Written question asked by Norman Lamb (Liberal Democrat) on Tuesday, 29 November 2005, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Thursday, 1 December 2005. It was answered by Alun Michael (Labour) on Thursday, 8 December 2005 on behalf of the Department of Trade and Industry.

Telephone Preference Service

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry pursuant to the answer of 16 November 2005, Official Report, column 1360W, on the telephone preference service, how many (a) informal warning letters the Information Commissioner has issued to companies in each of the last five years in respect of breaching the telephone preference scheme and (b) companies have received (i) more than one informal warning letter, (ii) between two and 10 informal warning letters and (iii) in excess of 10 informal warning letters.

Answer: I am advised that as explained in the Commissioner's previous correspondence about statistics, the database that the Commissioner's office uses to record complaints about breaches of the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 (PECR), which includes the TPS scheme, does not enable his office to determine how many of the complaints they receive about telephone calls are TPS registered. In addition, due to the nature of the casework management system previously used, his office is unable to provide specific numbers for telephone marketing complaints prior to 2004.The number of letters the Commissioner's office wrote to organisations that were alleged to be at fault was 597 in 2004 and 1,125 so far this year. The increase in complaints corresponds with the sharp increase in TPS registrations. On the issue of multiple warning letters to individual companies, his office is unable to provide precise statistics from their database, although there are a number of companies that they have written to on several occasions for potential breaches of PECR. Where it is considered that a company has persistently breached PECR, cases are sent to their new Regulatory Action Division who consider enforcement.

Secondary information

Type: Written question
Reference: 33961; 440 c1487-8W;440 c1487-8W
Session: 2005-06
Subjects: Complaints Enforcement Telephones Unsolicited goods and services Telephone Preference Service
Contains statistics: Yes
Link: View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk