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Call Centre Activity

I shall come to that later. If I do not, I shall investigate and write to my hon. Friend in due course. The Banking Code Standards Board is the British regulator empowered to monitor and enforce. If I do not have the relevant information in my speech, I shall get it for my hon. Friend. As I was saying, there is an additional responsibility to encourage all call centres to move up the value chain. We should remember that outsourcing is a two-way process. The UK is the world’s second largest recipient of inward investment. Inward stock was worth £472 billion at the end of 2005 and call centre firms contribute to UK exports, which in turn contribute to our prosperity. HCL Technologies, an Indian company, has bought two call centres in Northern Ireland. It now employs about 2,000 people, who among them speak eight different languages. The centres service clients such as BT, the AA and Deutsche Bank, and are the largest outsourcing operation in the whole of Ireland. Companies need to think carefully about relocation and to consider the difficulties of managing staff, maintaining standards and offering appropriate customer care when staff are relocated thousands of miles away. We would do well not to forget that customers have a choice about whom they do business with. They have power, and can take their custom elsewhere. Service quality is one of the many important considerations companies have about relocating. Quality of customer contact is crucial for many companies. Offshore call centre services may be the obvious short-term economic option, but some companies are now sounding a note of caution as a result of strong customer feedback. Customers are demanding successful delivery of goods and services; to achieve that, call centre workers need detailed social, cultural and geographical knowledge of their customers’ requirements. As a former Minister with responsibility for the fire service, I could digress about fire service mobilising systems, the latest caller ID technology, global positioning systems, local road data and contemporary information. However, I shall not be tempted down that path by my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, North.