MORE than 100 million calls by the public to central Government departments were charged at a premium rate and the practice must be stopped, an influential committee of MPs has said.

Margaret Hodge, chairwoman of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), said taxpayers should be able to contact Government services "easily and cheaply".

But in a report, the committee said that of 208 million calls in 2012/13, some 63% were made to higher rate numbers at an estimated total cost of £56 million.

Of those calls, the Department for Work and Pensions received 100 million and HM Revenue and Customs took 68 million.

Mrs Hodge said: "Customers of Government services should be able to contact those services easily and cheaply. Charging customers higher rates by making them use 0845 or other high rate numbers is not acceptable, especially when the customers are often vulnerable people.

"We found that one third of customer telephone lines across central Government use higher rate numbers. Half of those lines serve the poorest people.

"Customers spent an estimated £56m on calls using higher rate numbers, from the lines run by the Department for Work and Pensions, to helplines for victim support and the Bereavement Service and the inquiries and complaints line of the Student Loans Company."

Mrs Hodge welcomed the commitment by the DWP to phase out 0845 numbers and said there should be "low cost alternatives" for vulnerable people.

In its report, the PAC also said calls to Government departments take too long to answer. Most departments have no targets, despite an industry standard that calls be answered within 20 seconds.

It said HMRC answered only 16% of calls made to its tax credit helpline on July 31 - the deadline day for notifying change of circumstances. The report stated that across the first quarter of 2013/14, the average call wait at HMRC was seven minutes.

Mrs Hodge said: "Callers must be informed of the costs involved in calling a particular number. Costs to callers can be even higher when they are left waiting to speak to someone. Performance by departments varies but is often astonishingly bad. HMRC managed to answer only 16% of the calls it received on its tax credits helpline on the deadline day for notifying the department of changes of circumstances.

"The industry benchmark is to answer 80% of calls in 20 seconds but most departments do not have such a target and their performance falls wide of accepted industry standards.

"Citizens should not as a matter of principle have to put up with standards of service from government, which are significantly worse than industry standards."

Matthew Sinclair, chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: "Charging people via the back door to contact departments and public bodies is unacceptable.

"Premium-rate lines not only cost a fortune to use but hit those on low incomes particularly hard.

"It's time ministers scrapped these rip-off charges as we pay enough for Government bureaucracy already without a stealth telephone tax adding to that."