Privacy and Electronic Communications (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2018

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Wednesday 28th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD)]

My Lords, first, I again thank the noble Lord, Lord Bates, for his introduction; it makes a change not to be the expert in the room. I greatly welcome this legislation and have just a few points to make, some of which follow up on those made by the noble Baroness, Lady Drake.

As I understand it, much of the problem with cold calling is that the cold callers—in this case, the introducers—are offshore. We will not be able to get at those generators of leads and they will attempt to sell on their information, which at the moment they may do quite successfully. The UK buyer of those leads would then presumably be committing an offence by following them up with a cold call, on the assumption that the person buying the information is not already, for example, the financial adviser to the individual concerned. Those following up, having bought that information in this hypothetical case, would be subject to the penalty. They should therefore be too scared to do it, so nobody buys leads and offshore cold calling stops because they cannot sell their ill-gotten gains. I think that is how it is meant to work, but it would be good to hear that confirmed.

We still have to address the wider issues of cold calling, beyond protecting pensions. I hope that, having dealt with this issue, we will not think that it is “job done” and that is the end of it. Following the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, I shall look at some of the issues that were not dealt with after the consultation period. The first was the time limit for having given consent. If the case in question happened 20 years ago, it rests on whether a person would reasonably expect to be contacted. It is probably quite a sophisticated system if the caller has information about the person because they already have a policy, for example. It all sounds very formal, and they go through some kind of identity check. I understand that the reason for not doing anything was the fear of setting a wider precedent within the GDPR, but that is a common excuse that is used more widely.

There may be more that could be done in due course because there is also consent by inertia, which was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Drake. Perhaps after a time lapse, instead of saying that someone is not allowed to make the call, there could be a halfway house of having to make sure that the person still consents to receiving calls, especially if they are on a related product rather than the product they have already been advised on. The existing client relationship could become very stretched, especially where one firm is taken over by another which has a wider suite of products on offer. A client might expect a much narrower relationship than would come from an enlarged entity. I am not sure that the recipient of a cold call stating that the caller is the successor of Bloggs and Co would know that the call should not perhaps have been made.

Ultimately, we may have to look at more than just pensions. If we are successful, that lucrative strand for the scammers and the cheaters will be closed off, but individuals who have diligently put money into ISAs—especially if they have put it into stocks and shares ISAs over the period since ISAs started—can have as much saved in them as they might have in a pension fund. So when these organisations start looking for where else they can swindle people, those might be next on their list.

I urge that we do not think that this is “job done”. This instrument is excellent as far as it goes, but it is a work in progress and we have to continue to keep an eye out for where the scams move to.

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, subject to a satisfactory response from the Minister to the queries by the two noble Baronesses, I warmly welcome these regulations. I am sure many people will value the fact that cold calling is reduced, particularly in this important area.