A Channel 4 News investigation has found the Conservative party contracted a secretive call centre during the election campaign which “may have broken data protection and election laws”. The Information Commissioners Officer confirmed it will be asking the Tories about the calls.

For weeks, up to a hundred zero-hour workers contacted “thousands of potential voters in marginal seats across the UK”.

The investigation has uncovered what appear to be underhand and potentially unlawful practices at the centre, in calls made on behalf of the Conservative Party. These allegations include: ● Paid canvassing on behalf of Conservative election candidates – banned under election law. ● Political cold calling to prohibited numbers ● Misleading calls claiming to be from an ‘independent market research company’ which does not apparently exist -Channel 4

The Conservative party confirmed they commissioned Blue Telecoms to carry out ‘market research and marketing’ phone calls, but insisted they were legal. But a whistleblower insists they were making unlawful phone calls.

Callers would contact people and say they were calling from “Axe Research”, which is not a registered company in England and Wales, and workers were “repeatedly told not to disclose that they were working for Blue Telecoms.”

Asked what Axe Research was, one supervisor told Channel 4 News: ‘It’s just the name we do these surveys under, basically. I did a Google search, nothing comes up. But as far as anyone’s concerned, yeah, we’re a legit independent market research company.’

Channel 4 says this is a breach of data protection rules on transparency and privacy.

Guidance from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) states that market research companies must disclose ‘who you are; what you are going to do with their information and who it will be shared with.’

The head of Blue Telecoms said they would not answer questions about Axe Research, and directed those questions to the Conservative party instead.

During the investigation, callers were also tasked with making direct calls ‘on behalf of Theresa May and the Conservative Party’. While genuine market research is permitted, marketing calls to TPS numbers on behalf of political parties are prohibited by EU regulations and the Data Protection Act, unless the person called has specifically given the organisation their consent.

A Professor of Political Communication at Bournemouth University resolutely agreed the content of the calls being made were ‘canvassing’ saying:

‘It can’t be research. All the questions are loaded, a lot of them are quite rhetorical in that sense of guiding you towards one answer. It’s canvassing. It replicates the sorts of scripts I’ve seen used on doorsteps by parties for many years.’

If it is true that the calls were canvassing calls, then a law was broken as the people making the phone calls were not volunteers, but in fact being paid for employment.

The calls appeared to be a breach of Section 111 of the Representation of the People Act which prohibits ‘payment as a canvasser for the purpose of promoting or procuring a candidate’s election’. Barrister Anya Proops QC said paid canvassing ‘can have very, very serious consequences, even if the candidate in question doesn’t know it’s happening’.

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