CAN there be anything more irritating than hearing the telephone ring as you walk up the garden path?

Instinctively anticipating bad news from your parents/spouse/

bank manager, you dash to the front door, fumble in your pockets for your house keys, clumsily struggle to put the key in the lock, open the door and trip over the coffee table as you make a frantic lunge for the phone.

But - oh, sweet relief - you've somehow managed to grab the receiver before the bearer of important news rings off. What luck!

Then you hear the words: "Hello, Mrs Drury. I am delighted to announce that you are the winner of our grand prize draw - you have won a holiday of a lifetime."

Sometimes you have scooped a top-of-the-range sports car. Sometimes the prize is a speedboat. And at other times, a shiny new washing machine. Almost invariably you first have to part with your bank details.

Over the next few weeks, though, the voice on the other end of the line may not be sweet-talking you false promises from an office in Bombay.

It could well be a Cabinet Minister.

Home Secretary Charles Clarke, Health Secretary John Reid, Education Secretary Ruth Kelly and Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett are among the members of Her Majesty's Government who are cold-calling voters in a bid to persuade them to back Labour in the forthcoming General Election.

Ministers will natter about war in Iraq, schools, hospitals, crime - even the broken lamp-post at the end of your street. The intention is to prove to the public that Government is listening - and ensure you mark your 'X' for Labour.

Now the Tories have got wise to the trick - and are dialling hundreds of thousands of random people in a bid to convince them that, actually, Michael Howard would make a far better Prime Minister than Tony Blair.

Telephone call centres are expected to be used as never before in the run-up to the election, widely anticipated to be held on May 5.

All fairly harmless, you might think. But no. The practice is developing into a political scandal.

The Liberal Democrats are asking the watchdog which oversees the rules on electioneering to ban the calls.

Labour and the Conservatives are telephoning the millions of people who have signed up to make sure they do not get marketing "cold calls", say the Lib Dems.

And they are ignoring the fact that seven million telephone numbers are on the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) lists, which ban unsolicited calls - and the rules on marketing calls apply as much to political parties as private sector companies.

Lib Dem chairman Matthew Taylor has written to the information watchdog saying: "The advice we have received on several previous occasions is that such phone calls are illegal."

But that has not stopped Labour and the Tories.

The parties say they can stick to the rules by ensuring that their calls are not marketing - for instance by asking about people's voting intentions.

A Labour Party spokesman reckons the party avoided those on TPS lists when telephoning people about membership or fundraising - but not for "voter identification" calls.

He said: "When we ask which party they will vote for, that is not marketing and we have very clear legal advice that it is not."

And a Conservative spokeswoman said the party stuck to the rules when it rang TPS subscribers.

"We do apply TPS but in line with the law. We would not do things that are not allowed in the law," she added.

However, assistant information commissioner Phil Jones has ruled that it is classed as marketing if political parties telephoned people to encourage them to vote for them.

But "classic market research", such as a poll of voter intentions, did not constitute direct marketing, he said.

So next time you get a Cabinet Minister on the other end of the blower, it would wrong to accuse them of breaking the law.

Maybe it's best just to let it ring off.

Updated: 11:24 Friday, February 18, 2005