My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, and the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson. It is so nice to have more support on the opposition Benches than on one’s own. I say
nothing against my noble friend, but he is too young to remember those signs on gates outside houses, which said, “No hawkers, no circulars”. He will, of course, know that the reason that I am in your Lordships’ House is to do with telecommunications, because my grandfather was the longest-serving Postmaster General in the past 100 years.
I will give my noble friend a little help and refer him to the wonderful report from the House of Lords Library. However, that report is effectively banned from outside circulation because of information that is deemed as not approved for use elsewhere. Will he give very serious consideration to the all-party group that he mentioned last week? Will he also consider: the DCMS written evidence; the report submitted to the House of Commons nuisance calls inquiry of 10 September 2013; the ICO and Ofcom joint action plan, “Tackling Nuisance Calls and Messages”, of 31 July 2013; the Ofcom landline nuisance calls panel research of 17 May 2013; the House of Commons Library Note, Nuisance Calls: Unsolicited Sales and Marketing, and Silent Calls, of 10 July 2013; and StepChange’s “Got Their Number” campaign of 29 October 2013. I want to make sure that this goes into Hansard so that other people can read it
I can therefore assure the noble Lord that I have at my disposal perhaps as much information as, or possibly even more, than his officials. Therefore, on that expression “foot-dragging”, I never know whether it means you drag the whole of your foot or just your toe when you do it. I would be grateful if he would give consent to perhaps having a small group meeting as quickly as possible so that we can work out the solutions. One of those solutions would be the amendment of that EC directive or part thereof. Maybe his officials might meet with the Public Bill Office upstairs to see how this could be done.
In the mean time, we find that most of the people who suffer the greatest are not electronically enabled. They do not have PCs; they are not “press button to answer” people. They cannot even work an answerphone. However, they feel very insecure when, out of the blue, comes a voice they try to answer but which gives no response. They do not know what these calls are. This is about the uncertainty and anxiety that is created. I thought, for a bit of fun, that I would make a threatening message; I will not repeat it to your Lordships, but I recorded myself so that I could press a button when anyone did that to me and leave them in fear of their life. However, that would probably have got me into serious trouble.
I am very grateful to my noble friend the Minister, who is a very good chap, and will do what he said. I took the liberty—I probably should not mention this in your Lordships’ House—of speaking to his officials. We know that officials are pretty good but, although they often try to direct their Minister, we always work better when Ministers direct their officials. I beg to move.