Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to reduce the number of international (a) cold and (b) scam callers to domestic (i) landlines and (ii) mobile telephone numbers.

As the Government set out in the Fraud Strategy, we are taking a range of actions to tackle criminals making fraudulent calls to the UK public.

In August, we launched an eight-week consultation on proposals to ban cold calls on all financial products, in addition to a previous ban on cold calls for pensions. This will mean that anyone who receives an unsolicited call trying to sell them a product such as crypto currency or insurance, will know it’s a scam. We also support National Trading Standards in the roll out of call blocking devices to vulnerable people.

Ofcom have already strengthened activity against ‘spoofed’ calls and new rules have now come into force to ensure that operators block calls from suspicious numbers from the UK and overseas. They also continue to look at significant long-term measures that will further tackle scam calling.