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

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what estimate his Department has made of the number of nuisance calls made by companies in (a) the UK and (b) abroad to customers registered with the Telephone Preference Service; and if he will bring forward proposals to increase fines for businesses that breach the law on nuisance calls.

No estimate has been made about the level of nuisance calls made by companies in the UK or abroad to Telephone Preference Service (TPS) registered consumers, as this type of information is not readily available. However, tackling nuisance calls is a priority for the Department, including those that are made to consumers who are registered with the TPS. We published the first ever Nuisance Calls Action Plan on 30 March 2014: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/nuisance-calls-action-plan-unveiled.This set out our achievements to date, work underway and proposed actions for the future, which included both legislative and non-legislative measures. We are currently pursuing these measures, which we believe that as a combination are beginning to make a significant difference for the benefit of consumers. The Information Commissioner’s Office’s Office (ICO) can issue a substantial monetary penalty of up to £500,000 to any organisation for breaching the TPS and therefore we are not looking to increase this further. However, we have consulted between 25 October and 6 December 2014, proposing to lower or preferably remove the legal threshold, as this will make it easier for the ICO to issue more monetary penalties. The Government’s Response will follow shortly in 2015. Details of enforcement action taken to date by ICO can be viewed at: http://ico.org.uk/enforcement/action/calls