UK Watch Dog Bans Home Office; "Go Home" Campaign Van.


A Van campaign by the UK Boarder Agency targeted at immigrants has been banned. The advert which received a lot of criticism when it was launched is said to be misleading by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) which is the advertising watchdog. The Home Office advert telling illegal immigrants to go home, involved two vans driving through six London boroughs between July 22 and July 28 with a poster saying: "In the UK illegally? Go home or face arrest."

 The poster on the van featured a close-up image of someone holding a pair of handcuffs and wearing a uniform with a "Home Office" badge. It also pictured a box containing green text in the style of an official stamp stating "106 arrests last week in your area". Small print at the bottom of the poster said the arrest figures were from the period June 30 to July 6 and covered Barking and Dagenham, Redbridge, Barnet, Brent, Ealing and Hounslow.

 Several complainants challenged whether the claim "106 arrests last week in your area" was misleading and could be substantiated, while others said the small print was not legible on a moving vehicle. The ASA said those who saw the poster would understand the claim "106 arrests last week in your area" to mean that during the previous week 106 people in the area in which they saw the poster had been arrested under suspicion of being in the UK illegally.

 Liberty sent out their own van in response to the posters It said: "Because the data on which the claim was based related to a significant part of London north of the Thames rather than to the specific areas in which the poster was displayed, and because the data did not relate to the week prior to the campaign, we concluded the claim was misleading and had not been substantiated. "We told the Home Office to ensure that in future they held adequate substantiation for their advertising claims and that qualifications were presented clearly."The ad must not appear again in its current form."

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