IPA boss Hamish Pringle accuses Cameron of making policy on the fly as he calls for advertisers to be banned from Government work.

The IPA has particularly hit out at Cameron's claim that should the Conservatives form the next Government that they would ban any agency found to be exploiting children in advertising from working on any Government business for three years.
Hamish Pringle, IPA Director General, said: "This is a classic example of policy on the fly and as usual with such proposals they crash land when confronted with some facts. You can't just airbrush over nearly fifty years of the highest standards in legal, decent, honest and truthful advertising, governed by tough Codes, abided by over 95% of the time by advertisers and their agencies, and enforced by a world class self-regulator in the ASA.  Cameron's idea of a "specially set-up website" would pull the rug out from under the ASA and is clearly ill-thought-out."

Pringle added:  "We're also very concerned about his proposal that agencies that have had a complaint against one of their advertisements on the grounds of sexualisation should be banned from bidding for Government contracts for three years.  This smacks of double jeopardy since the agency would already have been penalised by having its ad withdrawn by the ASA at considerable cost to them and their client. Fortunately the ASA data shows the incidence of this happening is so small and in these rare cases is usually perpetrated by a non-IPA, non-COI agency, for a non-ISBA client that it makes the sanction irrelevant."

Meanwhile a response from the ISBA's Ian Twinn stated: “Responsible advertisers share Cameron's concerns on inappropriate marketing to children. David Cameron has raised real concerns about the inappropriate commercialisation of childhood and these are shared by responsible advertisers.

“But it is vitally important to say that the UK’s advertising codes, which we plan to reinforce and extend to cover websites, are strong. The protection the codes afford for children brings peace of mind for parents.

“Advertisers remain open to discussing any appropriate and proportionate child-protection measures and we look forward to engaging with politicians in the coming months.”