The government should not rush to amend personal injury advertising rules, the chair of the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said last week.

In the first parliamentary debate on Lord Young’s ‘compensation culture’ report, which took place in the House of Lords last week, Lord Smith of Finsbury cited research by the ASA and the then Department for Constitutional Affairs in 2006, which found that advertising ‘cannot not be blamed as the primary source for fuelling the compensation culture’.

He said personal injury advertising should not be banned without concrete evidence that this is necessary.

Labour peer Lord Jordan criticised Young for failing to commission objective research as part of his review, instead relying ‘simply on hearsay evidence, including alarming newspaper reports and personal anecdotes’.

Labour peer Lord Sugar condemned a ‘new breed’ of ‘vulture-type lawyers’, who know that ‘it is almost a licence to print money’ if they can convince a member of the public to make a claim.