Pan fydd ymchwil farchnad wleidyddol yn croesi’r llinell
By Steve Eckersley, Head of Enforcement.
The ICO has concluded its investigation into a Conservative Party telephone campaign carried out in the run up to the 2017 general election.
An undercover Channel 4 News investigation raised concerns about the campaign involving calls made by Blue Telecoms, a firm in Neath, South Wales, on behalf of the Conservative Party.
These concerns prompted an ICO investigation into the campaign’s compliance with data protection and electronic marketing law.
We’ve found that two small sections of the written scripts used by those making the calls crossed the line from legitimate market research to unlawful direct marketing. We’ve warned the Conservative Party to get it right next time.
Direct marketing v market research in politics
Market research helps political parties inform their views and formulate policies. Questions about voting intentions, finding out which Prime Minister someone might prefer or generally encouraging people to go out and vote are all legitimate market research.
However, if the questions are framed in a way to gain support – either now or at some point in the future – then that crosses the line into direct marketing. We mean things like promoting the aims and ideals of a particular party, appealing for funds, or encouraging people to vote for a particular party or candidate.
The law protects people from this kind of marketing because it can be intrusive.
Direct marketing – whether it’s through emails, texts or phone calls – is regulated by the ICO under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR). Other matters, for example around election law and market research, are regulated by other bodies.
What did the Conservative Party do wrong?
As part of our investigation, we studied scripts and call recordings and were satisfied that, in general, the questions reflected a valid market research campaign.
But we did have concerns about two sections which we believe fell outside the bounds of market research. These paragraphs referenced both Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn in relation to policy choices.
What happens now?
We’ve stopped short of formal regulatory action because the overall campaign was genuine market research. The two sections we had concerns about were not enough to trigger formal enforcement action when considered along with the campaign as a whole. In addition, the results of the survey were not saved against any individual so they could not be targeted for future marketing.
But we have been clear about what we expect in the future.
We’ve warned the party that its campaigns must be rigorously checked for questions that fall outside the bounds of market research.
And, while we did not resort to the full force of our regulatory powers in this case, we will continue to keep an eye on all political parties in the run up to future elections and repeat our advice to them that they must comply with data protection and privacy laws when campaigning.
There’s more advice about the difference between market research and direct marketing in our political campaigning guidance.
 Steve Eckersley leads the ICO’s Enforcement Team. Its aim is to take purposeful risk-based regulatory action where obligations are ignored, examples need to be set or issues need to be clarified, based on the ICO’s Regulatory Action Policy. |
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wow, a warning. So I guess we know which party Steve Eckersley votes for. What’s the point of rules when you have sycophants refusing to enforce them?
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or did you not have the political balls to fine the governing party
This proves to me more than ever that this was a carefully planned act. 1). Out of a set of “questions” I would only ask a couple of “dodgy” ones so I could excuse it as an over-sight/unintentional mistake. 2) They didn’t need to save the data as the leading questions would have done their “job” (or not), and in fact, I would have stipulated that the data was NOT, in any circumstances, to be saved.
It’s like the judge who gave a “nominal” suspended sentence for over 5,000 images (pictures and videos) of child sexual abuse saying that it was a momentary aberration in an otherwise exemplary life. How long do people think it takes to accumulate this amount of child porn? Definitely not “momentary”.
If you haven’t the ability to properly challenge these very powerful people, say so, I for one can understand as they can “ruin” your life and career. But, don’t make feeble excuses.
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Wow – nice to see a “strong and stable” response from a regulator. Talk about lacking the cohones to take a meaningful action.
Another gutless regulator.
In my opinion it was clear that the Tory party were using the survey as a backdoor into marketing these people, and tougher action should have been taken. Had the Labour party been doing this it would have been front page news in the Sun and the ICO may have taken a different approach.
In essence Steve Eckersley received a big fat cheque from Tory HQ.
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“We’ve stopped short of formal regulatory action because the overall campaign was genuine market research”.
Small crimes appear to be free, if they are in a big enough pool of non-crimes.
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What a whitewash. Grow a backbone because you know they will do it again. You’ve given them the green light. You are not fit for purpose.
It’s just not good enough. Another white wash; always the same. They did wrong; yes or no? That’s it. No such animal as a little wrong or a lttle right. Without clarification our Democracy is DEAD.
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Hah! “The law protects people from this kind of marketing because it can be intrusive.”
Except the law Doesn’t protect people, because the guilty have been let off without punishment.
Your failure to act demonstrates that you are just as corrupt as the Tories. I hope someone drags you to the High Court over this utter white-wash.
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Thanks Steve for sharing on such interesting topic. research on politics is what I have not done so far in my market research career. Reading this I think I should opt for a political survey.
Market research was started with the political meeting and now it is used in many aspects of politics.
Thank you for writing on an important topic, i got the information i was looking for.