EXECUTIVES whose firms flout cold-calling rules should be held personally liable and made to pay huge fines, urged a leading consumer watchdog as it emerged Scots are still plagued by nuisance calls.

Three in four in people in the country are still regularly blighted by uninvited telephone pitches from commercial and marketing firms with Which? previously claiming Scotland is the biggest target in the UK.

Three of the four worst affected cities are in Scotland.

At the moment, only the companies themselves are liable for fines of up to £500,000 if they break the law.

Since 2010, the data protection watchdog has struggled to recover fines because some firms have gone into liquidation to avoid paying.

The Herald:

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) said it had collected just 54% of the £17.8m in fines issued over the past eight years because some directors "try to escape paying penalties by declaring bankruptcy - only to open up again under a different name".

The government is currently considering whether to make bosses liable by fining them up to £500,000 - but it was thought that it would come into force by spring, 2017.

The Which? analysis conducted this month shows only a slight dip in the proportion of Scots who say they have been hit by nuisance calls despite the Scottish Government launching new measures to help people tackle the problem last year.

This includes a £50,000 fund for those most at risk from nuisance or scam callers to install call-blocking technology.

The action plan also aimed to raise awareness and help people to protect themselves from scam callers.

The Economy Secretary Keith Brown wrote to the UK Government last year urging it to take action to reduce the volume of nuisance calls, which is a reserved matter.

The Herald:

Eight in 10 (80%) of Scots told Which? that they were discouraged from picking up phone calls from unknown numbers altogether - potentially missing out on important calls from family members or other legitimate sources.

Nearly half (45%) of those surveyed telling the consumer champion they felt intimidated and another two in five (42%) saying they felt distressed by unsolicited phone calls.

Alex Neill, Which?'s home products and services managing director said: “It’s time to stem the tide of this daily torment and properly hold to account company directors who are responsible for flouting the law. We must stop them from bombarding households with nuisance calls.

“The UK Government must seize this opportunity and act swiftly to deliver on its promise to stamp out dodgy practices and make sure that those responsible for making nuisance calls can no longer evade justice and skip fines.”

There have been warnings in Scotland that phone scammers who claimed to be "working closely" with the telecoms giant then try to deprive them of their cash.

Scammers tell their victims that their call-blocking features, which aim to stop nuisance calls getting through, are about to expire.

They claim the only way to stop this is by paying a renewal fee when, in fact, the services are normally ree.

Fraser Macpherson, the Lib Dem councillor for the West End, said he received reports in April of the scam from residents in the Logie area. One was conned out of £85.

In March, business premises in Clydebank, West Dunbartonshire, suspected of making 200 million illegal calls was searched by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO).

Some calls may have put lives at risk as they were made to Network Rail's control centre near Fort William.

As a result drivers and pedestrians were unable to check if it was safe to cross the rails at unmanned crossings.

Typically they were recorded messages promoting boiler and window replacement schemes.

In April, two directors of a home improvements company that made more than 2.5 million nuisance calls were banned from running a business for six years.

Allan Brown, 39, of Glenboig, Lanarkshire, and Kenneth Haswell, 30, of Lennoxtown, East Dunbartonshire, were disqualified after complaints about their Glasgow-based company Nevis Home Improvements.

The company was fined £50,000 in 2016 after an investigation by the ICO but failed to pay the penalty . The company had made 2,530,549 automated marketing calls in the summer of 2015, answered by more than 1.5 million people who heard a recorded sales script for the company’s services.

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) first promised to clamp down on what it called "nuisance call crooks" in October 2016.

That plan was thought to have been sidelined while the government concentrated on the recent Data Protection Act 2018.

ICO deputy commissioner Steve Wood said proposals to make directors personally responsible for nuisance marketing will "increase the tools we have to protect the public".

A DCMS spokesman said: "Nuisance calls are a blight on society and we are determined to stamp them out.

"For too long a minority of company directors have escaped justice by liquidating their firms and opening up again under a different name, which is why we're taking action to hold rogue bosses to account and put an end to these unwanted calls."