Wales can be a trail-blazer in ensuring fact-based political claims are accurate, says expert

Martin Shipton

The co-founder of a campaign to reform political advertising has told Nation.Cymru that Wales could lead the way by becoming the first country in the UK to insist that such messaging should be truthful.

Alex Tait spoke to us as concern mounts about the influence of disinformation posted to social media by the likes of Elon Musk, the South African-born multi-billionaire who pushes far-right conspiracy theories and has called for the release from prison of “Tommy Robinson”, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, and the jailing of Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips.

Marketing

Mr Tait, whose background is at a senior level in the advertising and marketing industries, told us: “Most of us in the group are from an advertising background and found it ridiculous that you’ve got so many rules that you have to abide by in commercial advertising, but you’ve got literally zero from an electoral ad point of view in terms of content. That’s how it came about.

“It seemed very bold, what we were setting out to do originally. We’ve had a number of different milestones since we set up the organisation. We set it up to be politically neutral and not for profit. So we’ve got no agenda around this. We just think it’s really crackers that if you’re advertising a washing powder, you’ve got four sets of rules to abide by, and you’ve got zero if you’re advertising for an election.

“There’s a couple of things that we’ve been advocating – the main one is around having rules for fact-based claims in election ads, and that brings it in line with commercial ads. So it’s a very simple ask. We’re not interested in opinions or manifesto promises – it’s specifically a fact-based claim in an election ad. We think there should be rules for that.

“We’ve also been advocating having an independent database of ads, which we also think’s important – so there isn’t ‘dark’ advertising, and you can see all the advertising that’s been run across all the different platforms. That was something that was included as a recommendation in the Fake News and Disinformation inquiry at the House of Commons that [former Wrexham Labour MP] Ian Lucas was on. Subsequently we’ve given evidence to the House of Lords Democracy and Digital Technology Committee where he met [film producer] David Puttnam, who chaired that. We gave evidence and one of his key recommendations was for there to be regulations for fact-based claims in election ads. That was a unanimous and cross-party recommendation.

“Since then we’ve been trying to dismantle any of the arguments on why it couldn’t be done. There aren’t any, to be honest. One thing we heard from a very few number of people was that you wouldn’t be able to do it in a busy general election because it’s too fast-paced. We did a pilot a couple of years ago for something we set up to show the principles of regulation could work.

“We set up something called the Election Ad Review Panel (EARP for short) that David Puttnam chaired. We wanted to show that something very similar to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) could work for election ads. You could have a body that rapidly checked ads, and worked in an election environment.

“We also developed as part of that at the general election an ad code, which is very simple. It’s basically a very simple commitment that politicians and parties have signed up to, saying they’ll be factually accurate in their election ads. Not a tall order, you would think. As well as this all being conceptual, we wanted to test the appetite a little bit for whether politicians would sign up for it.

“We did a bit of a trial with the London Mayoral election last year and managed to get six candidates signed up to it – Sadiq Khan, the Labour candidate, the Green Party candidate, the Liberal Democrat and three others, which was quite a milestone, I think. And subsequent to that, various other people we talked to, including [West Yorkshire Mayor] Tracy Babin and [Greater Manchester Mayor] Andy Burnham, and we also got the endorsement of former Labour leader Neil Kinnock.”

Reluctance

Asked why he thought there had nevertheless been a reluctance to change the law to accommodate the group’s idea, Mr Tait said: “I think it shows what an opportunity there is for the Welsh Parliament, and it’s one of the reasons we’ve given evidence to the [Senedd inquiry] for individual Member accountability [which is looking at whether Members of the Senedd should be sanctioned if they tell lies]. We don’t really have a position on that broader topic, but certainly the low-hanging fruit with all of that is election ads. In this age of disinformation – we’ve seen in the last week some of the consequences there might be in 2025 – we think the Welsh Parliament could take some action.

“My understanding is that Wales has the potential to implement this for local elections and anything that would be in the remit of the Welsh Parliament. That’s really an opportunity for something non-contentious, proven, something that has a parallel in commercial advertising, something very easy that’s being handed on a plate to the parliament to be implemented, and for Wales to have a UK-leading role in looking at how we can get past this talk about needing to restore trust in politics, and get people walking the walk a little bit and actually taking some solid action against it. We’d love to help in any way we can in terms of giving further evidence to influence that happening.”

New Zealand

Mr Tait said similar legislation had already been introduced in other countries: “New Zealand is a great example. There are also a couple of states in Australia that have rules for fact-based claims.A similar bill is being put forward in the Australian federal parliament as well.

“We brought in Hilary Souter, the chief executive at the ASA, a few years ago, to speak to MPs and peers about how it worked, and I think it was quite a light bulb moment for MPs and lords to hear that they’ve got a set of advocacy principles, protecting freedom of speech, but it’s very focussed on fact-based claims. It’s been up and running for several decades in New Zealand. All the parties bought into the process, and in one of the recent election campaigns there were 100 complaints upheld, which is quite a good precedent to have set.”

Mr Tait added: “Technology is accelerating. It’s really got to the point, I think, where we’re now in a bit of an arms race, with different political parties looking at how they can try to cut through and influence the electorate. We need to do something about it.

“There has been polling over the last few years that demonstrates overwhelmingly that the UK public would support rules for fact-based claims in election ads – and that’s quite consistent across the different parties in terms of how people voted.”

In Wales, a poll conducted by Opinium in June 2024 found that 80% of people backed a requirement for fact-based political claims to be accurate, with just 2% against.

Musk

Asked how an immensely wealthy man with his own channel like Elon Musk could be held to account, Mr Tait said: “I think it’s one of the reasons why you need a regulator like the ASA to be making up the rules, rather than the tech platforms. The First Amendment view on freedom of speech that X is talking about at the moment is a very US-centric view of things. The world’s a big and fragmented place, and that’s why it’s bumping up against different expectations in different countries. If you don’t have someone who comes up with the rules, you get a free-for-all, and a sort of arms race of disinformation happening.

“One of the key points Keir Starmer had in his election campaign was about change, and it all being about action and not words. So we just think it’s a golden opportunity for him and the new government, alongside the Welsh Parliament, to be taking some action.”