Compensation Bill [HL]

My Lords, I understand the pressures on time, but the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, referred on a number of occasions in Grand Committee to advertisements. He gave examples again this evening of ““distasteful”” advertisements by claims management companies and other problems arising because claims management companies have failed to indicate—and thereby confusing people watching television or reading—that alternative services are available free of charge. These matters concerned him. My noble friend the Minister stated that research had been undertaken by or on behalf of the Advertising Standards Authority—I declare my interest as chairman. This has been funded mostly by the Department for Constitutional Affairs, the Minister’s own department, but also partly by the Advertising Standards Authority. The first results—which I have seen in draft and which will be fully available to everybody in April—suggest that a number of distasteful advertisements of the kind mentioned could be dealt with, if they continue to exist, by the Advertising Standards Authority’s own code of practice, dealing with misleading or offensive advertisements. I have to admit that not all could be. For example, the rubric in our advertising code of practice is something like that any advertisement which is seriously offensive or likely to cause widespread offence is a breach of our codes of practice. There is a difference between taste and offensiveness. One advertisement mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, in Grand Committee suggests that, if compensation is won as the result of a successful claim, then you can have a nice holiday in the Caribbean. I am not sure I see that as being offensive, though I can see it will be distasteful from certain points of view. You may think it distasteful, and perhaps you wish to regulate against it, but I have to admit that the Advertising Standards Authority would find it difficult to regard it as coming within its rubric of being offensive. Similarly, some of the things that the noble Lord seems to want are really matters of better consumer education, rather than for advertisements to deal with them. For example, I do not expect—nor does my authority—advertisements to include the services that may be offered by rivals, or offered free of charge by somebody else. An advertisement is a promotion of one’s own commercial and marketing practice and services. While I would like to see a lot of caution in this regard, I have some sympathy for the view put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Goodhart, that there is a need in authorisation processes to have some kind of conduct-of-business rules. So long as these are carefully considered one by one, and not just dashed off as the result of some amusing or distasteful advertisements and practices that have been mentioned in Grand Committee or today, I see no objection to that.