Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 19 December to Question 118690, on Universal Credit: Telephone Services, what the evidential basis is to support the position that people abandoned calls to use the online service; what the cost to the public purse was of abandoned calls in each month since September 2016; and what the average length of abandoned calls was in that time period.

Universal Credit Full Service is a digital service designed to enable customers to manage their own data and account online at a time which is convenient for them. As well as giving them access to online statements for payment information, and their journal for interacting with their dedicated Case Manager and Work Coach, customers are able to report changes online when they would previously have called us.

We do not currently hold any management information that specifically correlates abandoned calls to use of online services. However, as of November 2017, the percentage of customers claiming online is over 95%, and those reporting changes online is now over 80%. This type of channel shift is helping reduce the calls we receive as a percentage of the caseload: Universal Credit Full Service calls per claim ratio has decreased from 2.7 in April 2016 to 1.0 by the end of October 2017.

There was no cost to the public purse for abandoned calls as this forms part of the contract we have with BT, and following the introduction of the free phone numbers to Universal Credit helplines in November 2017 there will no longer be a cost to the customer.

Between September 2016 and October 2017 the average length of time before a call was voluntarily abandoned by the Universal Credit Full Service customer was 5 minutes 19 seconds.

Notes –

1) The data supplied is derived from unpublished management information, which was collected for internal Departmental use only and has not been quality assured to National Statistics or Official Statistics publication standard. The data should therefore be treated with caution.

2) Data is not yet available for November 2017.