London, January 23:

Unemployed people and pensioners seeking benefit advice in the UK may have to ring offshore call centres to make appointments and get help to fill in forms under plans being discussed in London to meet savings demanded by Gordon Brown, the chancellor over the next three years.

A confidential document leaked from the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) reveals that John Hutton, the secretary of state, is under pressure to sign up to putting large parts of the ministry’s work offshore to meet a 1 billion pou-nds a year savings target set and agreed with the Treasury. It reads, “In line with the continuing need for government departments to reduce costs, proposals are being ma-de by service providers to undertake work for or on behalf of the department overseas. This could involve the transfer of part or even all of the functions of a DWP area of business that would have previously been located in the UK, to a centre located outside of the UK. This is referred to as offshoring.”

The move follows decisions by two government departments, the Office for National Statistics and the Department for National Savings, to start replacing British based staff with overseas employees earning a fifth or less of UK salaries under deals with private firms. The biggest deal is being implemented by German owned Siemens Business Systems, which proposes to transfer all records on births, marriages and deaths to Madras in India.