Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that people whose voices cannot be understood by her Department's automated helpline systems are redirected to a human operator.

All except two of the Freephone lines that DWP provides operate with a menu of options for customers to select the most appropriate one before the call is then routed to an agent. The two lines which operate differently; Benefit Enquiry Line (BEL) and the Jobcentre Enquiry Line (JEL) use a function called Natural Language Call Steering which will revert to a menu of options if the customer is not understood or chooses not to speak