed in a parliamentary answer last month, fully 87% of the Department’s phone lines use the 0845 number, including the disability living allowance and attendance allowance helplines; Jobseeker Direct, which helps people to find or make an appointment with Jobcentre Plus; all local jobcentres; Employment Direct, which is used for advertising jobs; the social fund; the winter fuel helpline; and the child maintenance line. The list goes on, and time is limited. In other words, people can pay up to 41p a minute in phone call charges for almost all inquiries to check the progress of applications, to ask for information and advice, to report a mistake or change in circumstances, and to make claims for some benefits and other support payments.

The other day, someone locally who helps others to deal with the problems they face in the benefits and tax credits system said:

“I called the Jobcentre and tax credit office last week for a lady only to find after looking at her itemised”

telephone

“bill it had cost her £4.55; and this was only the calls that could be checked as calls under 50p are not itemised.”

She added:

“To someone in this lady’s position as a single mum this is the equivalent of her daily food bill.”

This is not just a problem of call rates. We have an excellent welfare rights service, run by Rotherham district council. Staff there told me of a client this week who needed to check on the progress of her employment and support allowance claim. She has debts, as well as mental health difficulties. The advice worker said that

“she needed a great deal of encouragement from the adviser just to use the phone and she simply couldn’t afford to call the DWP. So she used the office landline, and the length of the two calls was over 30 minutes before she was then told she’d have to call back another time, as all the staff were busy.”

There are almost 8,000 people on jobseeker’s allowance in Barnsley, nearly 9,000 in Rotherham, and more than 45,000 across south Yorkshire. A further 38,000 across south Yorkshire receive income support and 37,000 get incapacity benefit. This is a scandal on a massive scale. The Department’s response to my FOI request showed that well over 30 million people call just seven of the DWP’s most commonly used inquiry lines each year—never mind the 141 other lines.

These 0845 numbers are formally called number translation services. The NTS is dialled by a caller and is diverted to its destination. This process can include features such as distributing calls between multiple sites, routeing calls according to the caller’s location and, of course, transmitting recorded announcements. But the key feature of these number translation services is that the call revenue from the customer can be—and normally is—shared between the telecoms company and the organisation receiving the call, the former receiving the access charge component and the latter receiving the service charge or the termination rate as it is known.

The Minister is relatively new to his brief, but the Government have had plenty of notice about the problems with the 0845 numbers. Back in 2006, Ofcom said:

“Ofcom continues to recommend that public bodies should not use NTS numbers exclusively…especially when dealing with people on low incomes or other vulnerable groups. The new 03 country-wide numbers, proposed as part of Ofcom’s Numbering Review, would be well suited to the needs of many public bodies currently using chargeable 08 numbers.”

Those 03 numbers were introduced the following year, and Ofcom recommends the use of these numbers, which provide the same additional functionality as 08 numbers but are priced the same as a geographic numbers and—crucially—have no revenue sharing.

The long-standing campaigner and expert David Hickson and the fair telecoms campaign take the same view—that 03 numbers are

“a perfectly acceptable option for normal engagement between citizens and public bodies”.

I go further, and Ministers make three arguments in response to my challenge. First they say that the DWP will ring people back, but too many constituents tell me that this is not offered and does not happen. The FOI figures I have show that hundreds of thousands of callers each week give up on getting through after being kept on hold and charged. More than one in three calls to the employment and support allowance helpline are abandoned before they are answered, but on average more than five minutes after they have been connected. Callers to the incapacity benefit reassessment line wait nearly 13 minutes without being answered before they hang up.

Secondly, Ministers say that there are customer access phones in most—but not all—jobcentres. Let me again quote from a constituent in Goldthorpe in Dearne who says that

“in my case the jobcentre at Goldthorpe the phone is in the corner where everybody who goes in to the office can overhear your conversations not in a sound proof booth so your conversations cannot be overheard.”

Frankly, people are having to give very private, personal and financial information through these phone lines. It is not acceptable to say, “There are these phones in the Jobcentre Plus office in the public space.”

Thirdly, the Department says that it does not benefit from the premium rate charges that people have to pay to ring it, but someone is making money from these calls. If the Government are not sharing the extra revenue and are letting the telecoms companies keep all the extra charges, the 0845 numbers are not just a bad deal for benefits claimants, but for the taxpayer.

Change is possible. I mentioned the changes to GP surgeries and the approach of the Department of Health and the NHS. The Minister might also care to look at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, because it ended a consultation on implementing the consumer rights directive, which was agreed by all member states in the EU last year. This will

“prohibit excessive phone charges for consumers contacting traders about existing contracts.”

In other words, all post-contract customer helplines will have to charge the consumer no more than the basic rate for a telephone call. According to the Department, the intention is

“that traders should not use high charges to deter existing customers with legitimate queries, complaints or cancellation requests from contacting them nor derive revenue benefit from such contacts”.

The parallels are clear; the lessons are clear. I hope the Minister and his colleagues in the DWP will learn those lessons. Because things are poised to get much worse now is the time for him to act. I fear that there could be an explosion of inquiries and problems for people because of the current turmoil in the benefit system at the very time the Government are cutting face-to-face service staff and forcing people to use phones instead. The combination of sudden cuts in benefits payments, delays in decisions and the introduction of universal credit next year could lead to chaos and much higher costs for those making calls.

What should the Minister do? Responsibility for running an efficient and equitable system of benefit support lies with the Government. I see contact centres and phone lines for access as part of the running costs of government. Therefore, there is a strong, principled case for making free the phone access that people need if they are to claim and to continue to receive their benefits, tax credits, pensions or child support. I want the Government to make these changes.

After all, the Department makes calls free with the 0800 numbers for new claims for some benefits. With the Ofcom changes to come in shortly, that will apply to all mobile calls, not just landline calls. As a minimum, all lines for all dealings with the DWP should be switched to 03 numbers, so that the cost is never more than calls to a 01 or a 02 number, and they must be part of any inclusive discount schemes in the same way. These numbers were launched five years ago for Government, public bodies, charities and not-for-profit organisations to use. Ofcom has reserved 0345 numbers for each of the equivalent 0845 numbers, so that the switch could be made with minimum cost and minimum confusion.

Finally, I called this debate to expose the extent of the rip-off rates that many of the poorest, most distressed and highly vulnerable are paying to get the welfare support to which they are entitled. I leave the last words to a local man from Barnsley who said:

“You haven’t the money to pay to phone these numbers, and yet you have to phone them. It’s a poor person’s trap.”

It is unfair and unjustifiable, and it must change.