Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to review the effectiveness of the Telephone Preference Service.

Whilst we have no such plans in place I am pleased to note that Ofcom and the Information Commissioner’s Office published new consumer research on the effectiveness of the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) on 24 July 2014. This independent research showed that registering with the TPS reduced all types nuisance calls, including live sales calls, recorded messages and silent and abandoned calls by around a third. The full Ofcom report can be accessed at: http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/market-data-research/other/telecoms-research/tps-effectiveness/

As noted in our Nuisance Calls Action Plan of March this year we are keen to improve the enforcement of the existing regulations as we believe this will further increase the effectiveness of the TPS.