Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1580
- 1599)
TUESDAY 24 FEBRUARY 2004
MR ANDREW
BROWN, MR
JIM ROTHWELL,
MR CHRISTOPHER
GRAHAM AND
MR ROGER
WISBEY
Q1580 Mr Brown: Even in the existing
code there is a reference to betting and gaming: "Marketing
communication should not be directed at people under 18 through
the selection of media, style of presentation, content or context
in which they appear. No medium should be used to advertise betting
and gaming if more than 25 per cent of its audience is under 18
years of age. People shown in gambling should not be, nor should
they look, under the age of 25". All one is doing is making
such communication less relevant to a young audience. They are
very similar rules to the alcohol rules.
Mr Rothwell: Also, the paragraph
you picked up on relates to the difference in relation to National
Lottery products where the legal age is 16 to purchase the product,
that is the only reason why we made that differentiation between
children and young persons, if that was where you were coming
from.
Mr Brown: Bingo is 18 and Lotto
16.
Q1581 Lord Mancroft: How much do
you think the existing restrictions on advertising of gambling
products have influenced or in any way restricted the prevalence
of problem gambling in the UK, or is that outside your area?
Mr Brown: I think it is largely
outside the area. There has been very little advertising for anything
that relates to problem gambling. The gambling areas that have
been allowed have really been that of Pools and Bingo.
Q1582 Lord Mancroft: That is now
changing.
Mr Brown: That is now changing.
Q1583 Lord Mancroft: We were talking
about these huge placards, and there is one outside my office
for an on-line casino. Will you be able to monitor the effects
of those over a period of time?
Mr Brown: Yes, I think one would
have to do that. That would be one of those discussions that one
would want to have on an ongoing basis with the Gambling Commission.
In pursuing a more liberal regime, one has to be jolly careful
that through irresponsible communication one does not create the
problem to a greater degree than might happen. I think alcohol,
again, is quite an interesting comparison.
Q1584 Lord Mancroft: Will you or
the ASA have the ability to conduct studies to see the effect
of that advertising over a period of time? Do you have that ability?
Mr Brown: Yes. One can commission
studies and quite often one does. In difficult areas like kids,
for example, at the moment and the discussion about obesity there
is an awful lot of research work about the causes, or lack of
them, and the interrelationship between communication and obesity.
It does seem to me if there areas of social issue and advertising
is in some way a stakeholder in that discussion, as they could
be in problem gambling, we would need to understand and have a
handle on that.
Q1585 Chairman: Clause 36(5), and
it is probably easier if I read it, says as follows: "If
information about gambling is brought to the attention of a child
or young person and includes the name or contact details of a
person to whom payment may be made or from whom information may
be obtained, that person (`the advertiser') shall be treated as
having committed the offence under subsection (1) unless he proves
that the information was brought to the attention of the child
or young person—(a) without the advertiser's consent or
authority, or (b) as an incident of the information being brought
to the attention of adults and without a view to encouraging the
child or young person to gamble." Do you think that this
is a fair structure?
Mr Brown: It seems to me that
the system should be very potent in dealing with any advertiser
who sets out intentionally to communicate and encourage young
people to gamble. That seems to me to be right. What we have got
to do is devise a way to minimise the effects of unintentional
communication because, as I say, you will not be able to cocoon
children so that they never see anything. They do read their parents'
newspapers, they do see a lot of things. The intentional seems
to me guilty as charged, and that is fine, it is the unintentional
where the codes of practice become very important.
Q1586 Viscount Falkland: So far as
smoking is concerned we have seen great concern on television
and films about people seen to be smoking, that it might be deemed
to encourage it. One could say the same thing about gambling.
If you went to a Bond film or whatever you might construe pictures
of people sitting at tables playing roulette as encouragement,
which of course they do not do nowadays because we were told by
the preceding witnesses that in fact the tendency of young people
is to stand often in a solitary remote relationship with a machine.
Do you see any concern springing up about the way in which gambling
is portrayed in films and television and so on?
Mr Brown: No, I do not really.
All these things are capable of misuse, of course they are, but
I am not particularly aware of them being misused.
Q1587 Viscount Falkland: No.
Mr Graham: It is actually quite
rare now. I was quite struck this morning watching the business
news when they were talking about BAT taking over RJ Reynolds,
or vice versa, that the item was illustrated by lots of people
smoking and it really jarred because one does not see it very
much on television. It may be less of a problem than it really
is. I suspect there is more real smoking going on than television
smoking.
Chairman: It is an interesting question
because the policy objective from the Government appears to be
that they wish to see gambling being seen more as a mainstream
leisure activity and the advertising of it, therefore, being permitted
with that in mind. Lord Falkland's point is very relevant. It
is quite conceivable that more gambling will be seen in soap-type
television programmes and that is something you may then get complaints
about.
Lord Faulkner of Worcester: If you listen
to The Archers at the moment you will find that there is
a very, very serious debate about problem gambling inside one
of the families depicted on that show.
Q1588 Chairman: I am very grateful
to Lord Faulkner. I do not listen to The Archers and from
what he has said I am glad that I do not.
Mr Brown: I think that is really
an issue for programme codes, not for advertising codes.
Q1589 Chairman: Yes, it probably
is.
Mr Brown: Certainly looking at
alcohol, again, that is one of the areas where broadcasters are
looking in relation to binge drinking and there are programmes
that are now holding a mirror up to that aspect of society which
is not very attractive. Those are programme code issues, they
are not advertising code issues.
Q1590 Lord Faulkner of Worcester: Can
I take up the question of gambling and young people. What about
advertising for gambling which is undoubtedly going to be seen
by people who either have a problem with gambling or have a propensity
to become problem gamblers? Do you think that advertisers have
a responsibility to address that?
Mr Brown: Yes, to a degree, but
not to the degree that in my view suggests that the advertisement
cannot exist at all. I think one of the dilemmas one always has
is how much should the rights of the majority be impeded to deal
with the problems of a minority? That is one of the dilemmas and
it seems to me the codes of practice ought to address that. If
advertisements exist in a way which feeds the problem, and it
is easy at the moment to think about alcohol, irresponsible alcohol
advertisement being seen by alcoholics, if advertisements operate
in that way they are almost certainly breaking the codes. It seems
to me that you can devise codes which enable competition to exist
without feeding the weakness of somebody who has that kind of
problem other than, as I said before, if by virtue of seeing any
advertisement it encourages such behaviour; I think that goes
too far.
Q1591 Lord Faulkner of Worcester: If
one is looking for a mortgage and one looks at advertisements
that appear in the press, or increasingly appear on radio, there
is a very detailed health warning attached to what happens to
you if you fail to keep up your repayments.
Mr Brown: Yes, there is.
Q1592 Lord Faulkner of Worcester: Why
would it not be appropriate for advertising for harder gambling
products to carry the same sort of warning?
Mr Brown: I think health and wealth
warnings are quite a tricky area. There is a lot of evidence that
they are not read. There is some evidence that wealth warnings
at the bottom of financial services products are put there by
the advertisers to find their way round technical problems but
they are not actually, they are put there by law, so they do not
actually fulfil the function they were set out to do. Those people
who have got them do not want to surrender them, although the
DTI did remove quite a lot of them without any problem. In Belgium
car advertisements have got health warnings saying "Driving
a car can be dangerous". What behavioural change is it likely
to bring about? I think people know by and large that if you are
spending money recklessly you are putting yourself at some risk.
Q1593 Lord Faulkner of Worcester: We
have had loads of witnesses who have told us that people who get
gambling problems do not know where to go with those problems.
How would it be if those advertisements carried perhaps not a
health and wealth warning but a helpline warning, an indication
that "If you have a problem with gambling, ring this number"?
Mr Brown: I think one of the more
successful warnings at the moment is for pharmaceutical products
which invite everybody to read the leaflet because that is the
obvious place for contra-indications. Something that is simple
and direct, it seems to me is always worthwhile considering. A
lot of the gobbledegook in financial services advertisements is
far too complicated and discriminates against the radio, for example,
when somebody has got to find the time for it to be read out.
When the DTI withdrew some wealth warnings from financial services
products the radio bookings for that category of advertising increased
by over 70 per cent. It discriminated against that medium.
Q1594 Lord Faulkner of Worcester: What
you are saying is you would not oppose the inclusion of a helpline
number?
Mr Brown: No. It is not a matter
of principle, I just think people are inclined to over-estimate
the importance of these things and assume that they are unlikely
to—
Mr Graham: We did some research
which is available on the ASA website about public attitudes to
advertising and people interpreted those wealth warnings in financial
services advertisements as protection for the advertiser, not
protection for the consumer, so one cannot assume that people
will read those and think "Gosh, thank you so much, I had
not thought of that".
Chairman: I promise the Committee this
is the last Australian reference I will make this morning, but
Lady Golding and I were intrigued that as you entered one of these
large casinos in Australia there was a sign on the desk that said
your chances of winning on any of these machines was greater than
a million to one. Forget about the accuracy of the figures but
nobody seemed to take much notice as they walked through the door.
We just want to talk briefly about the National Lottery.
Q1595 Mr Meale: Mr Brown, you said
earlier that you did not want a separate or different advertising
regulator. You also quoted from your code which is about not encouraging
people to gamble and you referred to part of that remit for the
under 25s. You went on a little bit about anything which encouraged
gambling might break your code. What about the Lottery? Should
those products not be to a different set of rules and regulated
by a different body? If that was the case, what problems or difficulties
would be caused by it?
Mr Brown: It is kind of where
we are at the moment.
Q1596 Chairman: Indeed.
Mr Brown: We have got the Lottery
Commission which is a statutory regulator with a code. There are
some complaints which come into existing advertising regulators
about the Lottery but they are very modest. Clearly it is very
different from commercial gaming, nobody is going to give commercial
gaming half an hour twice a week on BBC. The problem comes if
you have got two statutory regulators tackling the Lottery, whether
you have got the Commission and the Gambling Commission. That
would seem to me to be unnecessary. At the moment, as far as I
can see, the Lottery thing works jolly well and it ain't broke
so I would not change it. I would not try and extend the remit
of the Gambling Commission to include the Lottery, it seems to
me to be working fine. That is really from an advertising perspective.
The internal workings could be very different, I do not know.
Q1597 Mr Meale: You say twice a week
for half an hour, but of course there is a lot more than that.
We have football, which bets are taken on all the time, we have
racing which is on for at least 12 hours a day day and night,
there are a whole range of gambling activities which are taking
place on TV more than the Lottery.
Mr Brown: Yes.
Q1598 Mr Meale: The case is that
here we have got a product which is encouraging people to gamble
quite different from early on in the 1990s when preceding that
you were not supposed to encourage people to gamble. It is not
a small amount, it is tens of millions of pounds every week. Is
it possible to have a different code, a different body, a different
regulator? The reason I say that is they are advertisers.
Mr Brown: Yes, they are and, to
be honest, I would have preferred it if the Lottery advertising
code fell within the existing advertisement content regulators
as we have discussed, but the Government decided not to do it
that way. We have a statutory regulator that has got a statutory
code and a whole series of privileges that apply to the Lottery.
We cannot turn the clock back but I would have preferred to have
this kind of discussion about the Lottery and its communication
before it was put into being.
Q1599 Mr Meale: Can I just comment
that because the Government have decided that, it does not mean
to say that the scrutiny committee would agree.
Mr Brown: Of course.
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