Business of the House

Julian Smith Excerpts

Thursday 26th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

I was in the Chamber when the hon. Gentleman raised that point. In my view, the time that the Government allocated on Report for the Financial Services Bill was adequate. Speaking from memory, we allocated two days, which is quite generous compared with the time that is normally allowed. When what I would regard as adequate time has been allowed, it is up to the House to make intelligent use of that time. If people speak at length during the earlier debates, it is inevitable that a price must be paid in the later stages. As a business manager, I genuinely believe that the overall amount of time that we allocated was adequate so long as the House behaved in an intelligent and disciplined way that enabled all the relevant bits of the Bill to be covered.

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

Colin Brannigan of Ripon is having his sleep badly disturbed by unsolicited marketing fax calls to his home phone. He has tried Ofcom and the Information Commissioner. May we have a debate on banning unsolicited marketing fax calls in the middle of the night?

[Sir George Young]

My understanding is that if one registers with the telephone preference service it is then an offence to telephone that number after a gap of 28 days. I will need to check whether that applies to faxes as well as phone calls, but there is protection from unsolicited phone calls when someone is either registered with the TPS or has made it clear to the caller that those calls are unwelcome. It is illegal under privacy and electronic communications regulations. I will clarify the issue about faxes and somebody will write to my hon. Friend.