TELEPHONE CREDIT CARD SCHEME (Hansard, 25 February 1960)

§ LORD MACPHERSON OF DRUMOCHTER
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.

§ THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF TRANSPORT (LORD CHESHAM)
My Lords, I am glad to inform your Lordships that the arrangements have now been completed for a telephone credit card service to be introduced on March 1. On application to the local telephone manager subscribers who wish to use the new service will be issued with a card bearing a special number. By quoting this number to the operator they will then be able to make calls from any telephone in this country, including call boxes, to any telephone in the world without payment at the time, and the calls will be charged to their home or office telephone account. There will be a nominal charge (5s. per quarter) for the service, but no transfer-charge fee for the individual calls.
The agreement of other Administrations is being sought to the use of British telephone credit cards for calls from 383 abroad to this country. So far, arrangements have been agreed with 42 countries, including the United States, Canada, Austria, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, South Africa and the U.S.S.R.
The new service is yet another step towards making telephoning quicker and easier and my right honourable friend the Postmaster-General hopes that it will be of benefit to those subscribers and their employees who travel a good deal on business and have to rely largely on the telephone trunk service for their communications.

§ LORD MACPHERSON OF DRUMOCHTER
My Lords, I must thank the noble Lord for his news. The announcement he has made will, I am sure, be received by the general public, and particularly by the business community, with a great deal of satisfaction. May I ask the noble Lord whether arrangements will be made whereby the existence of this new facility will be suitably publicised to telephone users? If I may say so, the only fly in the ointment is the charge of 5s. per quarter for the telephone credit card. I think that is rather too high, and I hope that, as a result of the experience in working the system, this matter may again be reviewed. With your Lordships' permission, I should like to be allowed to thank the noble Lord for his personal interest in this question, and to congratulate him and the Department on the results of their efforts.

§ LORD CHESHAM
My Lords, I must first thank the noble Lord for his kind words, which will be favourably received on a good deal wider basis than I myself represent. On the subject of the charge. I should like to say that is a charge which has been assessed as being justified in the matter because of the extra work involved in the issue of cards, the recording of the numbers by the operators, the transfer of call charge particulars, and so on. It does not seem, in our view, to be a very excessive charge. If you have it for a year it amounts to about two-thirds of a penny per day, which I think compares favourably with the present charge of 3d. which is made for every transfer call made.
On the subject of publicity, the normal and usual arrangements will be made by 384 Press notices, and so on, to draw this service to the attention of people who are likely to use it. On that score, I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving me an opportunity to strike the first blow.

LORD SOM̃ERS
My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord one detail? How will this apply to public call boxes where it is necessary to insert coins before obtaining the operator's voice?

§ LORD CHESHAM
My Lords, as I see it that is a temporary difficulty. But as such boxes are rapidly—or I hope rapidly—being superseded, it is not one that will last very long.