National Antivisection Society
ADI’s Political Advertising Case Moves to House of Lords
Posted: 24 April 2008
ADI’s case to challenge the Government’s ban on so called ‘political’advertising by animal, environmental and human rights organisations moved to the House of Lords on 17 December for a 2-day hearing in front of their Lordships.
Our lawyers presented volumes of evidence and arguments supporting our case, and that at least two of the four Law Lords appearing to be supportive. However, the judgement received on 12 March 2008 was against us, leaving us looking to the European Court for our remedy. If we had won the case, the law would have been amended.
The case arose when an advertisement produced for ADI’s My Mate’s a Primate campaign in 2005 was banned by the BACC, not because of the content of the advertisement, but because NAVS and ADI are deemed to be ‘political’ groups under the Communications Act 2003.
ADI issued a High Court challenge on the basis that the ban violates our right to freedom of expression and that the relevant provisions of the Communications Act 2003 are incompatible with human rights. We argued that the ban is too widely drafted – it includes organisations whose aim is to influence public opinion; the ban is not a justified interference with the right to freedom of expression because it is unnecessary and disproportionate. We also said that it creates unfairness so that, for example, an oil company can broadcast a vanity advertisement claiming that it takes care of the environment, but environmental organisations cannot respond in the broadcast media. Likewise, ADI cannot advertise to criticise companies using animals in entertainment.
Although we lost our case in the High Court in October of 2006, the Court felt that our case needed to be heard and therefore gave permission to leapfrog the Court of Appeal and take our case straight to the House of Lords.
A boost came in May 2007, when the report of the Advisory Group on Campaigning and the Voluntary Sector, chaired by top lawyer Baroness Helena Kennedy, QC, agreed that the Communications Act 2003 has a censoring effect on the voluntary sector.
The report recommends: the ban in the Act on all advertising by ‘political’ organisations should be repealed; a new legislative framework should permit in principle non-political advertising by NGOs and charities; the definition of political in the Act should be amended so as to permit the broadcast of social advocacy advertisements on radio and television but restrict the broadcast of advertising for political parties; a new regulatory framework should allow ‘political’ (including party political) advertising by NGOs, but it should state that it contains political content/represents the opinion of the advertiser/state the source of funding; consideration should be given to a moratorium on all political and social advocacy advertising in the broadcast media during local and national election periods.
