MPs warning over telephone sex line 'scam'

2.14.37pm BST (GMT +0100) Tue 2nd Sep 2003

This week Vincent Cable warned on the BBC's consumer programme Working Lunch of a new 'scam' operated by a company calling itself Telephone Billing Services.

A Twickenham constituent, an 82 year old man in a nursing home, had somehow run up bills of hundreds of pounds as a result of someone, as yet unidentified, gaining access to his telephone to ring a pornography line.

He is being pursued by a debt collection agency, linked to Telephone Billing Services, with threats of bailiffs seizing his property.

Vincent Cable told the BBC, which has evidence of several other cases, that "there is a serious gap in the system of protecting vulnerable consumers from these nasty pornography merchants. Typically, sex lines can only be accessed by premium lines that are now overseen by a regulator. But this company has an ordinary 0207 number."

"If it is rung by accident, or if children were to discover it, not only is there offensive material but call charges are very steep indeed and bill collection is pursued ruthlessly".

"In this particular case it is a mystery how a bed ridden elderly man, whose phone cannot be used by anyone else, who insists he has not made the calls himself, can find himself in this position. I have asked BT to investigate the matter and am writing to the Minister to seek a strengthening of controls".