Officials halted my bid to stop cold call fraud

can’t ban cold calling. I had several meetings with officials to try to see why we couldn’t ban cold calling and also to see what we were doing to prevent people being scammed.

“The officials each time told me that banning cold calls either wasn’t possible or wouldn’t be effective, and each time I challenged their reasons they came up with others.”

It is estimated that up to 11 million consumers have received unsolicited communications about their pension in the past year.

And just six weeks after the reforms came into effect last year, consumer group Which? found that a third of over- 55s who weren’t yet retired had been contacted by someone trying to sell them a dodgy pension product.

City of London police have

Baroness Altman, above, says cold callers need to be stopped. revealed that the amount taken from pensioners in cold calling scams had almost doubled in the past year to £18 million.

Steve Webb, the former pensions minister under the Coalition, said: “We have got to a stage when legitimate businesses shouldn’t be able to do this.”

Research has also shown that nearly nine out of 10 people miss the common warning signs of a pension scam and fall for the promise of unusually high investment returns.

A UK Government spokesman said: “We are determined to tackle the scourge of nuisance calls. We take the issue of pension scams, and the targeting of vulnerable people through cold calls, very seriously and are currently considering ways to protect consumers from pension scammers.”

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