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New measures to crack down on nuisance marketing calls and text messages plaguing millions of UK consumers every day have been announced by the government.
Ministers are to lower the threshold of what is to be considered a nuisance call – meaning "annoying" as well as "distressing" calls can be investigated with a view to enforcement action being taken – and allow regulators Ofcom and the Information Commissioner's Office to more easily share information.
Further measures are being drawn up to prevent cold callers from being able to conceal their phone numbers and to improve the system requiring consumers to give their consent to be contacted. There will also be clarification of the process for opting out of receiving marketing calls and reporting unwanted calls.
The problem, seen as an inevitable result of fast-developing technology and telecommunications, has become so serious that consumer watchdog Which? has estimated that UK consumers received more than 700m unwanted calls last month.
The new protections were published in a consultation paper from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport called Connectivity, Content and Consumers. The culture secretary Maria Miller said the changes would put consumers at the heart of the communications industry. "The government will ensure consumers are protected from potentially harmful content, soaring costs and contracts that don't meet their needs," she added.
Which? executive director, Richard Lloyd, said action "cannot come soon enough". "More than 81,000 people have already joined our campaign to help end this menace," he said. "We also want to see the government go further, faster by strengthening the law on consent and the use of personal data."
Peter Tutton, head of policy at the StepChange debt charity, said: "Today's announcement is welcome, nuisance and cold calling are more than just an everyday irritation, they pose significant risks to financially vulnerable consumers. We have seen too many cases where consumers' financial position has been made worse by payday loans or debt management services taken out as a result of unscrupulous and unsolicited marketing calls."
But regulators called for tougher action. An Ofcom spokesperson said: "We welcome the proposal to improve our ability to share information with other regulators, which will support our joint initiative with the ICO to tackle the root causes of nuisance calls. However, we believe that more action, such as changes in the law, may be required to give regulators the right tools to tackle the problem."
David Hickson of the Fair Telecoms campaign said he wanted to "a single specialist body exclusively representing the consumer/citizen interest in this matter, facing the public, receiving people's reports of nuisance and aggregating them in a way that must lead to action
