 Will the Minister ask Ellie MelQu가nt, herby on her time this afternoon. But can we move on now to members' business? In the name of James Dornan.等 dim on congratulations to The Witch campaign to call time onzd dating on nousford's calls in Scotland as well as the thumbnails that can urge members or ask members who wish to speak in this debate to press their requesthold now. I call on James Dornan to open the debate. I would like to start off by congratulating which on their continuing campaign to end the scourge of nuisance calls. Over the past two years, my office, as I suspect, has received a disturbing number of complaints from constituents regarding the volume, timing and intimidating nature of those calls, which I had been plagued with myself. I hadn't realised that my memory was getting so bad that I kept on forgetting all the accidents that I had been involved in. For me, it's a bit of a nuisance. For many of our most vulnerable citizens, this has led to scams that have deprived them of their savings, their security and their dignity. This is a vile practice and completely unacceptable. I have a number of examples here where people, one woman from Scotland who was done out of £6,000 for solar panels and once she handed over the money, she never heard from them again. There's a number of other cases where people have been distressed by it, but where they've been severely affected by it both financially and psychologically. That has highlighted that 81 per cent of Scots has received a nuisance call in the past month, with 41 per cent of respondents citing a feeling of intimidation as a result. They also report that 79 per cent of people support greater accountability for the actions of these companies. As a Glasgow MSP, I'm delighted that I'm the one who's been able to raise the issue. Glasgow, unfortunately, holds the title of having the largest amount of nuisance calls—52 per cent of calls made in Glasgow are nuisance calls. That is something that needs to be dealt with very seriously. I was delighted to see the cabinet secretary, Keith Brown, announce a £50,000 fund to install call-blocking technology for those most at risk on nuisance calls. I think that that is a very important step forward. That is an issue where I thought the whole chamber would agree on two things. One, that we all applaud these practices, and I believe that we all do. I've got no doubts about that. The other was to just welcome the Scottish Government's funding to introduce these new measures. I forgot about Mike Rumbles, didn't I? It appears that Mike Rumbles' tactics these days are to wait for a Scottish Government announcement, claim it was his idea and then criticise the Scottish Government for not doing enough. My mum used to tell me that if I couldn't say anything nice, then not to say anything at all. That's advice that I'd give to Mr Rumbles, but at that point I think I'm going to move on. The witch campaign and the task force has highlighted a number of issues that have shared responsibility across businesses, the industry regulatory bodies and, of course, Government. Clearly, businesses should improve their direct marketing practices and ensure compliance with laws surrounding consumer consent to direct marketing. It is treated at a board-level issue under corporate risk and consumer trust. Also, active consideration should be given to join accreditation schemes. Boards should also commit to implementing the information commissioner's office guidance on collecting and buying of data and ensure that opt-outs are adhered to respect a six-month time limit on third-party consent and recognise that third-party consent is insufficient to override telephone preferences services. A business therefore must ensure that all telephone numbers purchased are screened in advance and, finally, businesses should also record standard information as proof of consent. Industry bodies of their roles to perform too, codes of conduct should place anonies in their members to follow good practice in guiding and purchasing, recording and sharing of personal consent. Any member found in breach of that practice should be accountable and face sanctions. The Competitions and Markets Authority should identify systemic harm to consumer protection and work closely with the ICO and fellow regulators to gain an understanding of the problems and identify what future action could be taken. The ICO has an opportunity to build on the existing market guidance to develop a model for firms to provide consumers with information on opting in and out, third-party consent and the controlling and revoking of consent. The new model should be produced in tandem with other stakeholders such as the chamber of commerce, the federation of small businesses and the voluntary sector organisations such as SCVO and GCVS. My view should assess what level consumer awareness of TPS is reached for landlines and mobile phone users and consider if there is a need for increased awareness and then be at the forefront of any future campaigns. Of course, all those bodies and organisations should be closely collaborating anyway to dovetail their efforts in reducing the problem stemming from useless calls. Of course, there is a role for Governments across the UK to take in the future to help to bring to an end the abuses of the current system. Firstly, directors or board-level executives should be made legally accountable for any abuses in their firms till they come to marketing operations. At the moment, the company is fine for any transgressions. However, companies can be dissolved and reformed under new names with the same directors, the same addresses, selling the same product, a practice known as phoenixing. Directors and other responsible-named individuals in firms may be a bit more mindful of the fact that we are going to be imposed on their personal finances instead of a firm that they can close the next day. Governments should participate in cross-sector business awareness campaigns such as the ICO, OFCOM and others to encourage the adoption of accreditation schemes. The department of culture, media and sport should review the news and calls action plan to assess the recommendations and give consideration to any new recommendations. Also, Governments should adopt an anti-news call policy and execute the procurement process for call centres. I would like to draw the chamber's attention to the Canadian national do not call list DNCL, which is designed to reduce the number of unwanted telemarketing calls. All telemarketers must be registered free of charge with the national DNCL. The consumers must register to have their mobile and home phone numbers included. Their details are added within 24 hours after registration and companies are 31 days to update their calling list. Registration is permanent, however, consumers can have their details removed on request. Regular telemarketers include those who make calls to sell or promote a product or service or request donations. A subscription must be pursued for the purchase of the area codes intended for use. Numbers must be downloaded from the national DNCL, then deleted from active calling lists, which firms must maintain but never call. If a consumer is asked not to be contacted, their name and number must be added to internal do not call lists within 14 days, and those numbers must never be called. The DNCL downloads must be no older than 31 days. Firms must identify who they are and ensure that the number is on display, and they can only call between 9 am and 9.30 pm on weekdays and between 10 am and 6 pm on weekends. The guidance must be complied with at all times. I am sure that we all have constituents who have been irritated or suffered worse from those calls, as I mentioned at the beginning, which have clearly demonstrated the public's feeling in this matter and have provided what I consider to be positive and realistic recommendations for business, industry bodies, regulators and government to implement and show leadership on. Therefore, I call upon everyone, particularly the Westminster Government, whose locustess is mainly in, to play their part in ending the scourge. Thank you very much, Mr Dornan. Normally, these debates are at the end of the day, and there is plenty of time, but today we are quite restricted. If members could keep their contributions to four minutes or less, I call Graham Day to be followed by Maurice Corry. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Let me begin by wholeheartedly congratulating my friend and colleague James Dornan on securing this debate, even though I have a depressing feeling of deja vu and rising to contribute to it. This is the third such debate that I have taken part in, the two previous occasions being in 2012, and almost two years ago to the day. We are making progress on the issue of nuisance calls, so let's acknowledge that, but the fact that we still have costs to consider it in the chamber shows that there is some considerable way left to go. It is a hugely important issue, deserving of all possible action on the part of Government at all levels. Back at the beginning of 2016, I hosted an event for which to inform members of its nuisance calls campaign. Ahead of that, I was interviewed on Good Morning Scotland. Trailing the interview, BBC Scotland ran a package in which members of the public were taking great delight in recalling how they personally dealt with these calls. Some had old abuse or wound up the call as well as others blew whistles down the phone. I have never found this matter remotely amusing. It is all very well and good for those of us who can to wind up or be abrupt in dealing with these callers, but some people, many people, do not feel able to put the phone down, let alone send the callers—that is, if there is anyone on the other end—packing. For them, these calls are an absolute intrusion and perhaps even worse if they are in any way vulnerable. It is frankly unacceptable that these folk reach the stage where they are unwilling to answer their phone. From the previous debates that we have had in this place on this subject, one contribution that has stuck with me was made by Liam McArthur, who revealed to the chamber that he had an elderly constituent who had been persuaded over the phone to purchase an internet security package, even though she did not own a computer. For me, that sums up the risks associated with this practice. In all your states, exactly why, as I noted earlier, Governments at all levels must take every possible action to deal with it. I welcome the Scottish Government's recently published action plan. Powers over this matter largely remain at Westminster, but there has been some limited devolution here, and it is important that we seize the opportunity that that provides. Of course, the Scottish Government itself was innocently caught up in this issue a couple of years ago, when rogue companies were cold calling, claiming to be doing so on behalf of the Government, to inform people that they had to replace their central heating boilers. I had a number of constituents getting touched, and my staff had to reassure them that the Scottish Government was demanding no such thing. People should be confident that a call purporting to be from or on behalf of the Scottish Government is legitimate. I therefore welcome the measures announced in the Scottish Government action plan in relation to this particular aspect, as I do the provision of call-blocking technology for vulnerable people and awareness-raising about protection options. I also note the call for a simpler reporting system. James Donnell referenced earlier the situation in Canada. I will not rehearse that in detail again. Suffice to say that whilst introducing such measures here might not reduce people's annoyance about calls, they would certainly afford an opportunity to determine whether the source is a number that they recognise or to get details to report the call if they so wish. The problem is not going away. If anything is growing in scale and annoyance value, data from September last year shows that 39 per cent of calls that people receive were nuisance calls. The research, as is noted by the Scottish Government, also shows that there is more of an issue here in Scotland. The voluntary steps that the Scottish Government can encourage businesses to take are, of course, welcome and would serve to highlight the firms not acting in this way. Unfortunately, we will always have companies that do not want to comply with what many of us might see as minimal best practice. It is about having a will across Government, frankly, to drive these cowboys out of business. The campaign is called calling time on nuisance calls and texts. I sincerely hope that, across the lifetime of this Parliament, we managed to persuade Westminster to act more decisively in this area than it has until now, and we can indeed call time on nuisance calls. Maurice Corry is followed by James Kelly. I thank James Dornan for bringing this very important issue to the member's debate today, which, as we know, has conducted a great campaign to raise awareness of the widespread issue that affects so many people throughout the country, and, according to their figures, nine out of 10 Scots received some form of nuisance call in the month prior for launching of their petition. In fact, the majority of members here in the chamber today will have been on the receiving end of one of those calls. Whether it is regarding personal payment insurance, otherwise known as PPI, or the possibility of being in a car accident that wasn't your fault, those calls are not always without their merits. For example, some of my constituents have received PPI compensation to which they are entitled, highlighted as a result of receiving a relevant phone call. There is, of course, a point at which those calls become a nuisance. That said, there are far more sinister phone calls that have a varying effect on different groups within our society. It is the most vulnerable of those that we need to ensure that we protect. Last year, there were over 1.8 million cases of financial fraud reported in the UK, which resulted in the total loss of £768 million. A large percentage of those were the result of unsolicited calls. Within my region, a more specifically Western Bartonshire, there was a recent sophisticated telephone scan that involves constituents being contacted by an organisation claiming to be Scottish Water regarding contaminated water supply and informing them to visit a specific website for more information, the purpose of which was, in fact, to receive their personal information. Many other members will have heard similar stories from their constituents. One point that was raised by which, within their petition, was the importance of protecting the most vulnerable groups in our society and helping to ensure that they are aware of ways to prevent these nuisance calls. For example, BT now provides on their phones, as we all know BT call guardian, which enables the homeowner to save numbers and block unwanted calls. It is important that those who would benefit from such a device are made aware of these benefits and availability. Given the scale of the problem in Scotland and the fact that these nuisance calls are ever on the rise, we must be more robust in our approach to preventing them. Perhaps, when the Scottish Government is looking at the matter, it could consider bringing some more awareness and tension to what constitutes a breach of law to help businesses to stay within the regulations, as well as cracking down on businesses who do break the law on nuisance phone calls and holding the relevant business executives to account where it occurs personally. Going forward, it is vital that we as a Parliament do not produce or create policies that encourage, whether directly or indirectly, an increase in unwanted telephone calls in order to protect vulnerable groups so as not to add to general nuisance calls, which is the vast majority of the experience in our lifetime. In conclusion, it would appear that the genuine issues such as PPI, which affect a large number of individuals, could be dealt with in a less direct and intrusive way, such as through television and radio campaigns to provide awareness to the public without causing nuisance or, in some cases, cause alarm to the people in their own homes. In my opinion, we should be protecting people and their right to privacy and peace within their own home and doing everything that we can to prevent nuisance calls in the future. Thank you. As we roll timekeeping, Mr Corry, James Kelly is to be followed by Bruce Crawford. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I start off by congratulating James Donan on securing today's debate on a very important issue. I know that Mr Donan has a consistent record campaigning on it. It is an issue that every member across the chamber will not only have personal experience of, but will have been approached by constituents in their regions and constituencies expressing real concern and anxiety about it. From that point of view, we should congratulate the work that has consistently done in raising awareness around the issue and prompting action from Governments and business on it. I think that when you look at the scale of the problem, 81 per cent of people have received a nuisance call in the last month, but it is not just the numbers. As Graham Day spoke about in his contribution, and I remember his excellent contribution in the debate that I hosted two years ago on this issue, it is the impact that it has on vulnerable people, particularly pensioners. Not everyone can dismiss a phone call that comes down the line. Some pensioners have difficulty in putting the phone down and sometimes feel that the calls are genuine. What is despicable about it is that a lot of companies are up to scams and are out to try to elicit people's bank details in order to participate in fraudulent activities and to take money off people through unjust means. That is what gets to the number of the issue and causes the real concern and alarm. In terms of how the issue should be combated, there are a number of things that can be done, first of all, around information awareness, which has been very active on. I know that I had a recent meeting with the local citizens and vice bureau, rather than in Canvas Lang and that Sharon Hampson and the team there have been very effective in getting the which packs out over the course of the campaign that they have been running. That makes people aware of the activities of those nuisance callers and helps to combat them. On a practical level, as a number of speakers have highlighted, it is important to support the introduction of call blocking technology. That can cut a lot of those calls off its source and ensure that they do not get through to people. There has to be more responsibility on companies. Those who participate in telephone activities—some will obviously do it legitimately—but there has to be a notice on those companies to ensure that their activities do not interfere with people's personal freedoms. From that point of view, the which campaign in order to ensure that companies have a director who is responsible for telephone calls at director level ensures that they take on more responsibility. Finally, action across all Governments is absolutely essential. From that point of view, I welcome the Scottish Government's action plan. An excellent debate has been brought forward by James Dornan. It affects many people and there is a notice on, as all MSPs, Governments, companies and information campaigns, to provide leadership in order that we combat those ineffective nuisance calls. First of all, like others, I thank James Dornan for bringing this very important matter to the chamber today. Nuisance callers sometimes, on an hourly basis, continue to harass and abuse many people across my constituency and I know that it is the same across the country. I would like to use my time today to focus the effect of nuisance callers on vulnerable older people, those who might be suffering from dementia or similar debilitating illness who are at home alone. In my constituency, I am aware of one harwing case of an older person who reached out for advice after being contacted by someone claiming to be from HMRC. This was a particularly aggressive form of fraudulent nuisance callers that attempted to persuade my constituent to pay tax. They claimed that she was liable for. The caller suggested that she should do that by purchasing iTunes vouchers, passing on the relevant codes and threatening her with court action if she did not comply. Thankfully, although highly distressed by the situation, my constituent questioned the validity of the caller's claims and eventually contacted Police Scotland to report the incident. Others will not have had such a fortunate end story. This particular case demonstrates only one of the more sinister attempts to victimise vulnerable older people. It is clear how such messages cause alarm and distress among those who are on the receiving end. The problem is huge. According to research conducted by Age UK, telefon scams affect more than 10 per cent of people aged over 65, meaning that more than 100,000 older people in Scotland have been targeted. 12 per cent of those who were contacted responded to scams. However, for the over age 75 group, that figure rises to 16 per cent. It is clear therefore that the older and more vulnerable person is the more profitable they are seen by those predatory companies and individuals who would seek to exploit them. Those figures demonstrate a sign in reality in our society where vulnerable people are being used, but perhaps the more appropriate term is abused in those cases. People are losing to what for them are vast amounts of money to opportunistic and vile sharks who relentlessly deploy scare tactics against them. Nearly two thirds of people who have been scammed have not reported it. Even many are stating that they were too embarrassed to even tell their close family or their friends. From this debate today, I think that there is one thing that should ring out loud and clear, is that no one should ever be afraid or embarrassed when it comes to nuisance calls. Those calls, to use a very descriptive Scottish word, are good at what they do and can be very persuasive, but that does not mean that they cannot be stopped. Report it to the police, speak to your friends and family and let those around you know that people are being targeted in this way. I welcome the Scottish Government's investment into co-blocking technology for the most vulnerable people. It will bring some peace of mind to many older people, but there is still a lot of work to do to stamp out this activity by raising awareness. I hope that the debate that James Dornan has brought forward today achieves just that, because it is probably the biggest thing that we can do from this particular debate. His motion also draws attention to other further action that we can take to improve matters, so that I thank him for bringing the debate to the chamber today. Thank you, Mr Crawford. I call Jamie Halcro Johnston. Can I first refer members to my register of interests in relation to the business of J. Halcro Johnston and Sons, which I refer to in my speech? I also congratulate James Dornan for bringing this debate. I welcome an opportunity to debate what is an important issue for my constituents in the Highlands and Islands and what is one that is causing increasing frustration and many cases of alarm. Other members have spoken of the extent of the problem with nuisance calls in Scotland, but in addition to the wide level of irritation that is shown by calls and surveys, which showed that 40 per cent of people's surveys were also intimidated by the calls. Ofcom's research showed that around one in 10 people found the calls distressing. Those are naturally the most serious concerns, but for many of us they are nuisance, but I would ask members to consider the following scenarios, one that is likely to be played out across the Highlands and Islands at times. You are an older person, you live in a remote location, you live alone. In the middle of the night, the phone rings, you have no idea who it is, but you answer. There is no one at the end of the line. You do not know if it is just another nuisance call, you do not know if it is a family member or friend urgently in need of help, you do not know if it is something more sinister. Let us be very clear, nuisance calls are not just a nuisance. For many, particularly the elderly and the vulnerable, they can feel like an intrusion into their home. Some people are being forced to make themselves almost uncontactable to friends and relatives, simply to get peace from persistent callers or the volume of calls from separate organisations. I would like to touch on the experience of some in the Highlands and Islands particularly, including a personal one. We, both as a farming business and on domestic numbers, receive calls consistently from nuisance calls. Calls from overseas call centres, which almost immediately hang up the minute they are questioned, calls that ring with no one at the other end when answered. Recently, and most frustratingly, calls from companies that claim, and with some justification in some cases, to be from organisations partnered or working with the very providers who have a role in providing services and which should be working to combat nuisance calling. Only a few weeks ago at our farm, we received a call from an organisation claiming to be that our BT contract was coming to an end, needing to be renewed and a new deal was available. That was done and a sign-up confirmation was sent from BT themselves. However, when I rang BT, they clarified that our contract still had well over a year to run. They also admitted that the company that contacted us were authorised by BT to sign up customers on their behalf. We were contacted by an organisation that appears to have a relationship with BT, which is cold calling BT customers and customers from other providers, and that selling them services simply do not need. BT had done nothing to question the new and unnecessary contract, despite being on the records. I am sure that we have all heard of utilities providers providing details to partner organisations, which they then use for what are essentially cold calling sales. That certainly seems to be the case in my own example, and I will write to BT to highlight our case and ascertain what protections apply for these data sharing arrangements. It is not just the utilities. In 2014, the Highland Trading Standards even reported scam calls coming from organisations representing themselves as being able to prevent nuisance calls. I am not necessarily to keep James Dornan happy, but I hope that he will. I welcome the action taken by the Scottish Government in relation to nuisance calls, including the increase in provision of call blocking technology as part of a UK-wide work that is taking place following the March 2015 budget. Of course, which has been working closely with the UK regulators to signpost nuisance calls and tackle them under the current legislation? That has paid off with a £350,000 fine issued to a PPI sales company in September for an incredible £146 million unsolicited calls. However, there is also an important role for service providers to play to, whether it is identifying and cutting off the offending companies at source, or in providing better systems or equipment that prevents calls from reaching the home or the businesses being targeted. Combatting those calls requires government, regulators, businesses and public bodies to work together. I would like to conclude with another example of the real impact that those calls can have on example. It has done you a good time to do with another example, if you must include please. I will just move on and say that those calls are not nuisance calls, and they are certainly not victimless. Thank you very much. I wanted to make space for Liam McArthur. Mr McArthur, please. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I, too, thank James Dornan for bringing this debate. I also assure him that I will take him off the mailing list for Mike Rumble's pressure releases in the future. I can also join others in thanking Wits for their tireless campaigning on this issue. As Graham Day said, there has been progress here and they deserve much of the credit for that. However, as everybody has pointed out, there is a considerable amount to do. Those are not simply a nuisance. I think that a number of colleagues have highlighted the scams and the financial loss, particularly for some of our most vulnerable people in the communities that we represent. I think that Graham Day rightly drew attention to the most egregious example that I outlined in a previous debate. However, it is also distressing. It is also isolating. I sent an email earlier this week from a constituent who works in the care sector, and she says, I work with the elderly in their homes and many will have several calls a day claiming to be government boiler schemes, etc. They try to get down to the phone too fast and put themselves at risk physically. She also goes on to highlight the particular problems for dementia sufferers and how distressing they can find. However, boiler schemes appear to be the source of many of the problems at the moment. I welcome the Scottish Government's action programme and, indeed, the commitment from the Cabinet Secretary's colleague Kevin Stewart, who confirmed that the Scottish Government for none of their schemes uses this method of calling. The UK Government and the correspondence have had with them. I have not been able to offer a similar commitment. That is an area perhaps that further work needs to be done. However, for now, I again thank James Dornan for bringing this debate, allowing Parliament again to strengthen a strong and unambiguous message about the attitude that this Parliament takes to the nuisance calls and our commitment to continue efforts to eradicate it. I thank again which for their, as I say, tireless efforts on this particular issue. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you very much, Ms McArthur. I call in Keith Brown to close for the Government. Cabinet Secretary, seven minutes are there about, please. Well, not seven minutes, six minutes are there about, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I also congratulate James Dornan for securing this debate. I also commend the work of my colleague Patricia Gibson MP in the House of Commons for the work that she's done, which has led to some of the developments in terms of penalties now being proposed. I chaired the nuisance calls commission and very recently published an action plan highlighting what the Scottish Government will do to reduce the impact of those calls, given the powers that we have. As the motion says, which have been pretty relentless in bringing an attention to this issue and, quite rightly, and I mean relentless in the most positive sense, we've worked very closely with which and I'm grateful for their work, not only to help consumers protect themselves, but also to highlight the particular scale of the problem in Scotland. Research has been mentioned showing three Scottish cities were receiving the highest percentages of nuisance calls in the UK. It's clear that we have to do what we can do in the Scottish Government, although regulation lies with the UK Government. We know that, to the rise of what are called nuisance calls, harm individuals. For most, they are, as Graham Day said, a recurring annoyance interrupting dinner or family time, and sometimes unforgivably, I'm sure that James Dornan can relate to this, arriving just as a champion's league coverage starts. For some people, circumstances people are very particularly vulnerable. The consequences can be much worse, and they can be a source of anxiety, distress or even financial hardship. We all know the story, some of which you've heard today, about people conned out of savings, frightened every time they answer the phone, and they don't want to just stop using their phone because they want to be available for family members, and they fear the worst every time the phone rings, only to be offered, as Liam McArthur mentioned, perhaps a boiler deal that they are not interested in having. Although Bruce Crawford's example is one that I have had as well, it seems so random and so odd that somebody would pretend to be from the tax revenue and ask people to go and purchase itunes vouchers. It just seems very odd, but this is a very common situation. I had a constituent who was told to go immediately to Tesco to buy these vouchers and not tell anybody about the call. She's an older woman and was only stopped from leaving her home by somebody else who she mentioned it to in confidence. The effect that she would have had on that woman in terms of paying tax, which she had no liability for, would have been substantial, but the concern and the anxiety that were caused were unforgivable. It can be much more than a nuisance call. I think that it is a serious issue, and that issue has certainly been brought home during the nuisance call's commission. I would say that, on the Mike Rumbles's press release, it is purely miserable and ill-informed. It doesn't treat the issue as seriously as it should be treated. I think that a councillor on Angus has again just used it as a means of having a go at the Scottish Government without having informed themselves about the powers that we have or don't have. I think that it is very important to realise where the power lies in relation to some of the regulatory aspects of that. We can do some things, and that is why we have launched a fund to supply call-blocking technology to some of our most vulnerable citizens. Trading Standards Scotland has worked closely with the third sector organisations to make sure that the call-blockers go where they are most needed, and almost all units have already been allocated. Some local authorities have done a great deal of work in this area, especially in areas in which they know that there are collections or an intensity in numbers of people who are vulnerable. We are very pleased by the take-up, but it is yet another indicator of how many people those calls affect. It leads me on to the suggestion that Ofcom follow the Canadian model, as James Dornan mentioned, of requiring telecoms providers to provide technological solutions. Only a solution that blocks calls on a dramatic scale can really change the pattern of nuisance calls, and telecoms providers are best placed to make that happen. However, Ofcom have explained to the commission that we held that Canada is further behind the UK system, which explains why the regulator has imposed a duty, so its position remains that imposing one here would have little tangible impact. We are, despite that, seeing some positive steps that BT, despite what was said quite rightly by a member previously, and Vodafone, for example, offer free services to their customers that put them in control of who can contact them. Nonetheless, even people who have subscribed, for example, to the telephone preference system are not immune to receiving those calls. We would like to see telecom providers do more to follow the lead of BT and Vodafone in this area. I have written to the UK Government to urge further action if the market themselves does not provide the solutions, and I believe that the UK Government should act. In that same letter, I also urged swift action on both director accountability, which has been taken forward, and a ban on cold calling on pensions specifically. The potential harm for those most at risk is too great to delay this for much longer. I had to write the letter in the first place, which highlights that we are very constrained in the actions that we can take. I know that there has been some criticism that the commission did not achieve enough or did not go far enough, and I do not accept that. If anybody here has a suggestion but an action that the Scottish Government can take that we have not considered and proposed in terms of awareness-raising, co-blocking technology, it had the chance to write it and tell us that, and it did not do that. Even now, I am willing to accept any further suggestions if we can help to reduce the plague on people's lives that this represents. If I can end on a more positive note and highlight the progress that has been brought about by the commission, even with the limited powers, I have mentioned the co-blocking fund, but the action plan sets out a number of other steps, including a commitment to building a wider scams strategy so that vulnerable people are protected from all kinds of unscrupulous practices, amending the business pledge to include support and protection for vulnerable customers and also ensuring that Scottish Government schemes, such as the home energy efficiency initiatives, are developed in a way that minimises the opportunities for road companies to hijack them and prey on vulnerable people. The launch of the plan marked the beginning of a consumer awareness week on Euston Scalls, which we worked with, with which on. I think that James Dornan and one or two others also appeared at Glasgow Central station to lend their support to which campaign. As mentioned by James Kelly, Citizens Advice Scotland is involved in the commission, as are many other people, and I have been instrumental in leading work to raise awareness so that consumers can better protect themselves and their loved ones. That collaborative working underpins the actions in the plan as the only way to solve the problem. I encourage all my colleagues in Parliament to join me and continue to press for more UK Government action where necessary and to finding our own solutions where possible.