French firm in passports fiasco handed £322m UK benefits deal

Summer hotline meltdown fails to deter ministers

- ANDREW BUCKWELL

A FRENCH firm blamed for this summer's passport shambles has been awarded a £322million deal to handle calls from Universal Credit claimants.

Teleperformance was fined hundreds of thousands of pounds for its failures with the passport hotline - where at its worst half of calls were not answered and other people were kept on hold for five hours.

But despite the controversy the firm won the new mega deal to handle calls from benefits claimants.

Demand for Universal Credit is expected to escalate as thousands of families struggle for cash during the cost-of-living crisis.

Paris-based Teleperformance will take over from Serco, which had been running a number of UC lines since the Covid-19 pandemic.