GOVERNMENT PLEDGES FUNDS TO STAMP OUT NUISANCE CALLS

The Government will provide a £3.5million package to protect the most vulnerable from nuisance and scam calls, as announced by the Chancellor in the budget which was presented to Parliament last week.

The £3.5million fund will explore ways of protecting vulnerable people from nuisance calls. This will include trialling the development and provision of innovative call blocking technology, research and a campaign to raise awareness of how to reduce and report nuisance calls.

Andrew Stunell MP & Lisa Smart led a ‘No 2 Nuisance Calls’ campaign jointly with Mark Hunter MP, and last year presented a 1,500 petition to Downing Street urging the Government to do more to tackle nuisance calls.  In Andrew’s final speech in the Chamber last week he echoed Lisa’s delight that the Government has put such a significant amount of money towards clamping down on nuisance calls:

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2015-03-0a.1011.0&s=speaker%3A10578#g1073.0

This announcement comes on top of the Government’s Action Plan to tackle nuisance calls which, amongst other things, has enabled the ICO and Ofcom to share information to help each other in their fight to combat nuisance calls, which wasn’t allowed previously, clear guidance has been published for companies so they don’t fall foul of the rules surrounding marketing calls and, most recently, the Government has lowered the legal threshold whereby rogue firms responsible for nuisance calls and texts can be punished.

The law previously required proof that a company caused ‘substantial distress’ by their conduct, but the Government has now changed this to reduce it to causing ‘annoyance, inconvenience or anxiety’ and firms can be fined up to £500,000 for continuing with this practice. 

The Government’s own Nuisance Calls Action Plan was published in March 2014 and can be accessed via the following link –

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/299140/Action_Plan.pdf