Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the reasons were for the setting of the charge for calling the 101 non-emergency number at 15 pence.

The public have always paid to contact the police for non-emergencies. Previous police non-emergency numbers (such as 0845 numbers) could cost up to 40 pence per minute. We believe the 15 pence per call charge to be a competitive and transparent rate.

Police forces and the Government do not make money from calls to 101.The 15 pence per call charge goes directly to telephony providers and covers the cost of handling calls and routing calls to destinations.