Direct Marketing Commission - Enforcing Higher Industry Standards

Data & Marketing Commission | Enforcing Higher Industry Standards

DMC gives evidence at Culture and Media Select Committee Inquiry

16th October, 2013 at 09:04am

The DMC welcomed the opportunity to give evidence on 3rd September at a Committee Inquiry into nuisance calls and text messages to the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee.   In our submission we said:

the Government should continue to remove barriers and build incentives to statutory bodies working together;

that action should be taken to establish a self-regulatory industry based body to deal properly and proportionately with all TPS complaints;

that thought should be given to new ways of educating the public on sharing data and giving authority for data to be passed on;

and that the Government should consider whether a more enlightened interpretation of the Communications Act Section 393 (1) would allow data to be shared with DMC.

We argued that national state regulators were often unable to deal with a market problem in a holistic way: Ofcom powers are limited to silent calls while the ICO can address a privacy PRS issue but not the nature of marketing or, perhaps, the source and adequacy of the data used. The DMA Code addresses fair marketing and contractual performance as well as issues of data sourcing and the privacy agenda. We argued strongly that Government should not just remove barriers to effective self-regulation – most obviously the way in which TPS data can be shared but that it should go further and recognise some enhanced TPS/DMC activity as the established means of dealing with public complaints about these nuisance calls. This was to complement, not replace the unique powers ICO, Ofcom and other public bodies have. We believe this sort of robust response would show complainants that they were listened to and give legitimate businesses the confidence that bad practice was no longer going unanswered.