Cold Calls

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Thursday 29th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

The noble Lord makes a good point and the FCA has committed to undertake a proper review of its rules on unsolicited marketing calls, emails and text messages from consumer credit firms. As he says, that will include debt management firms and so-called lead generators, which are basically data brokers. It will take place early next year. It is delayed but we have already suggested that the FCA might meet the noble Lord to discuss his concerns and ensure that they are fast-tracked.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, I refer to my interests in the register and, in particular, my role chairing National Trading Standards. The noble Baroness will be aware of the work done by the NTS Scams Team which looks at repeat victims—usually elderly people who are on “suckers lists” which are circulated between different companies. Can the noble Baroness tell me what she thinks should happen to reduce the incidence, for example, of people calling pretending to be from the Telephone Preference Service, saying that there is now a charge for this service and then trying to extract money from the victims? As those vulnerable people are then often referred by trading standards to other local authority departments for support and care, will that support and care continue to be available given the level of cuts now in local authority budgets?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

My Lords, there are several questions which I look forward to discussing with the noble Lord, but fraudulent and scam activities are a crime and should be constantly reported to Action Fraud. I have a feeling that consumer representatives and the Government are very much on the same side here, and I look forward to taking on these issues.