Today’s Independent has an interesting demonstration of the insidious influence of lobbying. This is how it’s done, people:
The independence of a Government adviser on red tape appointed by David Cameron has been called into question as details emerge of a possible covert attempt by the tobacco industry to undermine the proposed introduction of plain cigarette packets with no branding or company logos.
The horror of it! Since Mr Littlewood believes we could manage with fewer regulations a sensible person would conclude that his appointment was a modest but good thing. Apparently not. You see:Anti-smoking campaigners have voiced concerns that Mark Littlewood, the director of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), has been appointed as an “independent adviser” to the Government’s Red Tape Challenge, which they believe might allow him to influence policy on plain cigarette packets.
Mr Littlewood is well known for his robust views on anti-smoking legislation and in the past his institute has received funding from the tobacco industry – although it refuses to say whether this is still the case.
The All Party Parliamentary Group on Smoking and Health has asked Vince Cable, the Trade and Industry Minister, for reassurances that Mr Littlewood will not be advising on tobacco-related matters because of his “clear conflict of interest”.
“He clearly has a pro-tobacco agenda and has campaigned for a number of years against regulation of the tobacco industry. He could not, therefore, fulfil the remit of an independent adviser to the Government,” said the committee chairman, Stephen Williams MP, in a letter to Mr Cable.
What follows, naturally, are a series of quotations from anti-smoking fanatics from Cancer Research UK, ASH and all the other dreary, usual suspects. Their impartiality, naturally, is not in doubt. The Independent, like, alas, most newspapers, presents tobacco control advocates as though they were disinterested players. It appears to be axiomatic that their concerns are reasonable and even seemly and, consequently, that anyone disagreeing with their views is a dangerous cigarette-pushing madman who should be barred from making any contribution to public debate.
What follows in the Independent article is the usual broadside against anyone who has ever received any money* from the tobacco industry. That’s fine. But the least reporters and newspapers could do is treat other views with comparable scepticism. This rarely happens. Instead the views of ASH – who, absurdly, receive public money to assist their business, a large part of which is to lobby government – are published without any questioning at all.
Mark Littlewood doesn’t believe we need further regulation of an already highly-regulated consumer product. Ergo, he must be sidelined!
Such is the power of the public health lobby. They are entitled to their opinions but you might, in a better world, hope that the “All Party Parliamentary Group on Smoking and Health” would be a little more robust. But of course it isn’t because it is to all intents and purposes a front-group for the tobacco control industry. That lobby is no more “independent” than Imperial Tobacco. It aims, however, to silence anyone who dissents from any aspect of public health orthodoxy. I don’t wish to deny them their right to lobby goverment (though don’t see why they need public funds to do it) but do rather wish they were treated as just another special interest group. Like the tobacco companies, for instance.
Oh, and for the record: plain-packaging is an awful idea and a dreadful, unwarranted infringement upon commerical liberty.
*I have never received any money from any tobacco-related source. More’s the pity. Note to Philip Morris: you can change this…
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