At least in the US I know a number of call centers that have been sued into bankruptcy for attempting to use phone agent login status as a timeclock. The worst of these were telling staff that they had to login to their computers and get everything ready on their own time... then they would be paid once they logged in... On another note, I feel that such abuses really need to start to incur jail time for management since abuses like this still seems to be pretty common in US Call centers.

To be honest (guessing from the 'UK' part of your username) I figured that the UK would have better call center protections than the US.... from your post it sounds like it may be just as bad as the US.