Guardian: Lib Dems face censure over ‘cold-calling’ campaign
Written by The Voice on 24th September 2008 – 11:20 pmThe party is on the brink of being censured by the [information] commissioner, Richard Thomas, for breaching strict privacy rules when [Nick] Clegg called 250,000 voters in 50 marginal constituencies last Wednesday night after his keynote speech to the Lib Dems’ conference.
The privacy watchdog has confirmed that it believes the automated calls were a Lib Dems’ marketing exercise, which meant the party had to have the prior approval of all 250,000 people or be in breach of the regulations. The commissioner’s staff saw the “script” for the calls – which invited listeners to vote on Lib Dem policy ideas using their telephone keypads – late last week. They have decided they were not for market research, which would be allowed under the privacy and electronic communication regulations, but a promotional exercise. …
In an interview with the Guardian, the Lib Dems’ chief executive, Lord Rennard, admitted that they did not have that consent but insisted the commissioner’s office had misunderstood their campaign. He will again try to push that case with Thomas’s officials, who appear to have resisted similar arguments from senior Lib Dem staff last week; Rennard’s team insist that no attempt was made to get people to vote Lib Dem.
Rennard told the Guardian: “We were engaged in a genuine market research exercise. We’re hoping for a meeting as soon as possible to explain what we were doing and our motivation behind the exercise.”
The party now faces an enforcement notice, which would make it a criminal offence punishable by a potentially unlimited fine if it breaches the regulations again.
You can read Hywel Morgan’s Opinion piece for LDV - Why the party shouldn’t be auto-phoning people - here.
Posted in News
25th September 2008 at 1:44 am
You’ve got to admire our ability to kick ourselves violently in the crotch.
25th September 2008 at 2:12 am
I am sure that the Information Commissioner would be told that he had misunderstood the campaigns by those who help people to reclaim bank charges, to consolidate debts or enjoy free holidays in Florida.
This is what could happen if all those who receive these unsolicited recorded message marketing calls were aware that they were in breach of the regulation, and reported them so that the ICO could take action.
My concern is that inaction in this case will send out the wrong message to all other nuisance callers.
I phoned the Information Commissioner’s Office early last Wednesday morning as soon as I learned of the ill-judged plan. I then phoned the desk at Bournemouth to warn the party, but was told that the ICO had beaten me to it.
The party must now admit its mistake and suffer the consequences, which will not include any penalty.
It must then adopt as strong a position as it can against nuisance telephone calls, pressing for the ICO to act more firmly to stop improper use of recorded messages. It should also press Ofcom to do more about the nuisance of Silent Calls (my old hobby horse).
Do not worry about the effects of a slap on the wrist. Following theirs, the SNP went on to form a government following the next election!
25th September 2008 at 3:59 am
This is such nonsense.
If you want two people on planet Earth to make sure you’re within the rules on this stuff, Mark Pack and Chris Rennard will be the names at the top end of your list.
So concerned were Mark and Chris that some of the tricks used by the other two parties were NOT deployed by the LibDems in the 2005 election. They were utterly insistent that we would operate totally and completely within the law - even if this was to our electoral detriment.
It would be an absurdity for the party to be investigated for this and is probably just yet another example of the form-filling state bureaucracy being unreasonable and seeking to pick on the little guys.
The bigger pity is to see the Guardian newspaper - once considered liberal -falling for this garbage.
25th September 2008 at 7:30 am
How come, when other parties have gone much further down this line than we have, do we end up having piles of manure thrown on our head?
The SNP did loads of pre-recorded Alex Salmond calls in the run-up to the Livingston by-election in 2005. I remember one friend of mine asking, in disbelief, whether she was expected to listen to this nonsense.
So we cross our eyes and dot our tees and get hammered.
Definitely not fair.
25th September 2008 at 9:24 am
Good. It was an odious and stupid stunt on every level. I couldn’t care less whether it technically fell within the letter of the law because it so clearly breached the spirit of the law. I’m just disappointed that it won’t result in much more than a slap on the wrist, because I fear it will take more than that to teach the myopic cretins responsible that principles don’t have loop-holes.
25th September 2008 at 9:52 am
“The bigger pity is to see the Guardian newspaper - once considered liberal -falling for this garbage.”
Eh? How is the Guardian “falling for” anything in reporting the Information Commissioner’s decision?
It seems some people here can’t read a bit of news they don’t like without blaming the person who wrote it (or posted a link to it!)
25th September 2008 at 10:11 am
The Guardian has never been warm to the Lib Dems. May be if you had a little more experiance of the media you’d realise this Mark.
25th September 2008 at 10:15 am
The pre-recorded message from Nick Clegg had zilch to do with surveying and pre-biased the answers, the questions only referred to a small set of our policies with no alternatives to pick from.. basically it was a thinly veiled political message masquarading as research and the IC saw through it.
25th September 2008 at 2:06 pm
Strange this story comes from the Guardian’s Scotland Correspondent. Maybe that gives a hint about whose spin it is?
25th September 2008 at 2:31 pm
@ Mark Littlewood:
“It would be an absurdity for the party to be investigated for this and is probably just yet another example of the form-filling state bureaucracy being unreasonable and seeking to pick on the little guys.”
Stop whining about “acting in good faith” (the stock Lib Dem defence) and take the kicking you deserve. Marketing is marketing and dressing it up with a survey doesn’t change anything. The rest of the country is simply grateful that such a poorly run organisation will never get near the levers of power.
25th September 2008 at 2:36 pm
Mark Williams - A poorly run organisation?
1.Go the Electoral Commission website and look up the accounts of the three main parties and see which is the best run.
2.Troll somewhere else and sin no more!
25th September 2008 at 2:51 pm
My personal view is that political parties going about their business is a key part of the democratic process, not double glazing sales. The rules should be relaxed for political parties. The IC should be told to butt out and go and deal with all of the commercial companies that use dodgy overseas phone banks that don’t reveal their clients and don’t say who they are until you are about to give over your credit card details. I no longer hang up on them, or ask them to explain their illegal phone call, I wait until I can find out who their client is and go for them.
25th September 2008 at 2:54 pm
Re my earlier comment - or not!
25th September 2008 at 2:58 pm
Martin Land Says:
“Mark Williams - A poorly run organisation?”
Martin, go and look up the General Election results of the last 50 years and see which are the best run
25th September 2008 at 3:07 pm
In the 2005 election the party campaigned forcefully to get the Information Commissioner to put his house in order:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/127/321290442_5ea4e7e988_o.jpg
The IC refused to endorse the party’s understanding of the rules. Mark Littlewood is right - Lib Dems were the only major party to show restraint in the 2005 General Election.
The commissioner should not be surprised that, given his office’s failure to come to a coherent decision on this issue, the Lib Dems followed the lead of other parties, who are now choosing to forget what they have been doing.
25th September 2008 at 3:11 pm
I said on other posts this was a damn stupid idea - whether legal or not.
People HATE these calls!
Wasn’t there anyone people-savvy enough to realize this??!!!
25th September 2008 at 3:21 pm
“Wasn’t there anyone people-savvy enough to realize this??!!!”
I wonder what the FE will do or say since they are supposed to be in charge of things like this (whatever Old Bones may say).
Of course right-wing headbangers like Mark Littlewood would not recognise a real person if they bumped into one.
Tony Greaves
25th September 2008 at 3:21 pm
I think that Darth Rennard probably calculated that the value of the data was worth the possibility of a slap on the wrist.
25th September 2008 at 3:38 pm
‘I think that Darth Rennard probably calculated that the value of the data was worth the possibility of a slap on the wrist.’
Harrumph
25th September 2008 at 10:53 pm
Terry’s right. The calls are made, the data is gathered. Sod poor old spirit-of-liberalism.
It remains to be seen whether any benefit we derive from the data isn’t offset by (largely deserved) bad publicity. I’m open-minded on this, having first-hand experience of how marketing techniques that I consider shockingly poor and unsophisticated can be astonishingly successful in statistical terms. But I really hope it’s a cost/benefit analysis the Comms team consider seriously before they do something like this again.
26th September 2008 at 12:00 am
“It remains to be seen whether any benefit we derive from the data isn’t offset by (largely deserved) bad publicity.”
That’s one question - and looking at the online tabloids the coverage of the Lib Dems that day was exclusively “nuisance phone calls” (and “£30 state pensions”).
But I really don’t think a “cost/benefit analysis” is the only thing we should be doing. It probably sounds hopelessly naive to people like Mark Littlewood, but I reckon that if this is against the rules - and particularly if we have campaigned against it in the past - we simply shouldn’t be doing it.
Regardless of whether we can get away with it, and regardless of whether it will be to our advantage if we do.
26th September 2008 at 12:32 am
Of course so-called PR guru and friend of Liberal Vision (and George Bush), Gavin Grant, was the genuis behind this.
I hope his other “bright” ideas get the bitch-slapping the party has taken for his idiocy on this.
26th September 2008 at 1:29 am
Just for the record.
The SNP was issued with a similar notification in 2005. This was upheld on appeal to the Information Tribunal in 2006.
Lib Dems also took credit for a preliminary notification issued to the Conservatives, also in 2005.
This Notification explains how on the day of the “offence”, following my prompting, the ICO did all it could to make the party aware of what could happen. The relevant formal enforcement powers cannot however be used until after the event. The party therefore had to make up its own mind about whether or not to listen to the advice and perhaps benefit from a clear judgement based on the full text and confirmation about whether those called had given consent.
The party chose to go ahead and supply a copy of the text the next day. The party later confirmed that the calls had been made without the necessary consent.
I believe that both I and the ICO did all we could to “save the party from itself”. It is for members and active supporters to ensure that the necessary internal action is taken.
I look forward to welcoming the party back to the right side of the battle against telephone nuisance, whenever it feels it is ready to rejoin me.