Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what was the average time for calls to be answered by the Payment Exception Service helpline since the beginning of this year; and what is the target time for answering calls to the Payment Exception Service helpline.

The average time for calls to be answered is 10:32 minutes. This average is taken from calls received by the helpline between January until end of April. The latest in month average for April was 6:52 minutes.

The Payment Exception Service helpline is managed by a supplier who do not contractually have a call target time, however each month the customer response times are reviewed taking into account both the nature of the customer call and ways to improve responses for customers.