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Nuisance calls, particularly unwanted marketing calls and text messages, are a bane to millions. At best, the underlying scatter-gun marketing mentality causes needless interruption to many in return for an occasional benefit to few. The challenge we face is one of curtailing nuisance calls and texts for marketing purposes and fraud while at the same time allowing legitimate marketing practices and unsolicited calls made for good reason.
A significant underlying feature giving rise to nuisance calls is the unfair processing of personal data, something that is proscribed by the Data Protection Act 1998. Such processing includes obtaining a customer's "consent" to receive unsolicited marketing calls in ways that are at best opaque and at worst dishonest. It also includes trading personal data with companies lacking in scruples. The Information Commissioner already has powers to deal with this; he should use them far more.
Where regulation fails, technology has a place. A number of useful products are available; these include, but are no means confined to, the truecall call-blocking product and TalkTalk's network filtering service. More standard services like caller display can also help consumers screen out unwanted calls. We believe caller display should be a free service and hope communications service providers who don't already offer this will think again; in particular, we deeply regret BT's recent decision to begin charging explicitly for caller display.
Some nuisance callers withhold their numbers or hide behind a false one. In our view, this should not be allowed in relation to calls made for either marketing purposes or for generating "leads" for subsequent marketing activity.
Nuisance text messages can be simply reported by forwarding them to a dedicated "short code" number (7726). The introduction of a similar facility for nuisance calls to landlines is long overdue and would provide useful intelligence to regulators, principally Ofcom and the Information Commissioner's Office. Both these regulators have tried to make it easier for consumers to register an online complaint about nuisance calls, but the process could be made simpler; we recommend the introduction of a single online complaints form which would automatically be sent to the appropriate regulator and which would prompt an acknowledgment and reply to the complainant. Given that many people do not have internet access, including some from vulnerable groups, we recommend the establishment of a single nuisance calls helpline, staffed by existing regulators; this should be advertised prominently on telephone bills.
Easier reporting and regular tracing of nuisance calls will together provide better intelligence for the regulators and more opportunities to enforce regulations already in place. The legal threshold for the Information Commissioner to take enforcement action under the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 must also be lowered to cover any marketing telephone call or text message likely to cause nuisance, annoyance, inconvenience or anxiety. The Commissioner should not shy from imposing repeated penalties on companies that make repeated nuisance calls. Ofcom should apply more frequently, and interpret more broadly, its powers to punish those who persistently misuse telephone networks.
While the Information Commissioner's Office and Ofcom are the main regulators dealing with nuisance calls, there are others such as the Claims Management Regulator and the Office of Fair Trading. Replacing all of these with a single nuisance calls regulator might have superficial appeal, but a single point of contact for customers coupled with more effective coordination between regulators - behind the scenes - is both more achievable and desirable. Above all, organisations closer to the source of marketing calls, like the Direct Marketing Association and its offshoot, the Telephone Preference Service, need to play a stronger role. It is in their interests to do so.
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