Telecommunications (Premium Services) (Regulation) (Hansard, 2 December 1987)

§ Mr. Terry Lewis (Worsley)

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to establish a statutory regulatory body responsible for licensing telecommunication premium service providers: for regulating the content of material published; and for connected purposes. In recent times, there has been a proliferation of premium services provided through the conduit of the public telephone system. They are provided by British Telecom and by a growing number of contract companies, many of which have been established specifically for the purpose of cashing in on an extremely lucrative venture. Like most ideas that generate large profits, with a minimum of effort, the introduction of premium services has attracted to the public telephone system a mixture of the unscrupulous, the greedy and the irresponsible. So fast has been the growth of those companies, and so comprehensive is the range of material that they promote, that the ability of the regulatory bodies to protect the public interest has fallen far short of what Parliament should expect.

It may surprise the House to learn that, for £100, anyone can obtain from the Department of Trade and Industry a licence to operate a premium line, and that British Telecom has no control over the use to which that line is put. BT's interest, therefore, is purely financial, for it shares the product of any call by private negotiation with the system provider.

The calls are now being charged at 38p a minute. The services range from the Talkabout line, operated by British Telecom only, through a variety of dating lines to competitions with prize money, the integrity of which is in considerable doubt. Talkabout has resulted in unsuspecting parents being landed with horrendous telephone bills, their children having been seduced by BT advertising into spending time on the domestic telephone. In some instances, bills of £500 to £1,000 have been run up.

The purpose of Talkabout is purely to link three or four callers for casual conversation. That has resulted in practices which could mildly be described as undesirable. Foul language is the norm, and there is some evidence in the Manchester area that Talkabout has even been used by the National Front as a recruiting medium. I myself have heard conversations on that line inciting racial hatred.

The whole range of BT premium services pose in their own way some threat to public well-being. The dating and related services could be, and probably are, a vehicle for sustaining a network of contacts for the purpose of prostitution, and the so-called adult entertainment lines could well be dangerous to the sexually immature. Indeed, so distasteful is one piece of adult line material that it is currently the subject of a police investigation. I have no doubt that that, and much of the rest of the output of the adult line service, is pornographic.

It is a pity that the existing regulatory bodies of British Telecom and the Department of Trade and Industry cannot, or will not, do anything about it. It would seem that needless public expense will need to be expended to secure a ruling from the courts.

The latest racket, if I may describe it thus, is the dial-a-doctor line. For about £10, a subscriber can call an anonymous qualified doctor — or so the advertising 953 claims—to seek medical advice. It seems to me wholly improper for anyone, even a doctor, to claim to be able to give competent medical advice to a complete stranger over the telephone. I know that the British Medical Association shares my view, and has made representations — as I have—to the Secretary of State for Social Services.

My final example of the worst excesses of premium services will, I believe, horrify the House. It exemplifies the greed of the service providers, and demonstrates the ease with which the public telephone service is being used to exploit our fellow citizens. Two or three weeks ago, my attention was drawn to a newspaper advertisement, not in the telephone entertainments column but in the "part-time jobs vacant" column. It was clearly aimed at the unemployed. The idea was that an unemployed person would telephone an ordinary line and receive instructions from the person at the other end. It was suggested that a good reading voice was essential and that, if the caller would make a tape and send it to an address in Stalybridge, in the north-west, he would probably earn £10 if the tape was accepted. The problem was that the recipient of the call passed the caller on to a premium line, thus bypassing the code of practice that the Department of Trade and Industry tells me is tight enough to save people from exploitation.

The line to which the caller is then connected is a 38p line. It is called the "Treasure Trail". Having been connected, at enormous expense, the caller is invited to send the tape to Nemo Ltd., of Stalybridge. I believe that that is merely a device to attract unsuspecting people on to the "Treasure Trail" line, which is good business for BT and for Nemo, but a rip-off for the caller. Such practices can only be described as shady, and are clearly devised to circumvent the already tenuous controls operated by BT.

I wish to draw the attention of the House to the unsatisfactory nature of the "Treasure Trail" competition itself. As far as I know, no audit is demanded by BT, the DTI or any of the watchdog bodies. There is no evidence that prize money is paid out, and there is no means by which the general public can know whether there are winners or losers. Because no stake money is passed over, I understand that there is no need to register the gains under any gaming and lotteries statute. That considerable 954 expense is involved cannot be denied, and that serves to reinforce my view that the creation of an independent statutory body with adequate powers is urgently needed.

At the instigation of OFTEL, the Association of Telephone Information and Entertainment Providers produced a code of practice for premium services. I believe that to be woefully inadequate. I am certain that I have demonstrated today that it has proved useless in the face of the ingenuity of those who seek to make a fast buck without scruple.

The services to which I have drawn the attention of the House are a catalogue of exploitation of the unwary, and —I repeat—are being connived at by BT. The sick, the lonely, children and the sexually inadequate have all become targets for such exploitation.

Because of the shortage of time available to me, I have had to curtail my remarks. I assure the House that the abuses to which I refer have, perforce, beeen only superficially covered, and are more widespread than I have been able to suggest. So far, the regulatory authorities have been powerless to act, while BT and the DTI have been unwilling to do so. It is therefore necessary for the House to respond on behalf of the people whom we represent, and to create an effective statutory body to regulate these servies to which I have referred. My Bill will provide the vehicle for that response.