Nuisance Calls

(asked on 7th June 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps his Department and associated regulatory authorities are taking to reduce nuisance automated marketing calls.


Answered by
John Whittingdale Portrait
John Whittingdale
This question was answered on 10th June 2021

Companies that make marketing calls are regulated by both the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 (PECR) and the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA). The PECR was designed to complement the DPA and impose strict obligations on organisations that make marketing calls to individuals in the UK.

The Government has taken a number of actions to tackle nuisance and automated marketing calls through amendments to the PECR. This includes introducing director liability and working with the Ministry of Justice and HM Treasury to ban cold calls from personal injury firms and pension providers. We also secured over £1 million to provide vulnerable people with call blocking devices.

The regulators Ofcom and the Information Commissioner’s Office have developed a joint action plan to tackle the harm to consumers caused by nuisance calls and communications. This can be found at:

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-telecoms-and-internet/information-for-industry/policy/tackling-nuisance-calls-messages

We continue to work with regulators and the telecoms industry in a joined up effort to tackle the issue of nuisance marketing communications.

Reticulating Splines