Property Maintenance and Repairs (Cold Calling)
The final item of business today is a members’ business debate on motion S4M-05219, in the name of Dave Thompson, on prohibiting cold calling for property maintenance and repairs. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament welcomes the campaign by the Scottish branch of the Trading Standards Institute (TSI) that seeks to introduce legislation to prohibit cold calling for the purposes of property maintenance and repairs on the grounds of community safety; notes that TSI Scotland has stated that the practice is “one of the most disturbing and socially significant issues” faced by trading standards officers; condemns rogue cold calling, which, it believes, often targets vulnerable citizens in the Highlands and Islands and across the country; notes that such activity can be part of serious and organised crime networks; welcomes the backing for this campaign from Citizens Advice Scotland, Neighbourhood Watch, the Scottish Business Crime Centre and others, and notes calls for the Scottish Government to meet TSI Scotland to discuss its campaign.
17:34
I thank members of all parties for supporting my motion and thereby enabling tonight’s debate. I particularly thank those members who are here to speak on this important subject.
Before I go any further, I must declare an interest, as I am a vice-president of the United Kingdom’s Trading Standards Institute and a past director of trading standards and protective services.
The issue of cold calling for property maintenance and repairs causes a huge amount of stress for Scottish consumers. I have come across many such cases over the years. Last year, between April and November, the citizens advice helpline dealt with 421 cases of such cold calling, involving nearly £700,000 of consumer expenditure, and that is just the tip of the iceberg—an iceberg that the Scottish branch of the Trading Standards Institute has labelled
“one of the most disturbing and socially significant issues that is faced by Trading Standards Officers today.”
Due to the nature of property maintenance work, it is particularly important to ensure that consumers are not being misled, taken advantage of or tricked into agreeing to unnecessary work. The purchase of many other items or services from cold callers is protected by legislation that creates a cooling-off period, which means that people can change their minds, but that is not the case for property maintenance and repairs. People are protected by a cooling-off period if they buy double glazing or insurance from a cold caller, but not if they agree to a property maintenance or repair job such as fixing a roof or tarring a drive.
The added problem is that many property maintenance and repair jobs are not easily reversible. If a trader resurfaces a driveway or harls a wall, it cannot simply be undone. For that reason, it is critical that consumers are afforded the time to make an informed decision on such jobs.
Direct marketing through online adverts, emails and phone calls is fairly easy to deal with. Consumers are protected from intimidation and are offered a reasonable period of time between contact being made and the work starting. However, when someone appears at the door who is often ready to start the work immediately, it can be intimidating, and it is worrying to note that many cold callers target vulnerable groups, particularly older people, who might not feel confident in refusing rogue traders.
In a case last year in Newtonmore, in my constituency, which was reported in the Strathspey and Badenoch Herald, an elderly couple agreed to have their drive tarred for £600. The two men poured an oily liquid on to the drive and brushed it in and then told the couple that they had run out of material and needed £300 to buy more from their boss, who was allegedly running road works on the A9 and would supply them with his leftovers. The money was handed over and, of course, they disappeared. Fortunately, but unusually, the suspects were traced and the two men returned and handed back the money, but the drive was ruined.
As well as the evidence from Citizens Advice Scotland on the number of people who are dissatisfied with jobs completed as a result of cold calling, a worrying amount of anecdotal evidence highlights some appalling practices. In a worrying number of cases, the final bill is far larger than the price that was agreed before the work was started. Most troubling of all, there are all too many descriptions of customers being intimidated into paying, and even extreme examples of customers being marched to their closest cash machine or bank and handing over large sums of cash to rogue traders.
Practices such as those not only adversely affect consumers; they damage the vast majority of businesses, which are honest and conduct their affairs properly. Without official records, and operating through cash payments, rogue traders avoid tax and VAT liabilities and undermine the local economy.
The Trading Standards Institute has been running an excellent campaign to encourage people who are confronted by cold callers not to be pressured into agreeing to work on the spot. It has created a “No to Cold Calling” poster for its website, which has been downloaded more than 15,000 times. Unfortunately, however, such measures will not put off the worst offenders.
In order to protect consumers and honest businesses, we must ensure that the police and trading standards officers have the tools to tackle cold calling for property maintenance and repairs. The best way to achieve that is by bringing in legislation to outlaw the practice on the ground of community safety, making it a criminal offence for people to cold call at people’s doors to do property maintenance and repairs. By making cold calling for property maintenance and repairs illegal, we would deter rogue traders from the practice, while giving the public increased confidence to refuse a rogue trader and a solid reason for doing so. The police and trading standards officers would have a far stronger hand to play when tackling such incidents and would be able to greatly reduce the number of people who end up as victims of the poor service, extortion and scams that go hand in hand with the practice.
However, I would also like to sound a note of caution. Last week, the Accounts Commission published a report entitled, “Protecting consumers”, which highlighted just how stretched Scottish trading standards services are. The report highlights the fact that trading standards budgets have been cut disproportionately compared with those of other council departments and says that the number of officers is at a record low and that they are poorly co-ordinated.
The benefit of legislation such as I am suggesting relies on effective enforcement, and we must ensure that we take the Accounts Commission’s recommendations on trading standards seriously so that we can safeguard consumers and honest businesses alike.
I hope for a positive response from the minister on the introduction of legislation to curb cold calling for property maintenance and repairs, and for an assurance that the Government will seriously consider the Accounts Commission’s report, which calls for a redesign of the trading standards service in Scotland.
17:41
I thank Dave Thompson for bringing this incredibly important topic to Parliament.
As Dave Thompson said, the elderly are often the target of these ruthless criminals. Those in the chamber know that my constituency, Strathkelvin and Bearsden, encompasses one of the fastest-rising elderly populations in Scotland. At the moment, 22 per cent of the population are aged 60 years and over.
It has been interesting to read what people have written about older folk and their vulnerability. In 2006, Help the Aged found that older people are three times more likely to become victims of property crime than of personal crime. We all worry about the old lady being mugged and having her handbag stolen, but property crime, which relates to cold calling, is more common. The Alzheimer’s Society found that 15 per cent of people with dementia had fallen victim to cold calling, scam mail and misselling.
In November 2009, in my constituency, it was reported that police had received calls about cold calls every day throughout the month. One call was from an old person who had already lost £10,000 to cold callers, and it was only the intervention of the police that prevented that from reaching the sum of £17,000.
In East Dunbartonshire, we are taking the issue seriously. Dave Thompson has extolled the virtues of trading standards officers, and I will do the same for the ones in my area, who have decided to trial an item called trueCall, which is a call-blocking system that can be added on to a telephone and which enables people only to receive calls from people from whom they want to receive calls. It is quite an expensive piece of equipment, but the trading standards officers have got some in so that older, more vulnerable people in my constituency can give them a try and see whether they help to keep them safer in their homes.
In March, in Bishopbriggs, the adult protection committee is going to hold a whole-day conference on financial safeguarding. That shows how seriously the issue is being treated. Trading standards officers have entered a year-long partnership with the police across my constituency, stopping and checking traders to determine whether they are legitimate and using intelligence-led policing to take patrols past vulnerable households where they know that old folk have been targeted.
I am terribly sorry, Presiding Officer, but I am not sure how much time I have left.
One minute.
Thank you.
This is not just about money or the attack on property. When this happens to older, vulnerable people, they lose their confidence and, often, their sense of independence. We must take it seriously.
In my constituency, a dreadful incident was reported in the local papers last year. An elderly lady in her 70s was persuaded into a car. When the police stopped, the chap took off and abandoned the car with the elderly lady in it. Eight police cars and helicopters and dog units went after him. The old lady was left in the back of the car, terrified and upset, all because this man thought that he could take her to an ATM and get money out of her.
17:45
I, too, congratulate Dave Thompson on securing this members’ business debate. As Fiona McLeod rightly says, it is an incredibly important issue. I warmly welcome the campaign by the Scottish branch of the Trading Standards Institute and the drive to get legislation put in place. I note from Dave Thompson’s motion that he supports the TSI in its call for legislation and that he hopes that the Scottish Government will meet the TSI to help with that campaign. I add my voice in support of the motion and urge that it be given 100 per cent support from us all.
The debate has brought back memories of my parents when they were alive. As I was to learn once I became an MSP, their experience was not dissimilar to the experiences of some of my constituents. Both of my parents were frail and elderly. My father was bedridden in my parents’ living room. My mother answered the door and there were two men on the doorstep who offered to do some work at the back of the house. One took my mum to the back door to show her what they proposed and the other stayed with my dad in the living room. Mum’s handbag was next to her armchair. The other guy leaned over to my mum’s bag and lifted more than £1,000 from the bag. My dad was powerless to stop him. It was not long before the other man returned and only a few minutes before they were both gone, but it was too late and the money was gone. Once their victims realised what had happened, they were very distressed.
Like many old people, my parents had been saving for their funerals and the money was in my mother’s purse. The crooks took the purse but they did not know that there was another £1,000 in a polythene bag in the same handbag. Like many elderly people, they liked to have cash in hand. Although they had a bank account, they wanted to have that cash in hand, too. We later learned from the police that there had been a number of victims that day, all in the vicinity of Stenhousemuir and Falkirk, where I was brought up by my parents in our family home.
The work of the Trading Standards Institute, the Office of Fair Trading, Citizens Advice Scotland and the police is invaluable. I congratulate the various television producers on their first-class work on programmes such as “Watchdog”, “Don’t Get Done Get Dom”, “Cowboy Trap” and “Rip Off Britain”, to mention just a few. Those are powerful programmes. Apart from highlighting some dreadful cases, they frequently help to put wrongs right. More importantly, by taking the public step by step through what people have done, they illustrate how others can put things right. All of those involved in the production of these programmes deserve special commendation.
Anyone involved in protecting consumers deserves the highest praise, since victims are just left distressed and powerless to know what to do next. Thankfully, these days there are many silver surfers, of which I am one. It is great when I hear about 90-plus-year-olds going to classes to learn about their rights, how to do their shopping online and how to keep in touch with friends and family through social networking sites. No doubt some of them will watch this debate.
Above all, the important message to get out there into the public domain, to everyone throughout the country, is not to trade with anyone that people do not know and for whom they do not have references. Research on behalf of the Office of Fair Trading has shown that a fifth of people over 70 are not confident when it comes to deciding whether to employ a doorstep sales person. One in five agreed with a range of statements that suggested that they might be vulnerable to rogue doorstep salespeople. People should deal only with financial firms authorised by the Financial Services Authority. They can check if a firm is authorised by calling the FSA register.
I agree with Dave Thompson’s last point, about the cuts in local government budgets. One of the cuts that we had to endure in Fife Council was a cut to the money advice programme, which was run by trading standards. It was a superb service.
I wish Dave Thompson well in his endeavours. If I can help in any way, I will be right behind him.
17:49
I, too, thank Dave Thompson for bringing to Parliament this debate on prohibiting cold calling for property maintenance and repairs, and for highlighting problems that are associated with cold calling.
It is likely that every one of us will have had to deal with constituents’ complaints about cold calling and the distress that it has caused, especially to elderly people. The TSI campaign to prohibit cold calling for property maintenance and repairs is backed by Citizens Advice Scotland, Neighbourhood Watch Scotland and many others. The campaign must be welcomed because, too often, the most vulnerable people in society become the victims.
Cold calling for property maintenance and repairs has led to an increase in doorstep-crime incidents that have been reported to the police and trading standards over the past few years. The people who initiate doorstep calling—namely bogus workmen, high-pressure sales people and fake officials—often target older people and those who live alone. A consequence of that is often burglary, when distraction techniques are deliberately employed to enable theft to take place. On several occasions, victims have lost their life savings and through embarrassment are often fearful of telling relatives or friends. The financial implications frequently result in those people living in hardship for many years.
The vast majority of identified rogue traders have no local connections and no fixed premises in the area, which makes them extremely difficult to track down.
A recent survey by the TSI that got feedback from 9,000 householders showed that 96 per cent of households do not want doorstep callers. The figures surely show that the public would overwhelmingly back legislation to prohibit cold calling for the purposes of property maintenance and repairs.
There have been several local campaigns, such as TSI’s campaign in Aberdeenshire entitled “Cold calling—don’t buy it” and Fife Council’s trusted trader scheme. However, the most successful has to be the cold calling control zones scheme that was initiated by Cardiff Council, which was supported by police community officers and trading standards teams.
Since its inception in the spring of 2008 in the Heath and Canton areas of Cardiff, 83 per cent of residents believe that the number of cold callers has decreased, 80 per cent believe that they are safer in the zone and 90 per cent are more confident in being able to turn cold callers away. The police reported a significant reduction in crime of all types in cold calling control zones, including burglaries, theft from motor vehicles and all other types of theft.
The cold calling control zones have been so successful that they are being rolled out to another 11 locations across the city. It is encouraging that Highland Council is setting up a cold calling control zone in Inverness and is trying to establish further zones across the Highlands, in conjunction with various partners.
A substantial amount of evidence illustrates that prohibiting cold calling can have a significant impact on the community. It reduces crime and thus reduces the misery that is inflicted on the most vulnerable sectors of society. I hope that the Scottish Government will take the opportunity to discuss the TSI in Scotland’s campaign to prohibit cold calling.
17:53
I congratulate Dave Thompson on bringing this issue to the Scottish Parliament for debate and I offer the apologies of Mary Scanlon, for whom I am a last-minute replacement. Mary is a signatory to the motion and had intended to participate in the debate. I hope that I can do justice to what she intended to say.
There is an obvious issue with regard to cold calling and property repairs. We have heard that cold calling provides an extraordinarily effective opportunity for illegal activity, and I am sure that all members have heard from people who have suffered as a result of it. The debate will highlight that once again.
I am fully supportive of appropriate regulation of cold calling, in order to prevent the kind of attacks that have happened, particularly on the weak, vulnerable and elderly, which I do not wish to see continue. It surprises me that there are two groups here. There is a group of people out there who are so set against people participating in doorstep trade that they will not believe anyone who comes to their door. People who have been approached about the installation of home energy efficiency measures—some of which are claimed to be supported by the Government—are quite often resistant, simply because they are being approached by a cold caller. Some of those calls may be quite legitimate, for all I know.
I have a sensitive issue that I will raise carefully so that I am not misunderstood. I have been aware of the issue for a while, but I learned more about it only yesterday when I, along with members of the Equal Opportunities Committee, visited a Travellers site at Clinterty, near Aberdeen. We had the opportunity to interact with a number of agencies and Travellers, followed by a full committee meeting in the afternoon.
As many members will know, there are quite a number of people in the Traveller community for whom the business model is, in effect, cold calling and who often offer property repairs, landscaping or gardening services. I am not suggesting that those people are the problem; I am suggesting that they—for all we know—may well be legitimate. For the Traveller community, that is the only available business model through which they can operate.
Although I am fully supportive of Dave Thomson’s proposals, I am concerned that simply outlawing cold calling for property repairs and similar services may drive legitimate Travellers who use that business model to the point at which they are no longer legitimate traders. That is why, if I am to support our going down this road, we must ensure that we apply some thought to how legitimate members of the Traveller community can be allowed to continue their business in some form but without cold calling. I am afraid that I have not had the time or the opportunity to come up with a formal proposal, but I would not wish to see those members of our community marginalised simply because their business method has—possibly quite rightly—been made illegal.
With that said, I redouble my support for the principles that lie behind the motion, and ask that we work together to find a way through the problem.
17:57
I, too, thank Dave Thomson for securing this incredibly important debate. I also thank Alex Johnstone for his speech. First, because he articulated clearly that cold calling relating to property is a good opportunity for the crook to get their foot—quite literally—in the door or round the back. Essentially, the crook gets into the house and into the confidence of an uncertain and possibly vulnerable mind, which then gives them the opportunity to carry on doing what they are doing.
Secondly, I support Alex Johnstone’s comments about Travellers. I have been involved with Travellers in the past, and he eloquently made the point about their work model and the possible unintended consequences of what is being suggested. It may well be that they have to change their model, but I thank him for bringing that matter to us.
I remind colleagues that we are dealing with rogues. There is absolutely no value in talking about how to train people properly, or about methods of operation or in suggesting that people should study this or stick to that or the other protocol. It will not happen, and it has nothing to do with what we are talking about.
The moment we talk about victims of cold calling, it is important to reflect on the characteristics that make somebody vulnerable. It is partly their age, undoubtedly. Of course, if people stick around, they get older. We are all working on it; it is an instinct. It is also partly, of course, ignorance. I do not mean that unkindly, because there are many things of which we are all ignorant. By and large, whether or not the tiles on the roof need fettled is something that most of us are not good at judging. I have a suspicion that, by the time I reach 80, although I may be capable of judging that, it will be difficult to look. In such matters we are, simply by dint of our circumstances, very vulnerable to a person coming along and telling us what they think—and it is extraordinarily difficult to tell them that they are wrong.
Scams are not mentioned in the motion, but they are part of the issue. Human beings like to think that we are going to get something for nothing; instinctive greed kicks in when we are told that we have an insurance claim or have won something. It is awfully easy to believe that. Once we have fallen for a scam, how do we react? We are embarrassed. We do not want to tell people. We are also ignorant. We do not know what to do. We do not expect the law to be effective and we do not really want to tell the police and our family. We heard how older people lose confidence.
The problem has been around for a long time. I am assured that the Eiffel tower has been sold for scrap: “It’s a secret deal and you’re going to get a wonderful bargain, my boy. The French Government couldn’t possibly make this an open tender, so you must pay up front and take it down at your leisure.” So effective was the scam that it happened twice. It is what we do, is it not?
Time is running away, as it always does. The law is not as effective as it needs to be. We must recognise that most of us will become vulnerable if we hang around long enough. We need to protect vulnerable people in society. It will not be easy, but who said it would be easy? We must deal with the issue and I thank Dave Thompson for bringing it to Parliament’s attention.
18:01
I thank Dave Thompson for lodging his motion and giving the Parliament an opportunity to discuss this important issue. I also thank Paul Holland, who is a trading standards officer in my area, East Renfrewshire, for alerting me to the serious nature and extent of the issue, and Brian Smith and Brian Wilson, from the Society of Chief Officers of Trading Standards in Scotland, who helped to make this a national campaign.
Scams in general are on the increase. It is difficult to put a financial value on them. In 2005, the Office of Fair Trading estimated that mass-market telephone and mail scams were costing consumers about £1 billion every year. Doorstep cold-calling crime is not on the same financial level, but its psychological impact is far more serious. As members said, it is underreported, for many reasons, including the embarrassment and humiliation experienced by individuals who have been left feeling foolish.
In some cases, residents are frightened to report offenders. That is not surprising when we consider who is targeted. The typical vulnerable resident might be an 84-year-old woman, who lives alone without the support of family or friends. Traders quickly establish the situation and prey on the person’s vulnerability. Residents say that they feel coerced into agreeing to work that is not what they requested or is completely unnecessary. The trader persists in using excuses to visit the resident to extort more cash. Such persistence can leave consumers feeling confused and distressed, and they can agree to almost anything in the hope that they will be left alone.
If work is carried out, the workmanship is often shoddy, and more often than not the original problems are not satisfactorily repaired, so the consumer has to contact the trader time and time again. The trader becomes aggressive and abusive and refuses to rectify the problem.
It can get even more serious. Sometimes the trader insists on cash payment and accompanies the resident to the bank, to ensure that cash is paid on demand. It is a frightening ordeal for someone to be taken in a vehicle with people that they do not know. The impact on the consumer is devastating. They are often left feeling mentally and physically unwell, with little or no support.
We have all but agreed on the extent of the problem; the important point is that we recognise that there are many things that we can do about it. I will give an example from East Renfrewshire, where simple methods were used: 20,000 no cold calling stickers and 6,000 no cold calling leaflets were issued. That simply gave residents information and the confidence to say no to such callers.
More interesting steps were also taken. East Renfrewshire trading standards service provided training materials to banks in the area in the form of a training video called “The Bank Job” on spotting suspicious withdrawals. East Renfrewshire Council is also working to put in place formal support procedures to identify vulnerable residents with dementia. We particularly need to target that group.
Even more proactively, the trading standards service worked with the police to target the tradesmen themselves. They used the law on the right to cancel contracts, identified hotspots, tried to check on benefit fraud and identified whether vehicles were suitably insured, taxed and roadworthy. In other words, they took a number of steps to clamp down on the traders.
The abuse of vulnerable residents by cold callers can currently be treated as fraud or a consumer protection issue. As the Trading Standards Institute has highlighted, it can also be treated as a community safety issue. The point is that we can, and must, do more if we are to tackle the crime.
I congratulate Dave Thompson once again on securing the debate and look forward to the minister’s reply on behalf of the Government.
18:06
Whatever the extent of underreporting, the number of serious doorstep crime incidents linked to cold calling that are drawn to the attention of the police and trading standards services has grown significantly over the past few years.
All too often, rogue cold callers target the most vulnerable members of our society, particularly the elderly. Incidents involving older people losing thousands and thousands of pounds emerge with worrying frequency. Unfortunately, the response and support of enforcement agencies have not kept pace with the skills, organisation and shamelessness of the criminals involved or the changing nature of cold calling-related misbehaviour. We surely must consider how to address that.
Despite various education and awareness programmes being established by trading standards services, there remains a lack of grasp of the dangers that cold callers can bring. In a national survey by the Trading Standards Institute, only 13 per cent of people reported asking for identification from cold callers and only 1.3 per cent checked out those IDs. Similarly, the use of door chains was disappointingly low, with only 39 per cent of households having fitted one and only 6 per cent ever using them.
Those statistics make it clear that a great deal more needs to be done. As the TSI believes, an outright prohibition of cold calling for property maintenance, upgrading or repair has surely become worthy of consideration. Despite the campaigns, some of our most vulnerable fellow Scots continue to be open to the risk of falling victim to unscrupulous or outright criminal traders. Often, people are worn down by repeated and sustained targeting over a long time.
One example provided by trading standards officers from my area concerned a man in his 80s who was widowed and living alone. He was visited by itinerant traders over a two-month period in late 2011. They sought to persuade him to have the communal track to his property resurfaced—an action that would have required the agreement of, and a financial contribution from, all parties with an interest in the track. After a brief respite over Christmas, the visits and the pressurising recommenced until, eventually, having been offered a so-called discount rate of £1,640—down from £2,600—he gave in.
Some six weeks after the commissioned work was carried out, the trader’s son convinced the gentleman that he needed to spend another £650 to repair the surface further. For the grand total of £2,290, all that was done was the filling in of a few potholes and a degree of general improvement work that was independently assessed as being insufficient to last beyond the very short term.
A different, more general example of scandalous exploitation of the vulnerable from my part of the country involves a very elderly consumer who had been persuaded to sign up to £10,000 worth of solar panels, paying a £1,000 deposit following a cold call. When his carer realised what he had done, they contacted the company seeking to get him out of the contract. Initially, the firm concerned agreed, before then claiming that he would be in breach of contract.
The trading standards service was called in, and officers immediately realised that the gentleman had problems with his memory. In fact, they determined that he was suffering from Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. They pursued the company, pointing out that the gentleman did not have the capacity to enter into an agreement. Eventually, the deposit was refunded and the contract was cancelled. However, what would have happened if trading standards officers had not become involved in the case?
That example may not sit entirely within the parameters that Dave Thompson envisages, but I highlight it because it raises the question: if the regulated market is prepared to exploit the clearly vulnerable in that way, what restraint can we expect the rogues to show?
In cases of wilful exploitation, prosecution is of course extremely difficult. The unscrupulous choose their victims carefully: they target those who would be incapable of being convincing witnesses in any court, if those involved were caught and a case went to court. That is why, in the instances that the motion highlights, we need to offer additional consumer protection that goes beyond the established or conventional and which might well need to take the form of prohibiting cold calling.
I congratulate my colleague Dave Thompson on lodging the motion. I offer my support not only to it but to the work of trading standards officers the length and breadth of Scotland.
18:10
I, too, congratulate Dave Thompson on securing the debate. I know that he has a long-standing professional interest in trading standards, and he is probably the right person to raise such an issue in the chamber.
The debate is apposite, given that we have just debated human rights in general this afternoon. We are now discussing an individual right—the right to live our lives free from crime and the fear of crime. Everyone has the right to feel safe in their community and it is unacceptable for people to feel intimidated in their own home. Our aim is to make Scotland a safer and stronger place and an inclusive and respectful society.
The United Kingdom Government’s plans to restructure the consumer landscape are being implemented. Of course, I believe that Scottish consumers’ interests would be best served if relevant Consumer Focus powers were devolved to this Parliament—members would expect me to say that. Consumer protection is devolved in Northern Ireland, but a request to do a similar thing in Scotland has been—inexplicably, in my view—declined. We must therefore focus on ensuring that the UK Government’s policies deliver for consumers in Scotland.
The role of trading standards in local authorities is crucial in helping to safeguard citizens’ health, safety and environment. Trading standards services have an established history of protecting citizens and ensuring a fair market in which business can flourish. I take the opportunity to join other members in thanking trading standards officers for their contribution to combating rogue traders.
I welcome all the good work that local authorities, the police service and trading standards already do across Scotland to tackle cold calling. In doing so, it is important to acknowledge that cold calling can be part of serious and organised crime networks. That aspect has not been debated tonight, but it must be taken on board.
I welcome the recent report from Audit Scotland entitled “Protecting consumers”. I recognise the work that the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and councils are doing to improve national co-ordination and I note the scope for better integration between councils, which is an important aspect of the intelligence gathering and sharing that are probably required to tackle cold calling.
Members have talked about specific issues in their areas. The groups of people who carry out the scams do not confine themselves to just one area; they move from area to area, so intelligence sharing is extremely important.
Fiona McLeod, David Torrance, Helen Eadie, Ken Macintosh and Graeme Dey are all right to raise the differential impact of such behaviour on older people. That is a function of the fact that older people tend to be at home during the day far more often; they are sitting ducks—sitting targets—for such activity. The stories that all the members related were harrowing.
I was interested to hear of the local trial in Fiona McLeod’s constituency. I met the Scottish Pensioners Forum recently—in November last year—and I am only too aware of the physical and mental impact that cold calling can have on individuals who are often elderly and vulnerable, which in turn increases the fear of crime among individuals and communities.
Alex Johnstone raised a particularly sensitive issue and he should be commended for making such points in the debate. He reminded us that not all cold callers are bogus; some might be acting for Government initiatives and others might rely on cold calling as a business model. That means that how cold calling is dealt with must be carefully thought through, to avoid the law of unintended consequences, of which Nigel Don reminded us.
As members such as David Torrance and Ken Macintosh related, many initiatives to tackle cold calling are already in place across Scotland; perhaps they need to be more joined up, as I said earlier. For example, last year Lothian and Borders Police launched a new initiative that was focused on doorstep crime, which aimed to decrease the number of bogus callers and rogue-trader workmen who were targeting the communities of West Lothian. That initiative fostered in the community an increased feeling of empowerment to challenge such individuals and reduce the chance of becoming a victim. My colleague Kenny MacAskill saw the initiative for himself in March last year and was impressed by its impact.
To date, we have provided funding of more than £400,000 to Neighbourhood Watch Scotland to support its work. It plays an important role in offering reassurance to local communities by sharing alerts on potential criminal activities in their area, providing advice on how to keep safe and encouraging members of communities to look out for one another, especially the elderly and vulnerable.
The initiatives that the Scottish Business Crime Centre promotes are also crucial. Its adults at risk of financial harm conference in 2012 brought together a number of delegates from the Scottish Government, local authorities, the business community, law enforcement, fire and rescue services and the voluntary sector. All parties agreed on a strategic commitment to collaborate consistently and effectively with a common objective—the protection of vulnerable adults who might be subjected to financial abuse by others. Cold calling was addressed at the event in presentations by Scottish scambusters, Lothian and Borders Police and Angus Council—Graeme Dey might be interested to hear that.
The SBCC is also working closely with a range of partners to deliver a scam-free Scotland, and a joint awareness campaign is to be launched in the spring. I recommend that members look out for that. My officials are already working with the SBCC to provide a central intelligence hub, which will go some way towards addressing the lack of national data on the issue.
I thank Dave Thompson for lodging his motion and I thank other members for their valuable contributions to the debate. I recommend to members some of the existing schemes, the upcoming campaign and the work that is being done—as well as the work that is being looked at—in respect of cold calling for maintenance and repairs.
Meeting closed at 18:17.