Advertising: Children
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, if she will make an assessment of the effectiveness of the implementation of the Broadcasting Code by Ofcom on reducing the sexualisation of children through broadcast advertising.
Answered by Chris Bryant
The Advertising Standards Authority co-regulates broadcast advertising under contract with Ofcom and its sister organisation, the Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice (BCAP), sets the advertising codes. The codes require that advertisements must not portray or represent anyone who is, or seems to be, under 18 in a sexual way and care must be taken when scheduling advertisements in or around children's programmes or programmes likely to be seen by significant numbers of children.
The Broadcast Advertising Code has a dedicated section on protecting children, with rules designed to ensure that adverts do not contain anything that is likely to cause children physical, mental or moral harm, and the ASA administers these rules robustly. All broadcast advertising is pre-approved to ensure it is compliant with the BCAP Code before it is aired, through a system known as Clearcast. Clearcast has well established processes to ensure advertising content is thoroughly checked before it appears on television and puts restrictions in place when necessary.
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