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

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, how many companies were fined for making nuisance calls by (a) the Information Commissioner's Office and (b) Ofcom in each of the last three years.

The number of monetary penalties issued for making nuisance calls by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) and the Office of Communications (Ofcom) in each of the last three years is set out in the table below. Also, both the ICO and Ofcom take informal enforcement action to ensure that companies about whom they have concerns are brought into compliance more quickly. From January 2013 - June 2014, ICO engaged with over 20 organisations, which were responsible for making nuisance calls and as a result recorded substantial reductions in complaints for five of these organisations. Ofcom's informal action against 25 organisations making silent and abandoned phone calls has resulted in complaints linked to the telephone numbers used by 22 of those organisations stopping or reducing significantly, while three cases are ongoing. The power to issue monetary penalties of £500,000 for ICO came into force in January 2012, whilst Ofcom's power to issue a monetary penalty of £2 million became effective in October 2010.

*ICO has also issued monetary penalties to two companies for SMS spam text messages in 2012 and 2013