Data Protection and Digital Information Bill

Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 22nd April 2024 Grand Committee

On this matter in particular, I am more than happy to receive the Minister’s response in the Room, by telephone call or by text, but not by fax. I beg to move.

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 208A. I declare my interest as a solicitor but not one who has been directly involved with personal injury claims. This is an area of particular specialism that requires particular expertise and experience for it to be carried out to the best advantages of those who seek that help.

Looking back, I am concerned that this matter has been raised, in different fora, on a number of occasions. For instance, in 2016, the Telephone Preference Scheme opt-out was discussed when it was removed from the control of Ofcom to that of the ICO. At that point, there was a great opportunity for this matter to be dealt with. Indeed, a number of organisations, including personal injury lawyers, the Motor Accident Solicitors Society and others, said that it was vital to carry this out and that cold calling should be ended because of the pressures it placed on an awful lot of very vulnerable people.

Since 2016, things have got worse in one respect—although, perhaps, they are a little less bad in respect of telephone calling. It is a little while now since I was last told that I had just had a major accident in my car as I was sitting enjoying a glass of wine and not having such worries in my mind. Telephone cold calling seems to have diminished but pressures through social media contact, various scams and so on have increased dramatically. I have been told this by a number of my legal colleagues.

In 2023, the Government produced the UK’s Fraud Strategy. As I am sure noble Lords will know, when it was published, it specifically pursued the question of extending the ban on cold calling to personal injury cases; that was very important and included all servers. So, unless there is some relationship already in place—something where that is a defence, as it were, here—and a voluntary willingness on the part of those who suffer from personal injuries to be contacted by an organisation with which they already have a relationship, this is something that we should pursue very strongly indeed.

Although it is correct that the legal profession, and perhaps other professions, are banned from this procedure, on a regulatory or disciplinary basis, some of my colleagues in the profession are, in some cases, susceptible to financial and commercial challenges through these organisations, such that they would become—sometimes, almost inadvertently—part of the process. Therefore, I hope that, in passing such an amendment, we would give a clear sign to the Solicitors Regulation Authority and the Law Society that it underlines yet again that these practices are not acceptable to those members of the profession.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 208A. I am a recovering solicitor. Many moons ago, I gave public affairs advice to the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, which is a fine organisation. I very much support its call and this amendment on that basis. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Leong, on his introduction to this amendment; he and the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope, made a terrific case.

APIL took the trouble to commission research from YouGov, which showed that 38% of UK adults had received a cold call or text while 86% had a strong emotional response and were left feeling annoyed, angry, anxious, disgusted or upset. Therefore, the YouGov research reveals that almost all those who received a call supported a total ban on personal injury cold calls and text messages.

There is little for me to add but I am sorry that the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, is not with us—she has just exited the Room, which is unhappy timing because, in looking back at some of the discussions we have had in the House, I was about to quote her. During Report stage in the Lords on the Financial Guidance and Claims Bill, when she was a Minister, she told us:

“We know that cold calls continue and understand that more needs to be done truly to eradicate this problem. We have already committed to ban cold calls relating to pensions, and are minded to bring forward similar action in relation to the claims management industry. I have asked officials to consider the evidence for implementing a cold-calling ban in relation to claims management activities, and I am pleased to say that the Government are working through the detail of a ban on cold calling by claims management companies. There are complex issues to work through, including those relating, for example, to EU directives”;


of course, we do not have those any more. She went on to say:

“We would therefore like time to consider this important issue properly, and propose bringing forward a government amendment in the other place to meet the concerns of this House”.—[Official Report, 24/10/17; col. 861.]


How much time do the Government need? Talk about unfinished business. I know it is slightly unfair as you can unearth almost anything in Hansard but the fact is that this is bull’s eye. It is absolutely spot on on the part of APIL to have found this. I thought for one delirious minute that the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, was going to stand up and say, “Yes, I plead guilty. We never pursued this”.