Asked by: Sarah Gibson (Liberal Democrat - Chippenham)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what discussions he has had with the Chancellor of the Exchequer on increasing levels of defence expenditure above 2.5% of GDP.
Answered by Maria Eagle - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence)
The Government is committed to setting a path to spending 2.5% of GDP on defence in Spring. The Ministry of Defence remains closely engaged with His Majesty's Treasury on this matter.
Asked by: Sarah Gibson (Liberal Democrat - Chippenham)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many calls to the Disability Service Centre helpline (a) were not answered, (b) involved the caller being on hold for more than 10 minutes and (c) were terminated by the Disability Service Centre following the caller being on hold for more than 10 minutes in each of the last 12 months.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
Part (a)
The table below shows the total number of unanswered calls (Calls Abandoned from Agent Queue) for Disability Services, for each of the last 12 calendar months.
Month Year | Directorate | Calls Abandoned from Agent Queue |
Feb-2024 | Disability Services | 189,821 |
Mar-2024 | Disability Services | 199,623 |
Apr-2024 | Disability Services | 268,374 |
May-2024 | Disability Services | 191,549 |
Jun-2024 | Disability Services | 133,799 |
Jul-2024 | Disability Services | 151,056 |
Aug-2024 | Disability Services | 152,973 |
Sep-2024 | Disability Services | 162,451 |
Oct-2024 | Disability Services | 157,661 |
Nov-2024 | Disability Services | 158,028 |
Dec-2024 | Disability Services | 118,581 |
Jan-2025 | Disability Services | 264,966 |
Part (b) The department does not hold data that enables us to answer this question.
Part (c) The department does not hold data that enables us to answer this question.
There are many reasons why calls to a service line can attract a high call abandonment rate which can include but is not limited to increased hold times. The abandonment of calls is an area that we are unable to fully analyse as there is no data to tell us exactly why a specific customer terminates a call. We are continuously monitoring the service and reviewing our approach to ensure we are able to deliver for our customers.
DISCLAIMER
Please note this information is derived from the Department’s management information, designed solely for the purpose of helping the Department to manage its business. As such, it has not been subjected to the rigorous quality assurance checks applied to our published official statistics. As DWP holds the information internally, we have released it. However, it is possible information held by DWP may change due to operational reasons and we recommend that caution be applied when using it.