Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, when will the Online Advertising Taskforce next meet; and how many meetings are anticipated in 2025.

The Online Advertising Taskforce last met on May 6th 2025, and is expected to meet again in Autumn. Its six industry-led working groups are delivering a programme of work to help tackle illegal advertising, and minimise children being served advertising for products and services illegal to be sold to them. A progress report was published in November 2024, updating on progress to date and planned next steps. This can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/online-advertising-taskforce-progress-report-2023-24

Since the publication of this report, working groups have continued to set further targets to improve advertising trust, transparency and accountability, and a new AI-focused working group has been established.

The Action Plan also referred to the passage of legislation at the time and to other government initiatives to support a reduction in advertising harms, including fraudulent advertising. This includes the Online Safety Act 2023 and Part 4, Chapter 1 of the Digital Marketing, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, which restates the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 and applies from 6 April 2025. The Government committed to introducing an expanded Fraud Strategy in our manifesto, covering the continued and modern-day threats our society faces. Development of the strategy has begun, and we are considering all harms, including fraudulent online advertising.

The Online Advertising Programme was an initiative of the previous government and a second consultation was not published, but we continue to monitor the regulatory framework closely.