Letting Children be Children
25.
There is no doubt that some businesses across the various sectors are doing a good job in working with parents and only providing goods and services for and to children that are appropriate for them. But those who are not need to step up and be as good as the best businesses of all kinds need to be more proactive in encouraging feedback from parents and when necessary, complaints. We think there is enough goodwill in the sector for this to happen without legislation. In relation to inappropriate advertising and marketing, parents want businesses to play fair when selling to children and not to take advantage of any gaps in the regulatory framework especially regarding new media.
26.
Some may object that changing business practices in the ways recommended and being more responsive to the needs of their customers and consumers has a cost implication. Our argument is that doing things a little differently benefits not just children and parents but businesses too, through helping them develop and provide the inds of goods and services that children and parents really want and are more likely to buy, and also by increasing customer confidence in the business.
27.
We now that the ambitions of this Review, to reduce the pressures of the commercial world on children and of premature sexualisation to a minimum, cannot be achieved overnight. Nor should we accept a timid approach when there is obvious goodwill to draw on and concrete examples from different business sectors and regulators of changes that are already being made. We therefore propose that, if it accepts the recommendations in this report, the Government should take stock of progress 18 months from now. The Government may at that point feel the need to bring in further regulation to complete the task. But for now, there is good reason to believe that the business community, supported by engaged and responsible parents, can show that it is capable of playing its part in putting the brakes on the unthinking drift towards an increasingly commercialised and sexualised world for children.
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