Gov Proposes Tougher UK Penalties for Nuisance Calls and Texts

The UK Government has today announced that their planned data reform, which covers a multitude of areas (many of which are outside our focus), will also set out plans to impose tougher penalties and fines for nuisance calls and text (SMS) messages. But it’s unclear how much impact this will actually have.

Last year the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) received a total of 103,733 complaints about nuisance calls and nuisance text messages (i.e. a year-on-year decrease of 20%), while Ofcom received 25,342 complaints about silent and abandoned calls, which is down 9% compared with last year (here).

Most of the major UK home broadband ISPs and mobile network operators have already developed technical measures to tackle Nuisance Calls, but these aren’t always 100% effective and there are still plenty of operators that take almost no action against such calls.

The Government has now proposed to take action by imposing “tougher penalties and fines for nuisance calls and text messages,” which will be overseen by the ICO and builds on government action in recent years that has included holding individual directors liable for nuisance calls made by their respective companies (2017 change). More recently, it has also banned cold calls from pension providers and claims management firms, unless individuals have expressly agreed to be contacted

Oliver Dowden, UK Digital Secretary, said:

“Data is one of the most important resources in the world and we want our laws to be based on common sense, not box-ticking.

Now that we have left the EU, we have the freedom to create a new world-leading data regime that unleashes the power of data across the economy and society.

These reforms will keep people’s data safe and secure, while ushering in a new golden age of growth and innovation right across the UK, as we build back better from the pandemic.”

The related consultation on all this isn’t due to be published until 9am tomorrow, but we have been given a sneak peek. Mostly it deals with changes to the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 (PECR), which among other things already prohibits organisations that undertake direct marketing from contacting individuals by phone if they are registered with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS), or have previously informed the company that they do not wish to be contacted.

Sadly, the consultation is currently only seeking industry feedback and does not yet propose any specific changes in this area, other than the aforementioned, if still quite vague, reference to tougher penalties and fines for nuisance calls and texts messages. The detail of this is important because most such calls and texts now originate from outside the UK, which may dampen the impact of any new penalties.

Despite this, the consultation does still offer a few clues about the direction of travel. For example, at present the ICO can only take action on calls which are “received” and connected, but the Government are also examining whether the ICO could take action against organisations for the number of unsolicited direct marketing calls that are “sent“. This would be complemented by a new “duty to report“, which would require comms providers to report when they have identified “suspicious traffic” (calling, texts etc.) transiting their networks. We suspect that might be a tall order for smaller players.

A voluntary charter for telecommunications providers is also in development, which will set out what actions they can take to prevent fraud. Earlier this year, the Home Secretary chaired the Economic Crime Strategic Board, which agreed a framework to develop a Fraud Action Plan that will include prevention, education, effective enforcement and regulatory reforms across several industries, including the telecommunications sector.