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Call Centre Activity

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr. Olner, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, North (Dr. Gibson) on securing this opportunity to debate the important matter of call centres. I would normally also thank him for the opportunity to address the Chamber, but he has delayed my return to five-a-side football by at least another week after my recent operation, as he said, so I am not very appreciative this morning. However, the issue is important and I am grateful to be here. I am also grateful for the contributions by the hon. Members for Solihull (Lorely Burt) and for Wealden (Charles Hendry). In the past decade, call centres have become part of daily life, whether we want to pay a bill, make a service appointment or contact the bank. We come across them in a variety of different roles, from direct selling to customer relationship management, and they are used by nearly all commercial and industrial sectors, and by the public sector, to reach their customers. There are more than 5,000 call centres in the UK, employing nearly 800,000 people. Many of those jobs have been created in areas of high unemployment. According to a recent Office for National Statistics study, in the three years between 2001 and 2004, employment in IT and call centres grew twice as rapidly as overall UK employment. This country’s open and competitive markets, our flexible labour laws, our relatively low costs, our advanced telecommunications infrastructure, and our business and management expertise have encouraged that success. In fact, the UK is the leading location for call centres in Europe. I appreciate that from time to time callers to a centre experience poor customer service. People who experience a lack of service are quite rightly vocal—I dare say much more so than those who are satisfied with the service—when they make criticisms, but that is human nature, given the point that the hon. Member for Wealden made.