PLANS to ban campaign advertising in the two days before an election have been pulled after legal concerns were raised by the Jersey Evening Post.

The Privileges and Procedures Committee have scrapped the plans, which were due to be debated during the States sitting that started today, after concerns were expressed by the newspaper that the rules broke European human rights conventions.

JEP Editor Chris Bright wrote to the panel in August to say that by preventing adverts in the JEP in the immediate run-up to an election, the States would be restricting free speech and free trade. Privileges chairman, St Clement Constable Derek Gray (pictured), has replied to Mr Bright, and written to States Members, to say that the debate will not go ahead.

He said that while the committee did not necessarily agree with Mr Bright’s argument that the rules broke the guaranteed right to free speech in the European Convention on Human Rights, they would put off the debate to discuss the matter ahead of the 2011 elections.

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