§ Mr. KaufmanTo ask the President of the Board of Trade if she will make it an offence to transmit unsolicited commercial communications through facsimile machines. [22896]
§ Mrs. RocheMeasures are already in place to deal with the problem of unsolicited faxes. The telecommunications and telephone selling industries have established a Fax Preference Service to help residential customers reduce the number of faxes they receive. Customers who have a fax machine in their residential premises may register for inclusion in a database against which companies selling via fax "clean" their mailing lists. In addition, under the Telecommunications Act 1984, UK companies using fax marketing are subject to a class licence which contains measures aimed at limiting the nuisance which can be caused by unsolicited faxes. Anyone sending unsolicited faxes must cease doing so to any particular person on receipt of a written request from them, or face possible enforcement action, including the removal of their right to operate a telecoms system, by Oftel.