§ Mr. WillettsTo ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions pursuant to his answer of 3 February 2004,Official Report, columns 833–34\V. if he will provide the information on calls to the pension credit application line for each month since January for which figures are available. [1857341
§ Malcolm WicksThe available information is shown in the table.
Calls to pension credit application line, January-June 2004 Calls received by application line Calls receiving engaged tone or recorded message Calls answered within 30 seconds Average call duration (minutes: seconds) January 495,560 120 429,670 08:12 February 433,790 190 372,930 08:34 March 430,070 230 378,440 08:38 April 346,890 13,560 250,970 09:18 May 234,580 20 212,570 08:48 June 315,200 20 266,040 07:20 Notes: 1. Numbers of calls are rounded to the nearest 10. 2. The number of calls receiving the engaged tone or a recorded message was unusually high in April due to reduced numbers of staff as a result of industrial action. The number of lines feeding into the application line from the network was reduced to avoid people having to wait for a long time for an answer (instead they received a recorded message). 3. The number of calls received is a measure of the total number of calls from customers made to the application line number 0800 99 1234. The number of calls answered within 30 seconds is a measure of all calls answered in application line sites and excludes any calls abandoned by the customer.