Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment her Department has made of the potential merits of implementing a feature on calls relating to (a) universal credit and (b) employment support allowance where in the event that the caller does not progress with automated telephony services they are automatically transferred to a human operator.

All except two of the many freephone lines that DWP provides operate with a menu of options for customers to select before the call is routed to a human operator. The two lines which operate differently with a form of automation are the Benefit Enquiry Line and the Jobcentre Enquiry Line. These freephone lines use a function called Natural Language Call Steering which, if the customer is not understood, does not understand the question, or chooses not to speak, will revert to a menu of options before transfer to a human operator.