"Should we cut children's exposure to advertising?"

A meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Alcohol Misuse in December 2006 was devoted to the question of children’s exposure to alcohol advertising.Themeeting was organised by Alcohol Concern, the National Agency on Alcohol Misuse, and chaired by Rob Flello MP,Officer of the All Party Group,accompanied by another member of the group,Russell Brown MP. Srabani Sen, Chief Executive of Alcohol Concern and Jane Landon, Deputy Chief Executive of the London Heart Forum, gave short presentations.

The meeting was attended by the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, the Royal College of Physicians, the Institute of Alcohol studies, Representatives of Ofcom, and the Directors General of the Association of Advertisers and the Institute for Practitioners of Advertising.

The meeting sought to address three main points: Is the evidence base linking the advertisement of alcoholic beverages and underage consumption credible? Is the regulatory framework currently in place sufficiently protective of children? And finally, are politicians, rather than regulators who have to balance a greater range of statutory obligations, better placed to make decisions of this nature?

The meeting took up the theme of the watershed, drawing upon the National Heart Forum’s impressive campaigning - and lengthy battle with Ofcom, the independent regulator competition authority for the UK - for a ban of the advertising of junk food targeted at children.

Srabani Sen, in her presentation, highlighted the imbalance which exists between the potential impact of alcohol advertising and marketing, and public awareness campaigns: in 2003, the alcohol industry spent £203 million on advertising - this figure stands in stark contrast to the £4 million the Government spent on the ‘Know Your Limits’ Campaign, launched last month by the Government, and aimed at raising awareness of the risks of binge drinking among young people. She also emphasised the evidence cited in the report ‘Alcohol in Europe’, published by the Institute of Alcohol Studies, showing a clear relationship between UK Advertising expenditure on alcohol between 1992 and 2000 and levels of alcohol consumption among 11 to 15 year olds during that period. She noted that rules set out by the Advertising Standards Association (strengthened by Ofcom in October 2005 to prohibit advertising likely to appeal to under 18’s, as opposed to advertising deliberately targeting under 18’s as was the case previously) were still not sufficient to prevent adverts appealing to younger children from reaching the marketplace. Srabani Sen called for more robust measures to be put in place; the watershed could represent an effective way to protect children from the influence of alcohol advertising.

The spokesperson from Ofcom claimed she was “not convinced that there was a problem, and that by and large, the content rules were very effective”. She also reiterated the plural nature of Ofcom’s duties, which mean that, as an independent regulator, it must create standards of advertising in order to protect vulnerable groups (such as young people) but it also has to balance the rights of commercial expression of manufacturers and retailers.The representative of the Association of Advertisers referring to the issue of a junk food ban, ridiculed the model provided by the Food Standards Agency, classing products such as milk and cheese as ‘junk food’; he suggested that a ban on advertising alcoholic products in order to protect young people ignored the fact that three of the major soap operas in the UK were heavily centred within a pub setting.He suggested such decisions should be left up to the regulators,who implement ‘evidence based’ bodies, rather than ‘opinion based’ politicians.