NFH wrote on Dec 20
th, 2013 at 1:59pm:
I might have been wrong, but Which did have a massive campaign on this specific exemption with tens of thousands of signatures on their petition. They claimed victory for themselves, although I have no doubt that other pressure groups, including this one, made a large contribution too.
Which? did indeed collect many email addresses to add to their database, mailing out a message with an implicit invitation to subscribe (direct marketing without consent, under the terms of PECR #20). The actual terms of the petition were not directly specified - it was about "putting a stop to costly customer helplines".
I imagine that nobody in government would be surprised to learn that people would prefer helplines to be less, rather than more, costly for them to call. It is an open question as to whether people want businesses to be stopped from offering helplines, because they are costly to the business and therefore lead to higher prices. (I can assure readers that no business offering a helpline on a 084/087 number makes a net profit from the activity, in isolation from other activities.)
I understand that the actual submission to BIS by Which? (in response to sight of the draft regulations) was a list of passenger transport companies. This may may have duplicated the content of a number of other submitted lists (at least one of which had been published twelve months earlier), as no effort was made to co-ordinate research or submissions with other parties.
Many others engaged in the BIS round-table session, at which the issues were thrashed out, shared information in advance and demonstrated an understanding of the issues, participating in group discussion. Richard Lloyd claims to have had a private meeting with the Minister (or should that be, boasts about having privileged access denied to others).
As many of the relevant exchanges were private it is not possible to detail the representatives of the passenger transport industry who argued for its inclusion, or the precise role taken by various parties in helping the officials and the Minister to make the right decision.
Just for the record, "this forum" is not a pressure group - it is an open public forum where issues are discussed. It is part of a website that is supported by advertising and cannot therefore offer any formal view on any issue without suffering a conflict of interest, regardless of the difficulty of reflecting a common position that that encompasses the views of all contributors. I represent "the fair telecoms campaign" and engage in work on this issue in that role.
As the campaigning efforts of Which? are now conducted under the brand of a commercial publication and membership organisation, I believe that it should be a little more careful about what interests it may claim to represent. The libertarian, or even anarchistic, nature of its statement of purpose, quoted below, may cause those with different political philosophies to treat some of its declared objectives with extreme suspicion.
Quote:to make individuals as powerful as the organisations they deal with in their daily lives