§ Barbara FollettTo ask the President of the Board of Trade (1) what powers she has to prevent the misuse of fax machines for transmitting unsolicited material; [41499]
(2) if she will legislate to prevent the sending of unsolicited faxes. [41501]
§ 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. Moreover, 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.
The Government are addressing the question of additional measures to protect businesses and residential consumers from unwelcome faxes in the forthcoming consultation paper on the European Union Telecoms Data Protection Directive, which the Government will implement later this year.