My Lords, I, too, support the amendments in this group. This is a vital issue for us all. The language of children’s protection has to be modernised. We rightly rail against pornography and violence and the abusive exposure of young children to those things, but the insidious manipulation of children when it comes to the payday lending industry can no longer be overlooked or seen as a lesser evil. Those puppets are built like children’s grandmothers and grandfathers. They are authority figures that kids look up to—certainly the ones I have seen. We all know that the misuse of money, as the noble Baroness has said, can lead to terrible family misery, and we harm children—often for the rest of their lives, as noble Lords have said—if we make popular for them the notion that money can be procured cheaply, and dress it up to sound like fun or a solution to their family’s pain.
The Advertising Standards Authority, speaking about advertising rules on this subject, states that:
“The protection of young people is at the heart of the rules”.
It goes on to say that advertising “must be socially responsible”. I fail to see what could be socially responsible when it comes to payday loan advertising at usurious rates, as the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury put it. Member states of the European Community—which I believe we still are at present—are urged by Article 27 of the audiovisual media services directive to,
“take appropriate measures to ensure that television broadcasts by broadcasters under their jurisdiction do not include any programmes which might seriously impair the physical, mental or moral development of minors”.
I suggest to the Minister that the Bill’s inclusion of this group of amendments would be an appropriate measure.
In conclusion, I read recently that the world’s top 10 PR companies, including UK companies, have said that they will not represent clients that deny climate change. What a powerful signal it would be if those PR firms and their advertisers took a similar course of action when it came to their industry being approached to procure payday loan advertisements. I urge the noble Baroness to use the opportunity of the Bill to stop this practice.