Now charities are forced into action over cold calling

BOSSES of Britain’s biggest charities were forced into action yesterday amid a growing outcry over their use of ‘boiler room’ tactics to pressure the vulnerable.

They were made to account for themselves after the revelations in the Daily Mail about the way they try to secure donations over the phone.

The growing scandal was also raised in Parliament yesterday as:

Oxfam’s deputy chief executive had to explain her charity’s policy of taking donations from people with dementia

Save The Children promised it would no longer take part in cold-calling

Cancer Research UK said it was suspending its relationship with GoGen, the call centre exposed by the Mail.

Harpal Kumar, chief executive of Cancer Research UK, wrote to all the charity’s supporters to assure them the claims were being taken ‘very seriously’ and it would ‘act swiftly and decisively’ if evidence of wrongdoing was found.

Charity bosses are under huge pressure following the shocking revelations in Tuesday’s Daily Mail about the ‘boiler room’ tactics call centres are using to raise cash. British Red Cross, Oxfam, the NSPCC and Macmillan were all caught hounding people on the Government’s ‘ no- call’ list, the Telephone Preference Service, as part of the undercover investigation by the Mail.

The charities are also accused of taking donations over the phone from people with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia, and using ‘brutal’ tactics to pressure people to donate.

Ministers are now understood to be placing huge pressure on the charity bosses and regulators to stamp out the practices, which they call ‘immoral and intolerable’. The revelations were also raised in Parliament yesterday, with International Development Secretary Justine Greening questioned over the charities’ behaviour. She was asked by Labour MP Stephen Kinnock about the ‘coverage in the Daily Mail and other newspapers about charities using aggressive fundraising tactics’.

He demanded to know ‘what steps she would be taking’ to ensure that the charities were properly investigated. Miss Greening replied that there would be a ‘discussion around standards and commitments’ of the charities involved.

During a BBC interview about the Mail’s evidence, Oxfam’s deputy chief executive Penny Lawrence admitted the policy of taking donations from those with dementia – as long as the person could answer a few basic questions – had been approved by the charity.

In an extraordinary defence of the procedure, which has now been scrapped, she said it had been to ensure that ‘people with dementia to have the opportunity to donate to us if they wish’.

But she also pointed the finger at the regulators, claiming the Institute of Fundraising – as well as the Alzheimer’s Society and Age UK – had approved Oxfam’s approach.

The Institute of Fundraising later denied endorsing the procedures that were being used by Oxfam fundraisers at GoGen, saying they differed from those issued by the regulators.

In the interview on Radio 4’s Today programme, Miss Lawrence also said the aim of the policy had been ‘to strike the appropriate balance between enabling people with dementia to have the opportunity to donate to us if they wish, but at the same time protecting them because they’re in a very vulnerable position’. But she added: ‘I do acknowledge, though, that to get the balance right with vulnerable people is extremely difficult. We are actually working with vulnerable groups to see how can we be more sensitive and get it as absolutely best as possible.’

In a separate interview, Save The Children chief executive Justin Forsyth said the charity had made the decision to end cold-calling.

‘We’ve made a promise today that we’ve been putting in place for quite a few months, ever since the Olive Cooke case, that we won’t do any cold- calling by phone,’ he said. He added that the charity would also guarantee not to share or sell any individual’s details and would allow donors to choose how they are contacted.

But Simon Entwistle, of the Information Commissioner’s Office, said charities had deliberately ‘blurred’ the definition of cold-calling.

He said in many cases charities claimed they were only calling people who had an existing relationship with their charity, when in fact they were effectively cold-calling them.

And he accused charities of thinking that because they had a ‘moral high ground’ they could get away with making aggressive calls.

‘They perhaps are less worried about people’s reaction when they call them because they think, “Well it’s a good cause, and people are likely to look at us favourably”,’ he said.

‘That’s something they’ve got to be careful of – especially when they are subcontracting to these firms.’