Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, which public telephone lines for his Department's services are charged at higher rates; and how much was taken by each such telephone line in the last 12 months.

There are 34 FreePhone numbers operated for the Ministry of Defence (MOD) through the Defence Fixed Telecommunications Service (DFTS) contract with British Telecom (BT).

Some mobile phone suppliers may charge higher rates to their users for FreePhone calls, but the MOD does not generate income from this.

The MOD operates four Premium Rate Service (PRS) telephone lines through the DFTS contract with BT. While these four telephone lines do have the capacity to recover money from callers, the MOD as an organisation does not benefit from PRS calls, and no income has been detected from them for the period November 2016 to October 2017.

However, DFTS is not mandated as the single procurement mechanism for PRS telephone lines across Defence, and other Defence contracts may include the provision of publicly accessible PRS telephone numbers, e.g. for contact centres.