Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether his Department has made an estimate of the average response time to telephone calls from the public to large private sector organisations; and what steps he is taking to improve these times.

The telecoms regulator, Ofcom, published a report on service standards across the telecoms industry, including call waiting times in May 2022. A copy of the report can be found at: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/news-centre/2022/best-and-worst-telecoms-customer-service-revealed.

The Government expects all firms to treat their customers fairly, but does not have plans to amend the consumer protection law in this area. How customer services are operated is a matter for firms, and there are many different channels of communication firms offer.