Commissioner will no longer have to prove messages cause ‘substantial damage or substantial distress’ before taking action

Companies that plague householders with unsolicited or nuisance phone calls and texts will be fined up to £500,000 under a government crackdown.



Ministers will confirm on Wednesday that they will be changing the law to make it easier to levy tough penalties on the companies behind persistent texts and calls promising compensation for payment protection insurance mis-selling and cold calls pushing solar panels.

The watchdog, the Information Commissioner’s Office, will no longer have to prove that messages are causing a “substantial damage or substantial distress” before taking action against those responsible.

Following a consultation launched last October, the government has been considering how to make early intervention easier, and is expected to announce that in future the ICO will be able to intervene when calls cause “nuisance, annoyance, inconvenience or anxiety”.

Last year there were more than 175,000 complaints made to the commissioner about nuisance calls and texts, but there have been only a few prosecutions.



The consumer group Which? has been actively lobbying for the threshold for legal action to be lowered, warning that four in five people are regularly cold-called at home, while a third of householders feel intimidated by the messages. Its executive director, Richard Lloyd, chairs a taskforce, which in December recommended tougher action to crack down on calls, including accountability by board directors.

Last year Ofcom, the telecoms regulator, admitted that the telephone preference service, designed to let households block calls, was failing to stop two-thirds of unsolicited calls and messages. Rogue companies ignore the rules or trick consumers into giving consent.

The culture minister, Ed Vaizey, will press ahead with action after being shocked by the scale of evidence. Six in 10 people say they no longer wanted to answer their own phone.

Changes to the regulations will allow a change in the law before the general election, and possibly within days.

Lloyd said: “We welcome the government making good on its promise to change the law so it’s easier to prosecute nuisance callers. These calls are an everyday menace blighting the lives of millions so we want the regulator to send a clear message by using their new powers to full effect without delay.”



David Hickson of the Fair Telecoms campaign said: “We fear this is simply a bit of pre-election posturing, as with so many similar announcements over the last 10 years, during which the problem of nuisance calls has simply got worse.”

He called for togher regulation of companies, rather than a “lightweight general purpose regime against nuisance calls, using the limited capacities of the ICO and Ofcom, [which] can never succeed now that the problem has been allowed to grow to its present scale.

“Obviously this is a tiny step in the right direction – potentially making it easier to penalise less serious cases – but anyone who understands this issue must recognise that it is largely inconsequential.”



The energy firm SSE said it was one of the first to end cold calling – in 2013. A spokeswoman said: “Nobody likes receiving a sales call at home out of the blue, it’s intrusive. It’s time this practice is ended for good.”







