Nuisance Phone Calls

Debate between Alun Cairns and Cathy Jamieson

Thursday 28th February 2013 Westminster Hall

[Cathy Jamieson (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to speak in the debate, and I congratulate all those hon. Members who pressed for it. Several of us have been raising the issue of nuisance phone calls in various ways. I am sure that the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Mike Crockart) will be pleased to know that one of my constituents congratulated me on taking up the issue and mentioned his campaign in conjunction with The Sunday Post. I am sure that he will say more about that.

People are concerned about a number of issues, and a range of constituents have contacted me. An elderly couple wrote to me to ask for advice about what they could do, because they were receiving persistent calls. They said in their letter to me:

“How can we stop phone calls which we consider to verge on the disruptive and the invasive? This week, since Monday, we have received seven of these calls.”

That might not seem like a lot of calls, but for an elderly couple such as my constituents, who live in sheltered housing and who would normally receive calls from family and friends but who are suddenly receiving an influx of calls and do not know who they are from or what they are about, it can be quite concerning.

I gave that couple advice at that stage. They contacted the Telephone Preference Service and were told that that was the correct thing to do. However, part of the problem was that the calls originated from offshore and the TPS could do nothing about them. Of course, the couple were then quite concerned because it seemed as though nobody was really taking the issue seriously.

As well as the nuisance calls, of course, there are the other types of calls that have already been referred to as scams. Again, one of my constituents wrote to me to explain that a couple of years ago she was constantly phoned for a few weeks by a company that said there were problems with her computer. Eventually, after a number of those calls, she gave in; she thought that what the company said must be correct. She gave the company information, allowed it to log on to her personal computer and then it started to tell her about all the serious problems she had with her computer and began to ask her for money. Thankfully, she then realised that something was wrong. None the less, she continued to receive calls from the same company, despite making it clear that she had no wish to receive any such calls in the future. Her number was ex-directory, and she was registered with the TPS.

Another issue was raised with me recently by constituents. I hope that the Minister will consider it seriously, as he has done with the other problems that have been raised. A number of constituents have contacted me because they are concerned about what they say are companies calling them about either the green deal or some of the energy offers that are available. The problem for my constituents is that they are not immediately able to identify whether those calls are genuine calls made on behalf of—as they see it—the Government or, indeed, on behalf of a company that is seeking to persuade them to apply for Government grants before providing them with the business. There seem to be some grey areas in terms of what is marketing and what is actually selling. That is something that it would be useful to look at.

One of my constituents, who is pretty savvy about these issues, received a call telling her that she could miss out on lots of Government grants, so she told the caller that, of course, the green deal is not about grants but loans, etc. The caller then tried to continue with the call, by claiming that they were not trying to sell her anything at all. Afterwards, she googled to get the information about the company that had called her and discovered that it was indeed a company trying to sell her products. Again, she was left feeling that the protections that exist did not particularly help her.

Offshore calls are another issue that people will be familiar with. I know how difficult it is sometimes when I am calling people, or when people are calling me, for them to understand me; having a fairly broad west of Scotland accent, it can be fairly difficult for people to do so. I was on a call last week and I had to try to spell out the name of my home village of Mauchline to someone in another part of the UK, and that was pretty difficult. Again, we can imagine what the situation is like for vulnerable people or elderly people. They are concerned because they do not know what the call is about and they have been asked to give information, perhaps even details such as their date of birth and their bank information, ostensibly for market research or marketing purposes.

[Alun Cairns]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for making some extremely valuable points. She mentions vulnerable and elderly people. Does she agree that people of working age, who might not be at home during the day, might not appreciate the scale of this problem because many of these calls are made in the daytime? Vulnerable people, including older people who may well be vulnerable, are disproportionately affected by these nuisance calls.

[Cathy Jamieson]

That is a very good point, and I think that it is why we as MPs get so many people coming to us who are in that category of vulnerable people. However, some of my constituents who are at work during the day complain that the calls are targeted for the period immediately after they return home, after the schools come out or perhaps at the traditional tea time in certain parts of my area, between 5 o’clock and half-past 6. Basically, people are saying, “We get in from work; we sit down; and the phone goes.”

Older people are advised to get caller identification, but not everyone wants to do that because they might not necessarily understand the technology or want to judge whether to answer a call. People simply want a system whereby, if they say that they do not want to receive unsolicited calls, somebody somewhere takes their request seriously, does something about it and puts in place a system that works.

I do not have much more time left, so I will finish on the point about multiple responsibility. Different agencies and organisations have different responsibilities, and people are split between contacting BT or their phone company, before they are told to contact the TPS and then perhaps Ofcom. People just give up and say, “It’s all too difficult,” and I have not even started on the number of texts that people complain about, particularly ones about payment protection insurance or PPI. Perhaps that is for another day and another debate.