Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will introduce a free telephone number for benefit claimants to contact his Department to discuss benefit inquiries and short-term benefit advance.

DWP current telephony policy is that calls to claim benefit should be free, so it uses 0800 telephone numbers for these calls. The Department uses 0345 telephone numbers where customers call for other reasons eg. benefit enquiries and short term benefit advance, as these are, typically, calls which take less time to resolve. If a caller raises concerns over the cost of a call, we will offer to call them back. DWP has to strike the right balance between the cost to callers and the cost to taxpayers, which is why there is a mixture of Freephone and 0345, but never premium rate, telephone numbers available.

There are currently no plans to amend this policy.