Chair of APPG on Smoking and Health defends lobbying but wants transparency

Stephens Williams MP, chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Smoking and Health, has tweeted:

Lobbying is essential part of good law making but needs transparency. And lobbying is diff to dumb MPs & Peers cash for questions #bbcsp

At last, something we can agree on!

But first, I thought I'd check the APPG on Smoking and Health's own record of transparency.

According to the Register of All-Party Groups:

Action on Smoking and Health (a charity) provides administrative support to the group, which includes sharing of information with members of the group, provision of briefing material at meetings, and funding for group receptions and for design, printing, photography, and dissemination costs relating to group publications and stationery.

A small point, perhaps, but don't you think this is a little ingenuous? Can you imagine what our opponents would say if we said that Forest Eireann or the Hands Off Our Packs campaign were funded by Forest without mentioning that Forest is supported by British American Tobacco, Imperial Tobacco and Gallaher Limited (part of the Japan Tobacco International group of companies)?

Visitors to the ASH (London) website will find a clear statement that ASH receives funding from Cancer Research UK and the British Heart Foundation. In addition however ASH gets money from the Department of Health "to support delivery of the Tobacco Control Plan for England" (but not general campaigning, allegedly), but you have to dig a little deeper for that information.

That leaves the following questions: how much does the APPG on Smoking and Health cost to run, does it receive money from third parties not mentioned on the ASH website, and does it benefit in any financial or material way from the public purse?

For the sake of transparency I think we should be told.

Update on Sunday, June 2, 2013 at 21:40 by Simon Clark

Writing on Facebook my colleague Angela Harbutt says:

Stephen Williams says lobbying must be transparent. That's rich! It was he and his All Party Parliamentary Group on Smoking and Health that took state-funded 'charity' ASH along to a secret meeting with health minister Anne Milton during the consultation on plain packaging.

And did they discuss plain packaging? Yes they did. And was the meeting declared by Milton on the Ministerial Meetings register? No! It wasn't. Read more here ...

Misconduct or shambles? Behaviour of minister and civil servants raises serious questions (Hands Off Our Packs)

Ouch!