Brown backs curbs on ads to children

by Our Parliamentary correspondent, Campaign 09-Mar-07

Gordon Brown, the clear frontrunner to succeed Tony Blair as the prime minister, has backed calls for controls on "aggressive" advertising aimed at children.

The Chancellor promised "practical proposals" to help today's children
through the "pressure culture" of the multimedia age in which they
live.

His intervention in the debate over advertising follows a campaign for

children to be protected from commercial influences, led by Compass, a

left-wing group chaired by Neal Lawson, a former aide to Brown, and
backed by church leaders and pressure groups.

Speaking to parents in London, Brown said: "The commercialisation of
childhood, matched by advances in technology, has expanded so that
children's food, clothes, entertainment and toys and games are
billion-pound industries, with huge advertising budgets that are
powerful influences on children. This has increasingly exposed children
to the pressures of very aggressive advertising. But most worrying, it
has exposed children to images that sensationalise violence, drugs and
sex."

Brown also revealed that Ofcom would be promoting common labelling
standards to offer information on the type of content on TV, radio,
video games, the internet and in the cinema.

"Parents are under pressure as children are influenced by multimedia
sources and from more aggressive commercial advertising," he said,
"which compounds the usual problems of peer pressure."

- Comment, page 40.