We are delighted that The Green Party has announced it is supporting our campaign to reform political advertising.
A barrier to change historically has been the political parties agreeing to reforming the rules around political advertising. The Green Party’s support adds significant pressure to other parties to formally demand for the rules around political advertising to be updated. The Independent Group for Change also announced support for the Coalition for Reform in Political Advertising in May.
We are a politically neutral organisation and not for profit. We are supported by many other organisations as part of our coaliton including the UK advertiser trade body ISBA.
The Green Party comments:
“At the Green Party, we support The Coalition for Reform in Political Advertising’s campaign and all of the points you are seeking support for. We have been pushing for reform of regulations around elections for some years, particularly for transparency over online campaigning where electoral law is far behind where it should be in today’s digital age.”
Phil Smith, Director General, ISBA says:
“ISBA supports the Coalition for Reform in Political Advertising’s 4 point plan and agrees there is urgency for there to be agreement in how political advertising should be more closely regulated ahead of any potential upcoming electoral processes.”
Alex Tait, Co-founder of the Coalition for Reform in Political Advertising:
“We are absolutely delighted to have the support of the Green Party for our 4 point plan for political ad reform. There is consensus from everyone we speak to on the need to urgently modernise political advertising regulation. The barrier has historically been the political parties agreeing to it which is now finally changing. With the support we’ve been given also by The Independent Group for Change in May we’d like all the other political parties to show leadership on the issue and formally support what we are advocating too.”
We are calling on the UK Parliament to implement a four-point plan to improve the transparency and accuracy of discourse around our elections by reforming political advertising in the following ways:
- Legislate so that all paid-for political adverts can be viewed by the public
- Give an existing body the power to regulate political advertising content or create a new one to do so
- Require all objective factual claims used in political adverts to be substantiated
- Compulsory imprints or watermarks to show the origin of online adverts
Further details on our campaign can be found at /background/
