Volume 1
The tobacco industry and the health risks of smoking : second report / Health Committee.
- Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Health Committee
- Date:
- 2000
Licence: Open Government Licence
Credit: The tobacco industry and the health risks of smoking : second report / Health Committee. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![dramatic growth in counterfeit products that we have recently seen in our Asian markets. Where any government is unwilling to act or their efforts are unsuccessful, we act, completely within the law, on the basis that our brands will be available alongside those of our competitors in the smuggled as well as the legitimate market”. The article concluded by stating that “When governments and health campaigners are prepared to accept policies to reduce and control smuggling, we will always welcome such policies and co-operate with them”.*”! 217. We thought that the allegations made against BAT were serious enough to merit further questioning of the company, and so we invited Mr Broughton and Mr Clarke to give evidence on its behalf, alongside ASH and Mr Duncan Campbell, one of the authors of the Guardian articles. Dismissing the general allegations about BAT’s involvement with smuggling, Mr Broughton said that the documents cited demonstrated that BAT was aware that smuggling went on, but that it was not involved with that smuggling in the way suggested by ASH and Mr Campbell. He told the Committee that “an assumption seems to be being made by Mr Campbell that knowledge of what happens in a market is a criminal offence. I would say to you that we do understand pretty well what happens in various markets ... You would expect that of a consumer goods company like British American Tobacco. So knowing what happens in a market....and knowing [that there are] some smuggled goods in there is hardly a surprise ... Knowledge of what is happening in a market is not, as far as I have understood, a criminal offence”.*” Mr Broughton also made the point that in some markets the distribution chain was extremely complex, the inference being that it was difficult to trace the movement of goods from beginning to end of that chain.*” 218. Mr Kenneth Clarke MP, the Deputy Chairman of British American Tobacco, supported Mr Broughton’s assertion that, while it was widely known that smuggling occurred, no evidence had been produced which proved that BAT was the “originator, the organiser, [or] a participant in that smuggling”. Indeed, he went on to say that BAT was “the victim of smuggling ... We seek to minimise smuggling”.*”* Mr Clarke later said that “I satisfied myself that [BAT] is a company of integrity. It is an extremely good corporate citizen”.>” 219. Relating to terminology , Mr Broughton denied that terms such as “‘DNP’, ‘general trade’, or ‘transit’ were “specifically euphemisms for ‘smuggled’. That is not to say that there are not times where DNP would be the same as smuggled in one market”.*”° Mr Broughton said that to look at individual documents, or to quote small parts of individual documents was to risk taking them out of context.?””? Mr Clarke went further: he told the Committee that “any case which depends on taking sentences out of eight million pages ... is absurd”.°” 220. Given the severity of the charges made against them, and their robustness in denying them, the Committee asked whether BAT were intending to take legal action against the Guardian. Mr Clarke said that “we did not contemplate legal action, there has been no question of legal action’?” and that to bring such action would give the investigative journalists involved credibility.*®° 221. Mr Bates of ASH said that the concerns raised merited an investigation into BAT’s conduct by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). Asked whether he would welcome such an inquiry, Mr Broughton said he would not, but that the appropriate thing would be to have BAT’s own audit committee, chaired by Mr Rupert Pennant-Rea, a non-executive director, to look into the allegations and to “review all of our current trading practices and ensure they are all entirely legal and that we are entirely comfortable with those practices and that there are no conspiracies going on between people within the company, the company, our distributors and other people”.**' Mr Bates subsequently called this an “important and welcome development”.*” 311 The Guardian, 3.2.2000, p.12. 37291361.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b32221083_0001_0069.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
