The Coalition now has the support of two political parties, The Green Party and The Independent Group for Change and is in conversation with several other parties currently about supporting it.
The Coalition for Reform in Political Advertising, a not-for-profit and cross-party initiative, was founded by advertising practitioners to tackle the rising problem of regulation lagging behind the speed of change of digital media.
The Coalition believes a major historical barrier to change historically has been the reluctance of the political parties to update the rules around political advertising.
It is pushing for all parties to formally demand for the rules around political advertising to be updated and hopes the support of The Green Party will add to this pressure.
Alex Tait, Co-founder of the Coalition for Reform in Political Advertising, said:
“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.”
The Green Party said:
“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.”
The Coalition is 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
The Coalition is supported be media owners including The Guardian, The Sun and The Times and ISBA.
