Simon Clark - Taking Liberties

Red faces at the New Statesman following the non-appearance of Labour MP Kerry McCarthy at a fringe meeting organised by the left-wing magazine and the Tobacco Manufacturers Association.

The NS had invited the Shadow Economic Secretary to the Treasury to speak at an event entitled 'The smoking ban: success or failure?'. Other speakers were Chris Ogden, chief executive of the TMA, and a representative of the Working Men's Clubs & Institute Union.

Details of the event – giving Kerry McCarthy top billing - were published in the fringe listings of the Labour conference brochure. On Friday, however, just four days before the meeting, McCarthy pulled out, leaving the organisers without their star attraction.

Keen observers of the smoking debate are wracking their brains to work out the reason for this volte face.

Speculation is rife. It is known that a speaker at another New Statesman/TMA meeting (at the Lib Dem conference in Birmingham last week) was contacted by ASH and urged not to share a platform with the tobacco industry.

Did ASH speak to Kerry McCarthy as well? I don't know, but perhaps she would like to comment on her blog and clear up any misunderstanding.

Meanwhile, referring to the tobacco control movement at yesterday's meeting, TMA chief executive Chris Ogden declared, "They cannot tolerate debate".

How true.

See also: A Labour MP writes

Update on Wednesday, September 28, 2011 at 12:15 by

Simon Clark

I have posted a comment on Kerry McCarthy's blog:

Hi Kerry, curious to know why you didn’t speak at yesterday’s fringe meeting, ‘The smoking ban: success or failure?’, organised by the New Statesman and the Tobacco Manufacturers Association. You were listed as a speaker in the conference magazine and I was looking forward to hearing your views.

It is currently awaiting moderation. See here.

Update: I posted my comment shortly after 9.00am. Seven hours later it has yet to appear.

Update on Friday, September 30, 2011 at 12:23 by

Simon Clark

Kerry McCarthy has replied as follows:

Did that fringe meeting even happen? They got in touch a couple of weeks before conference and starting trying to negotiate a different time, possibly even a different date because they were flying experts in. They seemed to settle on 11am on the Tuesday, which was difficult for me as I was already committed to something else off site, but then stopped replying to our emails asking for confirmation. Also, I wasn’t impressed to discover from fringe guide it was being sponsored by the Tobacco Manufacturers Association, which had at no stage been mentioned before (I knew someone from TMA was speaking, and happy to debate him/ her, but not happy about appearing on a TMA platform). If it did go ahead at 7.30pm on the Tuesday I could have done it, but as far as I know it wasn’t going to happen then, and as I said, they didn’t reply to any of the calls or emails from my office trying to find out what was happening, or do anything about advertising a different time. Bad organisation.