One of the strands of our five year strategy, More Impact Online, is ‘Independence’. Here we set out what that means as well as the steps we’ve taken to ensure we are independent in our regulation.
Being independent means carrying out our work impartially, free from undue influence or vested interests, in pursuit of our ambition to make every UK ad a responsible ad.
Although we’re funded by the industry we regulate, that funding is ‘arms-length’. And our regulatory outcomes - our rulings, our regulatory projects and the tens of thousands of ads we get changed or withdrawn each year - are testament to how we operate without fear or favour.
We’re committed to evidence-based regulation and we’re open-minded to changes that could strengthen our work and bolster protections for people and business.
A big part of demonstrating our independence is being transparent and accountable. We welcome views that differ from ours, we engage constructively with and listen carefully to well-argued and well-evidenced criticism and, where necessary, we make changes to improve our independence.
That’s why in 2017 we invited Dame Janet Paraskeva to conduct an independent audit of our performance and published our response to her recommendations, which we welcomed and responded to. We also published our Commitment to Good Regulation, which sets out six commitments modelled on the Government’s Regulators’ Code.
Ensuring we remain accountable is an ongoing process and led us this year to scrutinise our governance arrangements further. In particular, our internal review responded to the occasional criticism that we’re not independent enough; that the ASA system is “hermetically sealed”.
Following our review, we’re confident that our existing governance arrangements demonstrate clearly our independence and accountability. But the process did provide us with the opportunity to do even more. As a result, we’ve taken the following steps:
- Ensuring that the ASA Chair role is publicly advertised and an independent person participates on the appointment panel
- Formalising the appointment process for the Independent Reviewer, including having an independent person on the appointment panel and introducing a five-year limit, with the option of an extension if appropriate
- Reviewing and updating our internal Guidance on Managing Conflicts of Interest and Lobbying – strengthening confidentiality protocols in relation to staff moving to companies we regulate
- Writing annually to the Chairs of parliamentary and assembly committees relevant to our work, to highlight key rulings, regulatory projects and policy updates and to invite them to hold us to account.
We will continue to keep our governance processes under review. That includes some upcoming work looking at communicating more clearly how we select experts in complex investigations - helping us to receive objective, impartial advice - and how they inform rather than determine our decision-making.
And we will, of course, continue to welcome views from and enjoy discussions with stakeholders, even when they challenge us.
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