YOU know when you’ve been quangoed. Government advertising, once synonymous with serious matters of public safety, is now campaigning to regulate the minutiae of daily life.

A television commercial warns of the risks of undercooking the Christmas turkey, while a leaflet reminds holidaymakers to keep out of the midday sun. Next up is a poster campaign against dropping chewing gum in the street.

The messages may be modest but the cost runs to hundreds of millions. With a budget just for advertising of £165m in 2004-5, the Central Office of Information (COI) is the third biggest advertiser in the UK. Under Labour, total spending on government marketing, which also includes mailshots, PR and sponsorship, has tripled since 1997 to £334m.

Critics say the “nanny state” campaigns state the obvious. Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the Taxpayers’ Alliance, said: “It has become a massive gravy train. A few decades ago the government restricted its advertising to road safety advice and public notices. Now, as it has expanded this remit to include ‘nanny state’ advertising, the budget has ballooned and taxpayers are worse off.”

Elliott points to a £100,000 campaign by the Department of Health last year warning the public about the dangers of a hot summer.

A total of 1.67m leaflets were printed, with tips such as “wear a hat and loose clothes”, “avoid going out during the hottest part of the day” and “take cool showers or baths”.

At Christmas the Food Standards Agency ran an £800,000 advertising campaign to warn families of the dangers of undercooking the turkey. Later this year an anti-chewing-gum campaign is to be launched with posters at bus stops warning people they face £50 fines for dropping litter.

Britain’s most glamorous advertising agencies vie to win a place on the official COI roster, which entitles them to pitch for government business.

Peter Mandelson, the European Union trade commissioner, is a shareholder in Clemmow Hornby Inge, an advertising agency that won a place on the roster shortly after the last general election. It has been asked to pitch for a lucrative account promoting biometric passports.

Johnny Hornby, managing partner of the agency and half-brother of Nick Hornby, the novelist, oversaw Labour’s advertising campaign in the 2001 election. However, he denied the agency enjoyed an unfair advantage. “We have been on the roster for six months now and got nothing,” he said, “so if you’re saying that Peter or my Labour connections are having an influence, it’s clearly not very strong.”

Opposition politicians claim the government is guilty of political advertising by stealth. Oliver Heald, the shadow constitutional affairs secretary, said: “Over the past eight years we have become used to headline-grabbing initiatives and schemes which sadly never seem to achieve what Labour promised they would.”

Both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are particularly scathing about the Treasury’s £5m campaign to promote child trust funds. The scheme was launched with a poster of a giant baby crawling across a City trading floor. But despite the campaign, more than 1m families have failed to invest the first tranche of £250 vouchers, handed out to all families with a baby born since September 2002.

Julia Goldsworthy, a Liberal Democrat MP, said: “Some government policies are becoming so complex that they require excessive advertising for the public to understand them.”

A project to offer UK university courses online was backed by a £4.2m marketing campaign. The e-University was scrapped in 2004, having attracted only 900 students at a cost of £50m.

Last year the army fell 1,000 recruits short of its goal of 11,592 new soldiers, despite an £11m marketing campaign.

A spokesman for the COI yesterday insisted that the organisation was both impartial and cost-effective. “Much government advertising aims to alert people to things that can save lives — such as wearing seatbelts, not drinking and driving, quitting smoking, and what to do in an emergency,” he said.

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