Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate he has made of the (a) average and (b) maximum amount of waiting time when contacting the Carer's Allowance Unit by telephone.

Telephony is our customers’ primary channel to contact us. We continually assess the number of calls we are receiving and the associated waiting times, deploying resources accordingly to support service levels wherever this is possible.