This an minimal, read-only version of the original Stop Junk Mail website.

Can I stop political parties using the electoral roll to send me junk mail?

2nd June 2011

I have received several election leaflets and letters directly addressed to me and recently I had some bloke from the Labour party phoning me (and there wasn't even an election going on either!). I checked electoral law and contacted the electoral commission but the law is really woolly. It says that election candidates can have a copy of the electoral register and use it for electoral purposes. But it doesn't explicitly state what those purposes are. I would argue that using my personal details to send me letters and then using my phone number to phone me especially when its not actually during an election is in clear breach of the law.

Dr Junk Buster's answer: 

Political junk mail addressed to you can be stopped in the same way as any other type of addressed junk mail. If you're registered with the Mailing Preference Service you shouldn't get addressed mailings from Labour, the Tories, and the Lib Dems; the opt-out scheme should prevent addressed junk mail from members of the Direct Marketing Association, and the three main parties are all members of the association. To my knowledge no other political parties are members of the Direct Marketing Association, and so other parties won't check to see if you're registered with the Mailing Preference Service.

Any addressed junk mail can be stopped by sending the sender a data protection notice. This is a demand, made with reference to the Data Protection Act 1998, to stop (or not begin) processing your personal details for 'direct marketing' purposes. Data protection notices are legally binding, and apply to any type of 'direct marketing' – including direct mail campaigns undertaken by charities and political parties. For more information and an example notice letter, see the Contact senders page in the Guide.

You might find that your local Labour Party / Tories / Lib Dems doesn't bother checking if you're registered with the Mailing Preference Service or have sent the (national) party a data protection notice. If so, they're breaching the Direct Marketing Association's code of practice and the Data Protection Act. The fact that they're allowed to use the full version of the electoral register as a cheap and convenient mailing list doesn't allow them to contact everybody on the roll.

As for the unsolicited phone calls, Labour must have found your phone number elsewhere as the electoral roll doesn't contain phone numbers (it's quite possible that they have bought a junk mail list, rather than used the electoral roll). Although unsolicited sales calls are banned by the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations I've found that Labour seems to get around the Regulations by pretending to conduct surveys rather than trying to win people's support. When they phoned me a while back I explained that I was registered with the Telephone Preference Service; the caller's reply was that this was irrelevant because they were not making sales calls… You might want to contact the Information Commissioner's Office to find out what the law says about disguised unsolicited calls from political parties.

Last updated: 
2nd June 2011