My Lords, I too express support for both the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, and that proposed by my noble friend Lady Altmann, supported by the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull. I ask my noble friend the Minister to consider both amendments sympathetically. I expect that she is likely to say that she agrees with the amendments in principle but that this is not the time or the place for such a measure. However, surely it would be popular with the public to introduce a complete ban on unsolicited cold calling across a broad range of activities.
The Law Society and the ABI have both called for a crack-down on nuisance calling of all kinds. ABTA has also suggested that the Bill provides an opportunity to introduce an outright ban. As noble Lords are aware, solicitors, who are more tightly regulated than CMCs, are already banned from making unsolicited calls.
What I find particularly annoying is that if you answer your phone when you are overseas, you have to pay. I get so angry when this happens to me that I am sometimes more likely to start a conversation with the cold caller than I am to just hang up, which would obviously be the sensible thing to do. I say, “Do you know it’s three in the morning and I’m in Japan, and this is costing me money?”, but I find that the cold callers are not a very nice type of person in general and they are not sympathetic. My noble friend Lady Altmann mentioned that every year there are 51 million cold calls in respect of personal injury claims. In that case I am getting many more than my share, because I get about one a week.
It is a difficult area because, as noble Lords have pointed out in earlier debates, the FCA is not necessarily the most sympathetic regulator, and I agree with the noble Earl that we should look more closely at equivalent regulators in other countries. I had the privilege of serving under the noble Lord, Lord Burns, on the Joint Committee on Financial Services and Markets in 1999, which set up the FSA. We talked at great length about getting the balance right between protecting the industry and protecting the interests of the consumer. We did not necessarily get it right in the sense that the culture needs to evolve in a direction which is more sympathetic to the consumer.
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When the Minister refers to cold calling in her reply, will she say whether telephone cold calling, SMS messages, emails and letters—the old-fashioned snail mail—all fall into the same category or whether it is right to differentiate between them? If you make it impossible in all circumstances for a consumer to have access to a CMC of any kind, it may be counterproductive. It has to be reasonable. The Government have to do
many things that are not popular, but if they were to act quickly to outlaw cold calling and nuisance calling, it would be extremely popular.