Day 055 - 25 Nov 94 - Page 36
1 Q. Is this 89 per cent, or 11 per cent did not comply, is this
2 following a complaint, or just generally did not comply
3 with their guidelines?
4 A. No. This was the ASA's own monitoring. The ASA has,
5 as I said earlier, recognised that it should carry out some
6 of its own monitoring, and not just rely on complaints.
7 I think there are particularly strong reasons why that is
8 important when it comes to nutrition claims.
9
10 Q. So they checked 138 food and drink advertisements in print
11 and found that 11 per cent of them fell outside of their
12 guidelines, in their own interpretation?
13 A. Yes, in relation to nutritional claims.
14
15 Q. They thought that was a good -----
16 A. Well, the interpretation that is given in point 1 of
17 the summary seems to imply a degree of acceptance of this
18 level of compliance.
19
20 I think part of the problem is that the ASA's code needs to
21 be strengthened and tightened in this area, and, secondly,
22 there needs to be greater effective implementation of the
23 code.
24
25 Q. So, in reality, in April 1994, 11 per cent of the
26 advertisements they looked at fell outside of their
27 guidelines but were not complained about or dealt with?
28 A. Whether anyone else complained about them, I cannot
29 judge, but from this paper here ---
30
31 Q. They got away with it?
32 A. -- it does not appear that any action was taken,
33 certainly none that is reported in this paper.
34
35 If I can refer to page 20, point 7 is talking about
36 complaints that are generally received by the Advertising
37 Standards Authority from members of the public or who else
38 may wish to complain. It compares the level of complaint
39 relating to matters of nutrition, compared to the much
40 higher level of complaints about issues such as quality and
41 value for money.
42
43 It gives no further interpretation of this, which I think
44 it needs, because I think this comes back to the point
45 I made earlier, that it is much harder for people to
46 understand where they might have been misled, for example,
47 by a nutrition claim, if you are misled, you are misled,
48 and you do not know that you have necessarily been misled;
49 whereas it is obviously much easier to feel misled about
50 quality or value for money.
51
52 Therefore, I do not think too much emphasis should be
53 placed on these figures to imply that there is not concern
54 about nutrition.
55
56 Q. Was that all you wanted to say on that document?
57 A. In relation to -----
58
59 MR. JUSTICE BELL: If I may say so, these documents were
60 produced in advance so that you and Ms. Dibb might have
