Lord Vaizey of Didcot
Main Page: Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Conservative - Life peer)(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
Everybody has their favourite moment in terms of nuisance calls. Mine came one new year’s day in the late 1980s, when, as duty officer at the British high commission in Nairobi, I was woken at 3 am by a gentleman on a crackling line from the Indian ocean coast assuring me that he had a vital issue on which he needed my help—he wanted to know the result of the previous day’s Liverpool-Manchester United game, on which he had a small bet with a neighbour.
This debate is about an issue that concerns Members in all parts of the House. The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), in an otherwise interesting speech containing two ideas on which I share her views, had a brief go at trying to make it a party political debate, but it is not that. Nor is it only a Scottish matter, as was somewhat suggested by the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Mike Crockart) being swiftly followed by the hon. Member for Angus (Mr Weir); it happens in all parts of the country. I want to highlight a couple of specific issues and then outline three or four recommendations, at least one of which has already been mentioned, for the Minister to mull over during this important debate.
In November, one of my constituents, Mrs Jill Smith, wrote to me saying,
“As you know we changed our number in the summer & have listed 9 such calls since the 16th Sep. on our new number. It never stops & is worse for the elderly at home all the time.”
Sadly, as all hon. Members will know, the issues that Jill Smith raised with me after she changed her telephone number and registered with the Telephone Preference Service by no means represent an isolated case. If we quantify her problem around the country, we see that it has increased enormously. Statistics revealed by a written question to the Minister at the end of last year show that the number of calls where a recorded voice was heard increased from 1,640 in 2009 to 59,447 in 2013-14, and that the number of calls where a consumer spoke to a person increased from 1,735 to 40,231. The increases in both cases were very similar and there was an enormous, gigantic increase—a big leap forward—in the leap year of 2012-13.
The situation has got worse and the hon. Member for Edinburgh West, whom I congratulate on securing the debate, has highlighted that regulators receive about 6,000 complaints a month. BT estimates that it receives about 50,000 calls a month to its nuisance calls bureau, including, no doubt, a large number of nuisance-like calls complaining about significant nuisance calls, so the number of nuisance calls and nuisance calls about nuisance calls becomes an increasingly circular frustration and irritation for all involved. We all agree that the worst affected are the elderly and the vulnerable. When it comes to dealing with nuisance calls, the Ofcom online guide will not necessarily help many of those worst affected, because they are not online.
During the course of my research for this debate, I discovered—I am sure many other Members found this, too—that regulatory responsibilities are split between several agencies: Ofcom is responsible for taking action on abandoned and silent calls and for maintaining the TPS; the Information Commissioner’s Office takes action against companies that breach the TPS and follows up on consumer complaints; the claims management regulator has a responsibility, because the vast majority of calls are from claims management companies; the Office of Fair Trading regulates debt management companies; the National Fraud Authority and/or the police are responsible for taking action on scams and fraudulent activities; and PhoneplayPlus is responsible for premium rate numbers.
One cannot help reaching the tentative conclusion that six different bodies—seven, if one includes the TPS—is too many. It is time for the Government to consider who is ultimately responsible for tackling the problem, which is a problem of practical politics rather than party politics. It relates to implementation and reducing the number of people who have some responsibility to a much smaller number with complete responsibility. That is my first point, having looked into the business of nuisance calls.
My second point relates to the TPS, which, in concept, is a brilliant idea. There are 19.5 million numbers registered with the TPS and it is free. It has to be a good thing, but the question is whether it is still fit for purpose. The June edition of Which? said that the TPS is failing to cut off nuisance calls—we all know that that is true: Jill Smith’s letter makes that clear—which leaves 57% of those registered with the service unhappy. The head of the TPS, John Mitchison, told The Guardian last year:
“It has eradicated lots of unwelcome calls…But the rules are complex, have loopholes, are split between agencies, tend to lag technology advances, and have been low priority.”
Numbers registered with the TPS have to wait 28 days before a breach counts, which raises a practical question: could not the TPS be updated in real time? On market research, perhaps it does not behove a politician to suggest that it should be banned—legitimate opinion pollsters have a role to play—but there is an issue.
An ICO review of the TPS was due this spring, but Ofcom has said that it will now be released this summer. The definition of summer sometimes stretches out during the course of a year, so the Minister will no doubt want to comment on when he expects the review to be delivered. It is important and I think it will lead to other opportunities, which I will touch on in a moment.
Another point is about possible conflicts of interest. BT, which is keen to block persistent offenders, is concerned about being in breach of the universal service agreement. That area could perhaps be tightened up.
I turn now to the whole business of trying to make recommendations about how things could be improved. First, we can all agree that there are too many nuisance calls and that the number ought to be reduced. We know that our constituents want them to be eliminated or reduced as much as possible.
The hon. Member for Edinburgh West referred to the fact that some telephone companies charge for services that ban numbers from ringing us, particularly at home, which is disconcerting. I am encouraged, however, by the fact that my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) mentioned a change in policy by TalkTalk, which suggests that it may lead the way to other telephone companies recognising that such services should be provided to consumers free of charge.
Secondly, on rationalisation of the regulators, there are too many bodies with different responsibilities, and there is a need to simplify and clarify the system. Thirdly, there is a particular opportunity to look at whether the TPS should be a separate organisation or effectively merged with the ICO. Fourthly, as a couple of speakers have mentioned, the ICO currently has the ability to fine offenders, but the reality is that one was fined in 2012 and three in 2013. I think that we all therefore want the threshold to be lowered. Whether the change is a legal or a practical one, nuisance callers should be fined on the basis of anxiety and stress as defined by the consumer. That gives the Minister four opportunities on which to respond.
I conclude by returning to Mrs Jill Smith. The Minister kindly replied to my letter, stating that
“we believe in greater enforcement and robust action rather than sweeping changes to the regulatory framework”.
In an answer to a written question, he promised an action plan early in the new year. Today, we are indeed early-ish in the new year.
Richard Graham
It is indeed time for action. I very much look forward to hearing more from the Minister about a robust action plan—I know that he cares and that he wants to solve this problem—so that Mrs Jill Smith and many others like her can look forward to a new year free from nuisance calls.
Sir Andrew Stunell (Hazel Grove) (LD)
I apologise to the House for arriving a few minutes late at the start of the debate and to my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh West (Mike Crockart) for missing a few minutes of his tour de force. I did catch the final 35 minutes, however, so I hope that I got the essence of it.
I got out of my hon. Friend’s contribution and those of other Members that some of the stock responses and deflection tactics that are used by different parts of the industry do not stand up to detailed inspection. The Minister has a duty to the House, when he responds to the debate, to say clearly and firmly that the Government acknowledge that and are prepared to take action.
This is a troubling issue for my constituents. When my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle (Mark Hunter), my neighbour in Stockport, started to deal with this matter for his constituents, he asked me whether we could have a combined approach to support our constituents. We both organised petitions for residents of our constituencies to make their case to us, and the response that we got was overwhelming. People were fed up with nuisance calls—whether automated recordings, calls from foreign calls centres or silent calls. Whatever time of day or night they come, they are overwhelmingly unpopular. They create trouble and difficulty, and my goodness me, our constituents in Cheadle and in Hazel Grove were ready to tell us about it.
Last autumn, my hon. Friend and I presented to the Prime Minister at No. 10 a petition from the two constituencies asking for action to be taken. I understand that it is in the gift of No. 10 as to whether the Government will make a statement. I do not know whether the Minister will disclose that decision to us today, but I hope that the petition that we submitted will contribute to a positive answer from No. 10 very shortly.
I wish to give the House a brief illustration of how pervasive nuisance calls are. During the conference season, I was away from home for five days. When I returned, my answer machine had 17 calls on it. On examination, 16 of them were nuisance calls—silent and pre-recorded calls. Some had a calling line identification, but universally, if there was CLI, it was a spoof or incorrect. Half those 16 calls were silent, and I can well understand that for people more vulnerable than I am, such as older people for whom the telephone is still something of a new contraption, such calls must be a really frightening experience. The Minister needs to take account of the evidence that exists, both anecdotal and in surveys.
The all-party group’s report—I perhaps should declare that I was a member of the working party that produced it—said that, looking at all the evidence, there could not be fewer than 1 billion nuisance phone calls each year. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh West cited another figure: according to the evidence that we received, 1 million people are employed in call centres. Taking those figures together, it means that each call centre operative makes 1,000 nuisance calls a year, which is a very small number—20 a week. I cannot believe that any call centre employs people to make only 20 calls a week, which prompts the question of whether that figure of 1 billion nuisance calls is right and how many calls made from such centres are not described as nuisance calls but instead produce a good result.
When the group took evidence in our inquiry, I had the opportunity to speak to a representative of one of the major network operators, who offered me his estimate that at some times of day, a quarter of all the traffic carried on his network consisted of nuisance calls. I have no way of knowing the validity of that information, but it gives some idea of the industrial scale of what is going on and the impact that it can have on our constituents. It certainly has a big impact on the elderly and on my constituents, who have been keen to say so.
In case it has not already become evident to the Minister, I want to tell him that there is a huge gap between best practice and normal practice. For instance, the rulebook states that if a silent call has inadvertently been made to a number, no subsequent silent call should be made to that number for another 72 hours. I do not believe for a moment that any call centre operates that 72-hour ban. It is incredible that they can, bearing in mind how many silent calls people receive on the same day, one after another. Silent calls are supposed to be not more than 3% of the total calls made by operators or call centres. It is difficult to believe that that is being complied with. If all call centres operated the 3% rule, 97% of calls would not be silent, but that is transparently not the case. The 72-hour rule and the 3% rule are not being obeyed.
Calling line identification is verging on useless. Some companies phone with no identification and some have spoof identifications. I have had endless calls on my phone from 012345, 00000 and so on. Clearly, the system is not working in that respect.
As other hon. Members have said, reporting problems is a nightmare. There is no simple system and there are multiple ways to complain. Who people phone up and what they are supposed to do depends on what kind of call they have suffered. Understandably, my constituents either do not know who they should call or have no confidence that anything will happen if they call. In evidence to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, ICO staff said pretty much that there was little likelihood of an individual complaint resulting in any action against an operator.
Several hon. Members have mentioned problems with TPS, which is widely bypassed and ignored by those who phone up. It is certainly not effective. I am on TPS, but that did not prevent the calls I received in that conference week. Essentially, it is a commercial service run by the Direct Marketing Association that operates on the basis of trust, without any practical teeth that will produce an outcome. It is also based on extremely old-fashioned technology, which means that it takes 28 days for the system to click and become effective after people have registered. That does not help large numbers of people, even assuming that the system works properly when it is activated.
By way of conclusion, I want Government action. I want to see the action plan in spring—in civil service terminology, it is due shortly. When I was a Minister, I once asked for the definition of “shortly”. It took the civil servants several minutes to get over the laughter. I would enjoy hearing from the Minister, when he responds to the debate, when we can expect the action plan.
Sir Andrew Stunell
The Minister, for whom I have the greatest respect, has been sucked into the machine to an even greater extent than I had feared.
I hope that, when we have the action plan, the Minister will say something about bringing the regulators together. The all-party group report makes the point that we could waste quite a lot of time physically uniting them in one organisation, but we need a joined-up regulatory system, with all the sources of information going into one place and with one group of people looking at whether there is a pattern in an area of activity so that we do not have the current fragmentation at the operating end of the regulatory system.
I want the Government to say that the CLI service should be provided by all operators for free. I also want the Minister to say that Ofcom will be permitted to allow the blocking of rogue numbers by telecoms firms. That seems to me to be how to teach those people a lesson. The industry can get TPS working properly and quickly. There does not seem to be any reason why some of the better technological solutions should not be in place very quickly and working well. We also need a short code that will allow consumers—my constituents—to report nuisance calls of all kinds very quickly.
I think that the Minister has got my point. I press him to go well beyond good intentions and to give us some serious delivery on a nagging problem that is driving my constituents mad. They are getting irritated; they are disturbed and angry. Some of them are vulnerable, and they are looking to this House and this Government to do something to relieve their concerns.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)
I am grateful for the chance to respond to the debate, which I congratulate the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Mike Crockart) on securing. It is worth noting the contributions of three hon. Members who are not present. My hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns), whom the hon. Member for Edinburgh West mentioned, is co-chairing the all-party group on nuisance calls. When the date of this Back-Bench debate was changed, it meant he could not be here, but he has put a huge amount of work into the issue and would have liked to be present. For good reasons, the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) cannot be here for the debate’s conclusion, but she made a powerful speech as Opposition spokesman.
The presence of the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), who was in his place earlier, was significant, because it showed that one of those rare, almost unheard of events had taken place—joined-up government. When the new Minister was appointed over Christmas, I reached out, made a nuisance call to him out of the blue and told him that I would be very pleased if he would engage with me on this issue. He certainly has engaged with me, and I look forward to working with him more, as he gets his feet under the desk. Joined-up government between the Ministry of Justice and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport is highly important. As many hon. Members have pointed out, this is a complex regulatory landscape, involving two regulators—Ofcom, for which my Department is responsible, and the Information Commissioner’s Office, for which my right hon. Friend’s Department is responsible. It is important for our two Departments to work together.
We have heard a number of valuable contributions, not least from the hon. Member for Edinburgh West who opened the debate. Other contributors were the hon. Member for Angus (Mr Weir), my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) who is the Chairman of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland who is the Opposition spokesman, my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham), the hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass), my right hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Sir Andrew Stunell) and, last but by no means least, the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Cathy Jamieson), who contacted me about this issue many months ago. She requested a meeting and has maintained her interest and her campaigning work on the issue.
To put an end to any speculation from the outset—I know that hon. Members are on tenterhooks—let me say that the strategy document is ready to go. It was originally due to be published on 31 October. I discovered that if a Minister tells officials that a document will be published on a certain date, the work starts to crank up exponentially. I congratulate my officials on their excellent work over the period to hit that deadline. We were ready to publish then, but we decided to wait for the all-party group on nuisance calls to conduct its report because a lot of hard work had gone into it. We said that we would also wait for the Select Committee report, which came out at the beginning of December. Once those two reports had been published, we incorporated their findings in our strategy document, which then began its meander around Whitehall for clearance. One thing that we inherited from new Labour is the grid—the grid that sits in Downing street: the holy grid—and we are waiting for a slot in that grid, which, I assure Members, is harder than finding a slot at Heathrow. However, the document is ready to go, and I shall now reveal to Members what, broadly speaking, is in it.
We all agree that nuisance calls are a menace. I was extremely grateful to some Members for saying that they sympathised with my position and recognised that I was working hard in trying to make an impact on the problem. They did not need to say that, and it was very kind of them to do so. I was also grateful to the Members who pointed out that the direct marketing industry is valuable to the UK economy. We must not throw the baby out with the bathwater—we must recognise that a legitimate industry is doing a legitimate job—but make no mistake: as is clear to all Members who have done so much work on the issue, nuisance calls are a scourge that needs to be tackled.
The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland observed that the number of such calls seemed to have increased significantly. That is partly because it has become easier to report them, but I suspect that it is also due to the increase in the number of calls relating to payment protection insurance, which has, in a sense, been a unique phenomenon, in that it has provided an opportunity for—perhaps—the more careless members of the industry to seek ways of making an income.
There are three categories of nuisance call. Both live, unsolicited marketing calls, when someone—a real person—rings up out of the blue, and automatic pre-recorded calls are covered by the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003, and fall within the scope of the Information Commissioner. Silent and abandoned calls—automatic calling machines repeatedly make the calls, but when one picks up the receiver no one is there—are covered by Ofcom, which can tackle them by means of its powers to oppose the persistent misuse of networks under the Communications Act 2003. We have increased the maximum fine that Ofcom can impose for silent and abandoned calls from £50,000 to £2 million, and have given the Information Commissioner’s Office the opportunity to impose a fine of up to £500,000 for unsolicited calls and texts. My hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester mentioned my letter to him, in which I referred to the need for enforcement. The powers are there to make an impact, and since January 2012, Ofcom and the ICO have issued fines amounting to £2. 5 million.
We have also sought to give Ofcom and the ICO a closer working relationship. I now regularly chair a round table that brings them together, along with representatives of telecoms companies and interested Members, including the hon. Member for Edinburgh West.
What more can we do? As a number of Members have pointed out, the legal threshold that the ICO must meet before it can issue a penalty is too high. It requires the ICO to demonstrate that a breach of the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations would result in “substantial damage” or “substantial distress”. The ICO has argued that the threshold should be lowered, and has suggested a test involving
“nuisance, annoyance, inconvenience or anxiety”.
I agree with the ICO that a lower threshold would generate more effective enforcement, and we are keen to legislate this year. That will be in the strategy document. There will have to be consultation on it, because it will require legislation.
Mr Vaizey
I do not know whether it is on the grid, but the announcement is governed by Downing street, and the legislation is governed by the Leader of the House.
In order to improve the working relationship between Ofcom and the ICO we also want to make it possible for Ofcom to share the data it has with the ICO, which is not possible at the moment. We will introduce a statutory instrument. That order will be brought into force by the beginning of April. We will look at consent. That will be in the strategy document as well. Members have rightly pointed out that there is frustration with the Telephone Preference Service but again the frustration partly arises from the fact that consumers may not realise they are giving consent and therefore effectively allowing the marketer to override the TPS.
The PECR states that a marketing call cannot be made to a consumer who has registered with the TPS unless consent has been given. The ICO has updated its guidance on this issue, but I accept there is scope for greater clarity to help consumers make informed decisions. We are considering the scope for action in this area and once we have published the strategy document we will launch a hands-on consultation working with consumer groups, particularly Which?, which has been excellent in the area of nuisance calls, and with our regulators to look at a practical way forward. Incredibly complicated regulations could inadvertently be brought in were we to introduce detailed regulations about when informed consent is given. If we are to change the regulations, it is important that we get them absolutely right and that they are clear and not confusing.
Many Members have made the point that there is no silver bullet and I thought the Select Committee report was excellent on that. For example it is easy to say we should just merge the regulators, but when we look into the issues, we see the situation is much more complicated than that and we are much more likely to make more rapid progress by simply making the regulators work together.
In a complex and fast-moving environment, it is also important that we look at what measures we can take without legislation. With developments in telecoms technology, it is now easier and cheaper than ever before to make calls. That is good news for consumers, but rogue companies can also utilise the same technology to circumvent regulation and bombard us with unsolicited calls and texts. We therefore need to look at not just legal measures, but industry collaboration, technical standards, and support from telecoms providers.
We also want improved information and guidance for consumers, to enable them to register complaints on regulators’ websites more easily and also access information about steps they can take to deal with nuisance calls. This information is available, and the guides have been viewed more than a quarter of a million—or perhaps I should say 250,000, as I think that is the new parliamentary expression pioneered by the Leader of the Opposition yesterday—times and are clearly proving to be a valuable tool. Additionally, as a result of our engagement with the consumer organisation Which? it has now developed a user-friendly page on its website whereby consumers are automatically directed to the right place to access information as well as to make complaints. In addition to issuing fines, the ICO “names and shames” persistent offenders on its website so that consumers are better informed about those who break the law.
I mentioned earlier the upswing in the number of nuisance calls. I think that has been generated by the payment protection insurance sector. There is an alphabet soup of regulators with a role in this area, and that sector is regulated by the claims management regulation unit. Through our engagement with it, it has put more resources into tackling the problem of unsolicited calls and text messages to ensure that it can move more quickly to investigate and take enforcement action. It is working actively with the ICO, Ofcom and other relevant bodies to detect and punish those involved. I welcome the action it has taken and continues to take against claims management companies that fail to comply with the rules. From June of last year it started to publish the names of companies under investigation or subject to recent enforcement action. Between July and September 2013, it conducted 41 audits, issued 25 warnings, commenced 11 investigations, cancelled 109 licences and visited 407 claims management companies.
When introducing measures it is important that Government start to think about what impact they might have on nuisance calls. For example, the ban on referral fees in personal injury cases appears to have had the knock-on effect of reducing the volume of marketing calls to potential clients, because claims management companies can no longer receive a fee for referring client details. The claims management regulation unit is actively policing the ban on referral fees, in addition to the ban on claims management companies offering financial rewards.
Mark Lazarowicz
The measures that the Minister is outlining are welcome. We are dealing here with nuisance calls, one category of which is the downright scam, which regulations might not be able to cope with. Does he acknowledge the importance of publicity from his Department and perhaps from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills in dealing with scam calls? I have heard examples of people getting phone calls from overseas selling them bogus computer insurance; I am sure we have all handled that kind of case. Those scams need to be publicised and people need to be warned about them. Does he agree that such publicity is important in dealing with not only nuisance calls but scams, and that continued efforts need to be made by Ofcom and by the Government in that regard?
Mr Vaizey
Yes I do; it is important for consumers to be aware. Organisations such as Which? and official regulators such as Ofcom and the Information Commissioner’s Office are great sources of advice on where scams are under way. They are often organised, all-pervasive scams that touch hundreds of thousands of people, and it is important that clear information on them should be disseminated to people as quickly as possible.
Taking that intervention has given me the opportunity to notice that the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark has snuck into the Chamber. He might not be aware that I mentioned him earlier in the debate, when I said how grateful I was to be working with him. For his edification, I should say that I also pointed out that he and I had embarked on an almost unique experiment called joined-up government to see whether our two Departments could make an impact by working more closely together. But I sense that the House is tiring of that joke. The mood of the House tells me that I should move on.
I also want to talk about call blocking. Market solutions are available for consumers wishing to block calls at individual level, and I am pleased that network-level solutions are now also being considered by telecoms providers and other companies. That is an important development. Phones with call-blocking technology are available for the consumer to buy and use in the home, but network-level blocking is also very effective.
Almost all Members who have spoken in the debate have raised their concern that consumers will be charged for services that could help them to tackle nuisance calls—in particular, caller line identification, call barring and anonymous caller rejection. This is clearly a commercial decision for companies, but it is important that consumers are aware of whether those services are being charged for and how much they cost, so that they can look into which telecoms companies are offering the best deal.
In that regard, I am pleased that, at the end of last year, Ofcom published a table setting out the cost of such services provided by the main telecoms companies. I hope that that will make the companies realise that this is a service that their consumers value. I welcome TalkTalk’s announcement yesterday that it is to become the first company to make all its landline privacy calling features free of charge, and I hope that the other telecoms companies will have noted the clear, strong steer from Members in the debate today that charging for those services is not a good idea.
Hon. Members have also mentioned international calls. It is particularly frustrating when nuisance calls are made from abroad, and it is therefore good news that we are working with BT on finding a way to display incoming international numbers, enabling consumers to make informed decisions. Hon. Members might be angry with BT for charging for caller line identification, but I hope that they will congratulate the company on updating its telephone exchanges to enable that service to encompass international calls. That update is expected to take place after the summer of this year.
We have also been working with the telecoms providers on call tracing. It is sometimes difficult to identify who has made a call, perhaps because the number is unavailable. But we have asked the Network Interoperability Consultative Committee, which brings together all the major telecoms companies, to develop new industry standards for call tracing between networks, as well as revising the current rules on how caller line identifications are passed between networks and presented to consumers. The new call tracing standard was published at the end of last year, and it will simplify and increase the likely success of the process.
We also face other technological challenges, for example, from technology that allows numbers to be “spoofed”. Companies may wish to give customers a local number to call rather than the number of their national centre and so this technology can be used for legitimate reasons, but it can also be misused for nuisance calls. So, again, we are working with regulators and industry to see how that can be addressed. We are also working with the regulators and telecoms providers to explore technical opportunities to make it more difficult to misuse caller line identification in that way, and to help identify companies that are doing so. The spoofing issue has an international dimension, and last autumn Ofcom and the Information Commissioner’s Office announced that they would be joining forces with regulators from Australia, Canada and the United States to tackle spoofing.
The issue of nuisance texts has been raised during the debate. Mobile operators, the Global System for Mobile communications Association—GSMA—and the ICO are working together to allow mobile operators to share their information to help block nuisance texts, no matter which network they emerge from, as well as to enable the regulator to take more effective enforcement action. The GSMA spam text reporting service enables consumers to make a report by using a short code, “7726”. Such reporting makes a difference. To give just one example, we have been told by the mobile operator Three that it suspends thousands of pay-as-you-go accounts each month in its efforts to tackle nuisance texts. As in many cases, the expertise to tackle such issues lies in the industry, which is why it is so important that we continue to work with it. The marketing industry also needs to play its part. Last October, the Telephone Preference Service launched its accreditation scheme, “TPS assured”, which focuses on improving the best practice of companies using these techniques. That is, in effect, a kitemark for call centres; it allows companies that do adhere to the Direct Marketing Association guidelines to get an industry accreditation that they are TPS assured and to use it in their marketing material.
A lot of hon. Members have mentioned their concerns about the effectiveness of the TPS. As I said at the beginning of my remarks, some things were beyond the control of the TPS and it is up to the Government, working with consumer groups, to look at the issue of consent. We need to have clear and specific information to guide our thinking on the effectiveness of the TPS. The TPS is governed by Ofcom, although Ofcom has contracted out its management to the DMA. Ofcom is undertaking research on the effectiveness of the TPS and that work will conclude in the spring. We expect Ofcom to publish its recommendations in the summer.
Let me touch on some of the other actions being taken. Regulators, the ICO and Ofcom sent a joint letter to about 170 organisations reminding them of the need to ensure compliance with the rules. The ICO has engaged with more than 20 organisations responsible for making nuisance calls through compliance meetings and has monitored their progress over a period of three months. As a result, there was a substantial reduction in the number of complaints about those 20 companies. Ofcom has also taken informal action against 25 organisations. As a result, complaints linked to telephone numbers used by 16 of them stopped and the number of complaints against five others fell significantly—four cases are ongoing. Again, I wish to assure hon. Members that although the fines get the headlines, a lot of behind-the-scenes work is going on, with both Ofcom and the ICO engaging with organisations that attract a persistent and high number of complaints.
I am also very aware of the concerns raised by the StepChange Debt Charity in its October report “Got their number”, which highlighted the serious consequences that can arise from nuisance calls for people who are financially vulnerable. That report notes that there are many factors that feed into this issue, including the apparent ease with which people’s personal data can be gathered and sold on. The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland also mentioned her concerns about personal data. Again, the issue highlights the need for my Department to work more closely with the Ministry of Justice. There should be a joined-up approach to data management in this area.
I share the concerns that regulators should be able to take greater action, and I hope that the information-sharing legislation that we will introduce as well as the proposals in the joint action plan published by Ofcom and the ICO will lead to more action in this area. I take this opportunity to welcome StepChange’s efforts to provide clear advice for consumers and also its willingness to promote Ofcom’s guidance on nuisance calls.
As I said at the beginning of my remarks, I welcome the interest that has been shown in this issue. We have an excellent report from the all-party group on nuisance calls. Both Backbench debates today have highlighted the effective work that all-party groups can undertake. We also have an excellent report from the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. We have also had a number of private Members’ Bills, parliamentary questions and sustained and helpful interest from a whole range of Members.
I hope that we have shown that we have some clear proposals, which we will publish once they have received clearance in the Whitehall write-around. We expect that to involve two pieces of minor legislation, which should make a significant impact in terms of allowing Ofcom and the ICO to share data and of reducing the threshold for what constitutes a nuisance call. Further work will commence on the complex issue of consent, which is a live issue. It is an important matter. Indeed, the chairman of the all-party group challenged me at a meeting yesterday about what action would be taken after the report was published. I made a twofold commitment to him. I will continue my wider round-table discussions every three months, bringing together all the relevant stakeholders, telecoms companies, Members of Parliament, regulators and others. I also committed that the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark and I would meet him once a month for an update on where we are on making progress on action against nuisance calls. As has been said by several Members during this debate, the time for talking is over and the time for action has arrived. In order to continue to make an impact, it is important that I am held to account and that regular meetings take place.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Mr Crockart, you can make the concluding remarks. You are on the clock. There is a time limit of three minutes.