Christopher Fraser: "Home users and business alike are plagued"

The issue was raised by Christopher Fraser who told the House: "Home users are being plagued by unwanted fax messages. They use up paper, tie up telephone lines and arrive all hours of the day and night."

The MP for Dorset Mid & Poole North said members of his constituency had received faxes offering them "everything from supplies of a recently identified wonder drug, world cup tickets, miracle diets, discount airfares to how to win the national lottery ... they also include joke faxes of highly distasteful nature."

The worst kind of junk

Recipient should not have to pay

Mr Fraser said he had singled out junk faxes rather than other methods of distance selling as needing urgent attention for a number of reasons - the most important of which is financial.

"Unlike junk mail or unwanted telephone calls there is cost to the recipient of an unsolicited fax by way of paper toner or ribbon and electricity," said Mr Fraser.

He also said junk faxes posed a more irritating problem than unsolicited telephone calls as they are often received in the middle of the night, waking domestic recipients with telephones by their bedsides.

The "offensive and undesirable" content of messages was also a cause for concern as children may be the first to find inappropriate material sent to people's homes.

He told the House that although Oftel was taking action against organisations which compile lists of fax numbers, vast lists already exist which include many ex-directory residential numbers and these lists are already widely used.

Under current reguations the public can request to be removed from these lists. However, it is a time consuming and often unsuccessful quest.

New regulation

Mr Fraser called the current system of regulation "inadequate". "There are numerous companies sending unsolicited faxes and each must receive an individual letter of request to desist."

He pointed out that marketing companies make it clear that unstamped post will be returned making the cost of each envelope and the relevant postage the responsibility of the recipient.

Although it is possible to count the cost of receiving one fax and to request the senders to remove the number from their list, Mr Fraser pointed out that this was impractical when you consider the amount of unwanted faxes currently being received.