<p>The Telephone Preference Service (TPS) provides protection to consumers from unsolicited marketing calls. The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has enforcement responsibility for the TPS and can issue a monetary penalty of up to £500,000 for the most serious breaches.</p><p>I am pressing for more action in this area, with the ICO, Office of Communications (Ofcom) and TPS working together to make improvements. The ICO has increased the resources devoted to enforcement of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR) 2003 and on 18 March 2013 served its first monetary penalty of £90,000 to a company that was making unsolicited marketing calls. The ICO has also published on its website, a list of the most complained about companies that make calls to TPS registered consumers. If the companies fail to remedy their actions, then they could face further enforcement action and ICO is also currently considering issuing penalties to two other companies for breaching the PECR:</p><p>http://www.ico.org.uk/enforcement/action/calls</p><p>In addition, Ofcom has improved information available to consumers online at:</p><p>http://consumers.ofcom.org.uk/tell-us/telecoms/privacy</p><p>which provides clearer advice on how to avoid unsolicited calls, texts and e-mails and a new Consumer Guide, signposts the correct place to make a complaint:</p><p>http://consumers.ofcom.org.uk/2012/10/tackling-nuisance-calls-and-messages</p><p>I welcome this kind of robust action from the ICO and expect them to continue with similar measures against other companies as well.</p>