During PMQs today, Jeremy Corbyn alleged that claimants are charged 55p a minute to call the universal credit helpline. It’s a shocking sounding claim but thankfully, it’s almost entirely untrue.

The universal credit number is an ‘0345’ number. These are ‘non-geographic’ numbers used by many large companies as well as all government departments.

Phone providers have a duty to treat ‘03’ numbers in the exact same way that they would treat any regular ‘02’ or ‘01’ landline number. That means that the cost of ringing an ‘03’ number like the universal credit helpine will cost you the exact same as it would to contact your parents’ landline or the local takeaway.

If you have a monthly contract with any major suppliers, or a PAYG bundle, these calls will almost certainly be included within your minutes allowance, and if you were to make the call outside of your allowance, it would be charged the same as any other landline call.

The 55p a minute figure quoted by Jeremy Corbyn is a theoretical maximum any mobile company is allowed to charge. In reality, no company charges this amount, and many charge much less. If you’re with ‘Three’, you’ll only be charged 3p a minute.

If you’re calling from a landline phone, the maximum limit is only 9p a minute.

With all this in mind, it’s hard to see Corbyn’s claim as anything other than a lie. The 55p figure is only a theoretical maximum; no one will have ever been charged at that rate, and the vast majority will have spent no extra money calling the helpline whatsoever.

Of course, claimants should be able to contact someone for support for free, and they can. The university credit website says that the easiest way to contact them is through the ‘online journal’. The telephone number is just a second option. Claimants are also able to request someone call them back so they can avoid paying, as well.

With all this in mind, it would be important to consider whether the cost to run a freephone number as Corbyn wants would be a wise use of government funds when the existing 0345 number can be reached free of charge in almost all cases, and other contact methods are available.

It may turn out that hiring more call centre staff, expanding access to live online chat, or any number of other schemes would be a better use of money. It’s clear however, that the ’55p a minute claim’ is misleading at best, and an outright lie at worst.

It is, however, annoyingly good politics from Corbyn. The Tories were clearly unprepared for it. Neither Theresa May in PMQs nor Liz Truss on Daily Politics afterwards had any good response to it and were left flailing.

Many major papers have already run headlines quoting the miseleading ‘55p a minute’ figure with little to no scrutiny, and these have already made their way all over social media before anyone had been able to check whether or it not it was true.

As always with these things, to use the hackneyed phrase: a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.