Government Sets Out New UK Penalties for Nuisance Calls and Texts UPDATE

The UK Government has today responded to an earlier consultation on their new Data Reform Bill (DRB) by, among other things, setting out how they’ll increase the financial penalties for those pestering people with nuisance calls and text (SMS) messages. But this probably won’t do much to stop calls made from outside the country.

Ofcom estimated that 44.6 million UK people may have received scam calls and text messages during just the three months of last summer (here), with 2% of recipients being duped by them. Nuisance calls include marketing calls (live and recorded), silent calls and abandoned calls. Scam calls also come in all sorts of different shapes, from people claiming that your computer has been infected with viruses, to those pretending to represent your bank, HMRC, NHS etc. We’ve all had them.

Most of the major UK home phone, 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 – often smaller players and many VoIP providers – that take very little action against such calls.

The new bill won’t resolve everything, but it will increase fines for nuisance calls and texts and other serious data breaches under the UK’s existing Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR), which aim to prevent companies contacting people for marketing purposes without consent.

In today’s response, the Government has proposed that fines will now increase from the current maximum of £500,000 and be brought in line with current UK GDPR penalties, which are up to 4% of a company’s global turnover or £17.5 million, whichever is greater. This will be overseen by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

Nadine Dorries, UK Digital Secretary, said:

“Today is an important step in cementing post-Brexit Britain’s position as a science and tech superpower. Our new Data Reform Bill will make it easier for businesses and researchers to unlock the power of data to grow the economy and improve society, but retains our global gold standard for data protection.

Outside of the EU we can ensure people can control their personal data, while preventing businesses, researchers and civil society from being held back by a lack of clarity and cumbersome EU legislation.”

At the time of writing, we haven’t yet seen the Government’s full response to their earlier consultation, partly because they’ve decided to upload it late at night and haven’t shared a preview copy. Suffice to say, we’ll update again tomorrow to summarise any other new details.

One obvious challenge here is that most such calls and texts already originate from outside the UK, which may dampen the impact of any new penalties. However, Ofcom are currently working with telecommunications providers to stop some of this by tackling the use of fake phone numbers (here), but this is a complicated area to get right and will take time to complete.

We should add that, 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.

Finally, a voluntary charter for telecommunications providers is in development, which will set out what actions they can take to prevent fraud. The framework to develop a Fraud Action Plan has already been established, which will include prevention, education, effective enforcement and regulatory reforms across several industries, including the telecommunications sector.

UPDATE 17th June 2022

The Government’s response is extremely thin, but it does confirm that they’re proceeding with some key proposals.

Government Response – Nuisance calls

The consultation proposed measures to help the ICO to tackle rogue ‘direct marketing’ firms that are responsible for generating large volumes of nuisance calls, and asked a range of open questions on this issue.

There was support for measures to allow the ICO to take enforcement action against organisations on the basis of the number of calls they generate (rather than purely on the number that are connected, which is the position under the current legislation). There was also support for the introduction of a ‘duty to report’ on communications providers, to require them to inform the ICO of suspicious levels of traffic on their networks.

The government plans to proceed with both proposals. In addition, the government is not ruling out placing further requirements on telecoms companies to block a greater volume of nuisance calls at source, if the measures outlined here do not produce tangible results.