At a recent Overview and Scrutiny Committee meeting, we were presented with a policy to ban Council advertising of a range of products including ‘unhealthy’ foods, fossil fuel and hybrid vehicles, airports and airlines.
This potentially flawed policy from the Liberal Democrat administration is contradictory, overbearing and will cost rather than raise money for the Council. It will also potentially limit sponsorship of Council events to companies some unseen officer or councillor deems acceptable – will that extend to Council-run employment fairs, limiting opportunities for young people?
One of the main problems with this policy is what kind of ‘ethical’ advertising the Council is trying to achieve. This can be summed up by an avocado. On our understanding, the Council could advertise ‘healthy’ avocados, but ban advertising of a burger made from locally reared beef based on the generic carbon footprint of mass-produced burgers.
Yet, there are significant environmental and ethical issues caused by the farming of avocados around its own carbon footprint, deforestation, water scarcity, human rights abuses of workers, and degradation of soil fertility.
What the Council is choosing to ban is completely arbitrary. For example, advertising cheap flights for families to go on what may be their only foreign holiday for the year would be banned, but not advertising luxury cruises, which have a higher carbon impact than flights per passenger. The proposed policy is silent on fast fashion, which the UN says is the second most polluting industry.
A Council less than 30 miles from Heathrow, where jobs and the wealth of our community are acknowledged to be generated by, and dependent on, the aviation industry, is proposing to engage in a war on aviation whilst ignoring more polluting industries.
Why is the Council engaging in social engineering based on councillors’ whims? It would be understandable – though not defensible – if it was based on a clear principle, such as ‘the Council will only advertise healthy foods’. But this policy is based on a random assortment of ideas. Lots of people try their best for the environment, their family and their health, but instead we have the Council casting a moral judgement from on high, whilst selling many of the same ‘unhealthy’ products in its own outlets.
Officers explained that some proposals were in line with Government plans set to come into effect next year. But this week it’s been reported that alcohol advertising pre-watershed won’t be banned, demonstrating this policy needs more consideration. The need for more consideration was illustrated by the bizarre, and unresolved, discussion at Scrutiny about whether the council would accept adverts for McDonalds fruit bags, or locally sourced burgers. The Council should stop this attempted overreach and rely on extensive existing Government policy, focusing on delivering better services for our population and making the Borough an excellent place to live.
Advertising should generate an income for the Council to go into our local services. But this policy will almost half the income the Council makes from advertising, creating a shortfall that will have to be made up by taxpayers. I also predict it will take lots of officer time adjudicating on what should be banned and what shouldn’t. This coming from the same Liberal Democrat administration that claims to be cash-strapped and insists on cutting services while putting up your parking charges and other fees.
As it stands, your Conservative councillors can’t support a policy that not only dictates to people and attempts to restrict their choices, but will actually cost taxpayers money. Unfortunately, Conservatives will not get a vote on this, as it a decision made by the Liberal Democrat Executive. But we will make the case for a rethink of this unworkable and expensive policy.
Cllr Pauline Jorgensen is leader of Wokingham Conservatives
