My Lords, I strongly support the noble Baroness, Lady Altmann, and I thank her for allowing me to add my name to her amendment. Obviously, I also strongly support the thinking behind the amendment in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, and I just wish to add one or two points.
There was a very helpful Which? report in November 2016 detailing the full horror of nuisance calls in the UK. For the report, telephone calls in 18 cities were sampled. In 17 of the cities—the survey took place over a long period—more than a third of all the private phone calls were nuisance calls, and in Glasgow, which topped this terrible table of nonsense, more than half of the calls in the sample were nuisance calls. The top type of nuisance call was about PPI, which of course is firmly a CMC nuisance. In commenting on the November 2016 report, Keith Brown MSP, the relevant Scottish Minister, was quoted as saying:
“These calls are a serious problem that can cause both emotional and financial harm, particularly to some of our most vulnerable citizens”.
A very horrible statistic in the report was that four in 10 people in Scotland who had received these calls felt intimidated by them. It is barbaric behaviour.
I was delighted to read in their manifesto what the Conservatives are going to do about cold calling on pensions. Like, I think, every other noble Lord in the House, I feel that we must use this opportunity to extend the ban to this area as well. I suppose that it is
the businessman in me who does a quick upside/downside analysis. My upside analysis has a reduction of emotional and financial harm and intimidation, and my downside analysis has nothing. Perhaps the Minister could tell me whether she agrees with that analysis. I hope that she feels as I do—that it is a social necessity that we carry through one or other of these amendments and put it in the Bill.