I've just looked at their website. Accidental damage (which this ad is supposedly selling) is an add on to their standard contents insurance. It says on the website (not the policy small print, just the hook in blurb):
Does Accidental Damage Insurance cover damage caused by children?
Yes – happily, with these add-ons you're covered for anything accidentally damaged or broken by your children or their playmates. This includes spills on the carpet or sofa and broken chairs or mirrors – although we cannot guarantee you against the associated seven years of bad luck!
The key is how they define "accident" in the policy and whether it varies from the ordinary dictionary definition, i.e., an unforeseen event or one without an apparent cause; anything that occurs unintentionally or by chance; a misfortune or mishap
Of course, JL and their advertisers might want potential purchasers to believe that lovely, fluffy, family friendly JL will cover the sort of scenario set out in the ad. However, it's not going to be lovely JL's policy, is it? They will be just a front/representative for a bog standard commercial insurance broker, whose assessors would rather pull their own teeth out than pay out.
If your kid is behaving like the kid in the ad while you look on doing nothing to prevent any of it, that doesn't seem to fit with the dictionary definition of "accident". If JL don't in fact pay out in this scenario, and that's clear in the policy small print, then that is going to be on the idiot who bought the insurance without reading it.
However, I do wonder if it breaches advertising standards. You can have exaggerated advertising, described by the Advertising Standards Authority as, "Obvious exaggerations ("puffery") and claims that the average consumer who sees the advertisement is unlikely to take literally are allowed provided they do not materially mislead.".That will be like the "Redbull gives you wings" type advertising. With this JL ad though.... I'm not so sure, actually. It's showing a very specific scenario, or sequence of events, and claiming the insurance covers it. Your "average consumer" includes many parents of all our acquaintance who think their very free spirited/natural born leader/ whatever excuse child can do whatever the hell they like while they look on and smile indulgently. Are they being misled by false advertising?
Isn't this ad just encouraging insurance fraud? I have known people (nice, middle class people) who have left their child alone with a sharpie and a sofa they want replacing, and have managed to make a one off fraudulent insurance claim. Every one of the incidences in that ad, all deliberate, all totally preventable and carried out while an adult watches them do it, is a fraudulent insurance claim in the making. Nice messaging to those inclined to criminal thinking, crap one to the rest of us watching our premiums rocket as a result.