Telephone Services
Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
John Spellar (Warley, Labour)
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how many call centres provide services for his Department and the bodies for which he is responsible; and how many such call centres are based abroad.
David Lidington (Minister of State (Europe and NATO), Foreign and Commonwealth Office; Aylesbury, Conservative)
We do not keep centrally details of all call centres operated by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), its global network and the bodies for which it is responsible. This information could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.
The following call centres based in the UK provide services on behalf of the FCO:
Call centre: Teleperformance
Service: (a) travel advice and (b) consular crisis calls (where volume and/or waiting times exceed the capacity of our Crisis Management Department's internal call centre facility)
Location: Bangor, Northern Ireland
Call centre: Careline
Service: advice on our Legalisation services
Location: Selkirk, Scotland.