Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether she will make it her policy that all universal credit claimants making phone calls to her Department should be informed that staff can phone them back free of charge.

The Department takes seriously the need to support claimants, and wants Universal Credit to be easy to access. It is designed to be a ‘digital-first’ service, ensuring we make best use of technology to deliver a modern and effective working-age welfare system. This allows our staff to concentrate on those people who require additional support through different channels.

Since 29 November 2017 all Universal Credit telephone lines are Freephone ‘0800’ numbers. Once connected to this service, a virtual telephone network will route the call to the most appropriate agent available with required skills to support the caller. Should a claimant call a previous chargeable Universal Credit telephone number, they will be redirected to our current numbers and the call will terminate.