Fury as taxpayers forced to spend £56m on premium rate calls to Government departments

 
Embargoed to 0001 Monday November 4. File photo dated 23/07/09 of call centre workers as more employers are signing up to pay the living wage, research has shown as new hourly rates for the measure were announced. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Issue date: Monday November 4, 2013. The living wage is currently £8.55 an hour in London and £7.45 outside the capital, compared with the national minimum wage of £6.31 for adults and £5.03 for 18 to 20-year-olds. Campaigners are urging firms to pay the living wage rate to help workers cope with rising household bills such as soaring energy costs. A new study by Save The Children revealed that almost two million children were living in households where their parents or guardians earned less than the living wage. See PA story INDUSTRY Wage. Photo credit should read: Richard Pohle/The Times/PA Wire
Staff|Agency11 November 2013

More than 100 million calls by the public to central Government departments were charged at a premium rate and the practice must be stopped, an influential committee of MPs has said.

Margaret Hodge, chairwoman of the Public Accounts Committee, said taxpayers should be able to contact Government services "easily and cheaply".

But in a report, the committee said of 208 million calls in 2012/13, some 63 per cent were made to higher rate numbers at an estimated total cost of £56 million.

The Department for Work and Pensions received 100 million of the calls and HM Revenue and Customs took 68 million calls.

Mrs Hodge said: "Customers of Government services should be able to contact those services easily and cheaply. Charging customers higher rates by making them use 0845 or other high rate numbers is not acceptable, especially when the customers are often vulnerable people.

"We found that one third of customer telephone lines across Central Government used higher rate numbers. Half of those lines serve the poorest people.

"Customers spent an estimated £56 million on calls using higher rate numbers, from the lines run by the Department for Work and Pensions, to helplines for victim support and the Bereavement Service and the inquiries and complaints line of the Student Loans Company."

Mrs Hodge welcomed the commitment by the Department for Work and Pensions to phase out the use of 0845 numbers and said there should be "low cost alternatives" for vulnerable people.

In its report, the Public Accounts Committee also said calls to Government departments take too long to answer.

It found most departments have no targets at all, despite a normal industry benchmark demanding calls be answered within 20 seconds.

It said HM Revenue and Customs only answered 16% of calls made to its tax credit helpline on July 31, the deadline day for notifying change of circumstances.

It said across the first quarter of 2013/14, average call waits at HM Revenue and Customs were seven minutes.

Mrs Hodge said: "Callers must be informed of the costs involved in calling a particular number. Costs to callers can be even higher when they are left waiting to speak to someone.

"Performance by departments varies but is often astonishingly bad. HMRC managed to answer only 16 per cent of the calls it received on its tax credits helpline on the deadline day for notifying the department of changes of circumstances.

"The industry benchmark is to answer 80% of calls in 20 seconds but most departments do not have such a target and their performance falls wide of accepted industry standards.

"Citizens should not as a matter of principle have to put up with standards of service from government which are significantly worse than industry standards."

Matthew Sinclair, chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: "Charging people via the back door to contact departments and public bodies is unacceptable. Premium rate lines not only cost a fortune to use but hit those on low incomes particularly hard.

"It's time ministers scrapped these rip-off charges as we pay enough for government bureaucracy already without a stealth telephone tax adding to that."

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