PREMIUM RATE SCAM:

"GOVERNMENT AS WELL AS TV COMPANIES"- TYLER

Liberal Democrat Peer, Lord Tyler today (Monday) said that profiteering from premium rate telephone numbers was not a phenomenon peculiar to television programmes but lay right at the heart of the Government’s own call centre arrangements.

Parliamentary Questions tabled by Mr Tyler while MP for North Cornwall showed the Department for Transport to be netting some £1.1m a year from calls to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency’s “0870” numbers.  The Home Office also used 19 of the numbers, at considerable cost to anyone calling the Immigration and Nationality Directorate, the UK Passport Service, HM Prison Service or the Criminal Records Bureau.  The numbers are advertised as “national rate” but are charged at many times more than the cost of a call from one part of the country to another and generate revenue for the organisation receiving the call. 

The Government’s own Central Office of Information counsels against using the numbers as they ‘can act as a barrier to communicating information that the citizen should have access to as a right.’ 

Lord Tyler has tabled further questions to the Government asking whether the numbers are still in use, as that guidance is now more than two years old, and what profits have been made.

Commenting, Lord Tyler said:

“Many government departments and agencies were operating in contravention of their own guidelines when I raised this issue two years ago. 

“Now that premium rate telephone numbers are again at the fore, people should be aware that ripping people off on the telephone is not the preserve of television programmes.

“Ministers have been complicit in a similar scam.  Now I want to know whether they’ve taken any notice of their own guidance and of public outrage at the millions being made from citizens’ calls to government offices.”

ENDS

Note to Editors:    Copies of Lord Tyler’s Parliamentary Questions are available from his    House of Lords office.  Call Alex Davies on 020 7219 6355