NUMBER’S UP FOR THE COLD CALL COWBOYS

Firms forced to end ‘caller withheld’ ploy

SPAM marketing firms will be forced to display their phone number when calling victims under new plans to end the blight of cold-calling. New rules will require companies phoning members of the public to advertise the number they are ringing from and stop them hiding behind an unknown caller ID.

The new rules could also apply to those charity fundraisers exposed by the Mail for targeting vulnerable people.

The new caller ID rules are being drawn up by Culture Minister Ed Vaizey and will be published next month.

One Whitehall source said it was ‘outrageous’ that firms could hide behind an unknown number.

The change in the rules could allow victims to identify when they are being cold-called by firms pestering them with messages about payment protection insurance, accident claims or boiler insurance. Crucially, victims

will also have a number they can pass to the authorities and help identify those bombarding them with calls.

The new regulations will have to grapple with the problem that many cold-calling firms are based overseas. Most also use internet phone lines, potentially making it easier to mask their origin.

Mr Vaizey will also set up a taskforce with members of the industry, regulators and watchdogs to address the blight of coldcalling. The new rules will apply only to cold-calling firms and similar companies, and not to members of the public or others who wish to withhold their phone number.

Separately, the Ministry of Justice is also considering making directors personally responsible for the calls made by their firms. This could open up new legal routes for victims to claim compensation.

Justice Minister Dominic Raab said: ‘We are determined to clamp down on the cowboys who make people’s life a misery, and we are looking at every angle to tackle it.’

Figures show that the average Briton receives 468 cold calls and texts from the likes of ambulance-chasing lawyers and accident claims management companies each year. Even those signed up to the Telephone Preference Service, which is meant to prevent cold-calling, are pestered.

Complaints about the plague of calls to the official watchdog run to 500 a day – or 180,000 last year.

The action on Caller ID follows separate moves by Mr Vaizey earlier this year to impose £500,000 fines on rogue cold-call firms.

Since the beginning of April the threshold for civil action against cold-callers has been lowered so watchdogs no longer have to prove the calls are causing ‘substantial harm or distress’. That change means legal action can be launched off the back of a single complaint.

Figures suggest six in ten households are reluctant to answer their phones because of the menace of nuisance calling. Around four out of five people surveyed by Which? said they are regularly cold-called, with a third left feeling intimidated.

Recent figures from the Information Commissioner’s Office show calls and messages about boiler insurance are most common, accounting for one in six of all complaints, followed by accident claims, solar panels and PPI claims.

A Daily Mail investigation into charity fundraising this year exposed the shocking tactics used by some operators to try to extract cash, including from vulnerable elderly people.

It prompted David Cameron to impose new rules forcing charities to publish details of their methods – and reveal the number of complaints they get.