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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps her Department is taking to stop the spoofing of UK telephone numbers by foreign companies to make nuisance calls.

The DCMS works closely with the independent regulator, Ofcom who is responsible for consumer protection, as well as the telecoms industry and the Home Office to address telephone-enabled fraud and nuisance calls.

In February 2022, Ofcom published a consultation which proposed a range of changes to address the specific issue of spoofing. This included proposals to strengthen guidance for operators on the detection and blocking of spoofed numbers by improving accuracy in Calling Line Identification (CLI) data, as well as reviewing practices in the reselling of allocated and assigned numbers. We will consider next steps following the publication of Ofcom’s response.