Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment his Department has made of the costs charged by telecommunications companies for telephone calls to repair broken services for elderly and vulnerable people.

While there are no sector–specific rules determining which telephone numbers communication providers offer to customers for reporting broken services, in practice many providers already offer no-cost routes for reporting line faults. These include 151 and Freephone (0800) numbers. Following recent Ofcom changes, 0800 freephone numbers are now free to call from mobiles as well as from fixed lines.

On the issue of elderly and vulnerable people, Ofcom requires providers to allow disabled customers who are dependent on the telephone to have access to priority fault repair services. Ofcom also requires that they can nominate third parties to be able to contact in the event of non-payment of a bill.