DAVID CAMERON AND BIG TOBACCO; WHEN DOES EVASION BECOME A LIE?

Evasion is the least effective of a politician’s tool kit; it is so often nakedly obvious and irritates voters. This has not deterred David Cameron who seems to view evasion as a cunning and subtle device for deflecting difficult questions.

Given our Prime Minister’s consistent refusal to answer a straight question on the tobacco industries involvement, if any, with the decision to drop plain packaging, I thought I would have a go my self. Well why not? I couldn’t do any worse than a string of backbenchers or professional media pundits.

I made a Freedom of Information request along the following lines:-

‘What representations formal or informal had the Prime Minister received from the tobacco industry respecting plain packaging?

What representations formal or informal had other government ministers received from the tobacco industry respecting plain packaging?

Fairly straight forward questions you might think. The response I got was as clear as the Thames at low tide. I was pointed in the direction of a quote the Prime minister made on channel 4 on 18th July:

‘The decision was made because there was too much legal uncertainty surrounding this issue as we stand today and there isn’t enough positive evidence, and as I explained in the House of Commons yesterday that was the reason the last government decided not to go ahead – ‘for the time being’ – with this issue. So that is, I think, a very, very clear explanation, but a decision made by me. If you don’t like the decision you should blame me or you should blame the Health Secretary, but I haven’t been lobbied by anybody.’

The letter then goes on to direct me to the Department of Health website, where information has been published relating to meetings with the tobacco industry. I will come to this information a shortly.

Leaving aside the fact that the Prime Minister’s statement is a matter of public record and that if it had answered my question there would have been no need for an FOI request, the quote simply fails to answer the questions I have raised. Everything of course hangs on the last sentence “but I haven’t been lobbied by anybody.” [my emphasis].

Surely this statement has to be patently untrue; if I had asked the same questions substituting Action on Smoking and Health instead of the tobacco industry, the Prime Minister could surely not have made such a response. Though of course if he acknowledges that he was lobbied by anti smoking groups or the BMA it would be inconceivable that he did not also allow himself to hear the voice of big tobacco. He could not in truth say publicly I was only lobbied by those concerned by the damage done by smoking. As I say simply not credible.

Everything turns then on the Prime Minister’s use of the word lobby, and why he answers questions about ‘representations’ or ‘meetings’ with the stock response I was not lobbied.

I believe that if he came across a representative of Gardant, the Westminster lobbying firm representing Marlboro manufacturer Philip Morris, at a Whitehall reception, and this representative said, “this plain packaging business is going to cost the government a fortune, more trouble than it’s worth,” he has convinced himself that this would not constitute lobbying. This is tricky thinking indeed. I believe that once you have reached this level of deceit there is no turning back, evasion becomes a way of life. I’m not sure the Prime Minister is any longer able to make the distinction in his own mind between everyday conversation and lobbying in. He has ceased to be a credible witness.

I did visit the Department of Health website which is worth viewing https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/meetings-between-department-of-health-and-tobacco-companies-de766508.

One thing is clear from the redacted minutes of the meeting with Imperial Tobacco that took place on the 9th January this year, their terror that information disclosed in such meeting should enter the public domain, in particular the implications of FOI requests are worth noting. Not keen, Imperial Tobacco, on the Prime Minister’s ‘disinfectant of sunlight.’

Big tobacco has a long history of heavy duty lobbying and of nobbling legislation by getting at ministers.[1] We are asked to believe this has not happened this time. We are asked to believe that a meeting took place in which members of the tobacco lobby got together and said, “Listen the Prime Minister is his own man on this one, further representations are a waste of time.”

It is certainly possible to believe that the decision taken by the Prime Minister was indeed taken by him alone, but to believe that he had no representations from big tobacco at all surely stretches credulity?  


[1] Though sometimes ministers seem to sact on their own initiative see :-http://www.theguardian.com/business/2011/dec/31/health-minister-tobacco-lobby-display-ban



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