HC Deb 23 July 1980 vol 989 cc231-2W
Mr. Arthur Lewis

asked the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster whether he will give for the longest and most convenient stated period of time such information as he has available as to the extent the telephone services in the House have expanded in lines, staff, officials, new equipment and so on; and why it is not now possible for a message to be received for more than one hon. Member when this has been possible for the past 35 years.

Mr. St. John-Stevas

A private manual branch exchange switchboard was installed in 1950, and this was replaced in 1972 by a private automatic branch exchange.

The number of telephone extensions in the Palace of Westminister in 1950 was 619. The number of extensions has risen to 713 in 1957, to 1,167 by 1976, and at the present day there are more than 2,400 extensions available.

At present, the number of messages that callers may leave at any one time must be limited, because at busy times the telephone bureau becomes overloaded.

Work is already under way for the provision of a combined communications centre, where the operators will be able to deal with the message-taking, inquiry and connecting functions. It is expected that this centre will be ready for service in the first half of 1983.

Mr. Arthur Lewis

asked the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster whether he will give, for any specified period of time, the total number of incoming calls for hon. Members in a given time; how this compares with the time prior to the introduction of the new plant and equipment; and whether he will cause an investigation to be made to ascertain how and why the service today should be worse than in the past.

Mr. St. John-Stevas

Since the "direct dialling in" facility was brought into use in 1972, the total number of incoming calls could be established only by monitoring and it would not be possible to isolate Members' calls from the calls made to other extensions. The average number of telephone calls taken in September 1957 was, however, 6,051 and in September 1967 this figure had risen to 13,134. Today these figures would be much higher.

The Post Office Telecommunications advisory service report of 1975 made certain recommendations to improve the telephone service and these are in hand.