Nuisance Calls

John Whittingdale Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Mike Crockart) on securing the debate. This matter is clearly the cause of great annoyance and anger, and it results in complaints from a large number of people. I suspect that Members of Parliament are no different from any other member of the public in this regard. I started getting calls some time ago asking me whether I wanted to make a claim for having been mis-sold payment protection insurance. I found that a little puzzling as I had never had PPI, but I then discovered that the calls were made indiscriminately and bore no relation to whether the recipients had actually bought the product. That is probably the most common kind of nuisance call, although it is not exceptional.

I also want to congratulate Which? It has been very effective in raising awareness of this issue and has mounted a good campaign. I went on to Radio 5 Live to debate the issue with some of the main regulators, and the extent of the problem and the strength of feeling about it became apparent from the calls to the programme. It was then that I suggested the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport might investigate it. The hon. Member for Edinburgh West and my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) also founded the all-party parliamentary group on nuisance calls, which has held its inquiry in parallel with ours. All those investigations have contributed to the recommendations that we will be debating.

It is important to point out that there are perfectly legitimate reasons why, in principle, there should be cold calling. Some people have said that we should just ban it, but, early in our inquiry, the National Autistic Society pleaded with us not to do that, saying that cold calling was one of its most effective fundraising methods. There are legitimate reasons for cold calling, including fundraising and using it for political purposes. We had an interesting debate in the Select Committee when the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw), who cannot be here today, told us that about once a week he rang up a number of his constituents at random to ask them their views and to discuss whatever was going on at the time. We debated whether that came under the definition of nuisance calling, and we decided that it did not, because it was part of the job of a Member of Parliament to keep in touch with his constituents. There are reasons why people should make unsolicited calls, and I certainly would not want to ban them.

One also has to assume that it is of some benefit to some people that they receive calls to ask whether they have been mis-sold payment protection insurance. One has to assume that companies would not be making these calls unless some people said, “I am so glad you rang. Yes, I was mis-sold PPI and I would like you to help me.” If these companies had got no custom and simply annoyed every person they called, the exercise would seem fairly pointless. One therefore has to assume that some people will welcome these calls, but that does not justify the scattergun approach whereby these companies appear to be calling millions of people across the population and identifying perhaps one in 1,000 who welcome the call.

My Committee was presented with compelling evidence—the hon. Member for Edinburgh West referred to some of it—about the scale of the problem: 85% of the population had received a cold call in the previous month, with the average number of calls being about seven a month. That is an enormous amount, and it is not surprising that the number of complaints about this issue has increased dramatically in the past few years. Some 62% of the unsolicited calls relate to PPI, so that specific driver has led to a large number of the complaints.

I do not want to repeat the hon. Gentleman’s comprehensive speech, as he went through the various component parts of the problem and possible solutions in detail. The Committee concluded that there was no single magic bullet to deal with the problem; it could be broken down into a number of different parts and in each case there was an argument for strengthening the regulation and increasing the protection available to consumers. I will briefly go through the four relevant areas, which have been covered by him and by the hon. Member for Angus (Mr Weir).

Like the hon. Member for Angus, I understand why people who have gone to the trouble of registering with the Telephone Preference Service, having been told that by doing so they will be sending a message that they do not wish to receive calls, are deeply irritated when they go on receiving them. We were concerned to be told that even though somebody may register with the TPS, that expression of their wish can somehow be deemed to have been overruled because they happen to have ticked a box at another time, often when they are buying a completely different product and are asked whether or not they wish to receive marketing calls relating to products from that producer or, indeed, from third parties. I was interested to hear the results of the research that the hon. Member for Edinburgh West had done on various companies’ practices as to whether the default is to say that people want these things. That is part of the problem: people register with the TPS, think that they have made sure that they will not get any of these calls and then tick a box, perhaps a few days or weeks later, which results in the expression of their wish expressed through the TPS being overruled and in their starting to get these calls again.

One thing we talked to the Information Commissioner’s Office about was the extent to which companies should be able to claim that a TPS preference had been overruled by a subsequent action. The ICO has already begun to take on cases relating to that area, arguing that the consumer’s wish has been improperly overlooked. There may be scope to do more, particularly through the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003, which I am sure the Minister will mention. The Committee also looked at whether there should be an expiry time: where someone gives consent to say they are happy to receive these calls, is that for time immemorial or should a renewal be required after six months?

The Committee thought that the simplest solution, which I would like to see applied more widely, is that where a complaint is made against a company for making unsolicited calls, that company should be required to show the consent—it should show why it has called that individual. The company should be able to produce evidence to show that the individual had given consent to be called, particularly if they were registered under the TPS. That would be a simple requirement for the ICO to enforce to deal with some of this confusion over whether consent had or had not been given.

The next component is the technological opportunity to obtain information about who is calling or to block people making calls. Ofcom published a useful table that goes through all the various services offered by different operators, such as caller display, incoming call blocking, anonymous call rejection and last-caller identification. It also shows whether the major providers offer those services and whether they do so free or charge for them. As this has become such a matter of public controversy and concern, it is healthy that operators are now beginning to compete, as part of their own marketing, by telling consumers the protections they offer.

Yesterday, TalkTalk announced that it is to become the first and only internet service provider to make all landline privacy calling features completely free. There may be some argument over whether other operators offer free services or charge for them, but the fact that TalkTalk clearly thinks it is in its interests to market its services by offering such protections free to its customers can only be a good thing. We were concerned when BT, having told us about the services that it offers, particularly caller line identification, announced that it was changing the terms of its contract and that some people would be required to pay for that feature. That seemed a retrograde step. Although it is a matter for BT, we none the less expressed a very strong view that BT and all other telecoms providers should provide that kind of service to their customers free, and that there are clear market advantages in so doing.

The hon. Member for Edinburgh West also talked about the ease with which it is possible to report a nuisance telephone call to one’s telephone service provider. As it happens, I got one yesterday by text message and I used the 7726 service, which is easy to use on a mobile telephone. It was suggested to us, as it was to the hon. Gentleman, that that was much more difficult to do with landline calls, but, as he said, similar services are already available. For example, people can dial a number as soon as they have received a call to ensure that it is blocked next time. A reporting system of that kind should be relatively simple to operate. I accept that there may be greater and different challenges as we move towards more internet protocol telephony, but I have every confidence that the telecommunications companies in this country have the ability to overcome the challenges and develop protections should they choose to do so.

The Committee also looked at the confusion that undoubtedly exists over where responsibility lies. There are different bodies, all of which have some role in accepting complaints and enforcing regulations. Although we did not agree with some people who said that there should be a single regulator, we did think that there should be a single point of entry for the consumer, so that the consumer does not have to sit down and think, “Should I ring up Ofcom or go to the Information Commissioner’s Office or the Telephone Preference Service?” There should be a single front-facing telephone number for consumers, so that if they get a nuisance call, they can report it and then the people at the other end of the phone can work out which is the appropriate body to pursue the complaint.

Finally, there is the question of enforcement. It may well be that more resources are needed to deal with the sheer volume of complaints. I agree with the hon. Member for Angus that the number of people who bother to make a complaint are a small fraction of those who suffer nuisance calls. For every person who complains, there are at least another 10 who feel that this is one of the irritations of life that they can do nothing about, and so do not bother to make a complaint. There is a case for Ofcom and the ICO to concentrate more on this area and to deploy more resources. To help them, it may also be necessary for us to lower the threshold for enforcement action. It has been suggested that rather than having a threshold that requires substantial damage and distress to be proven, all that should be required is the ability to show that it has caused annoyance, inconvenience and anxiety. Once that has been demonstrated, perhaps there should be higher penalties. When there are repeat offenders, repeat penalties should be imposed.

A large number of different measures can be taken. No single one will sort the problem out, but taken together they should have a real impact. They were set out, very well, in the report by the all-party group. That suggestion was repeated by my Select Committee, which made a number of similar recommendations and one or two different ones. I hope that both reports will have helped to inform the Government and we look forward with keen anticipation to the Minister’s response, who will, I hope, set out what the Government intend to do.