Also in today's papers ...
... a report in which the Observer 'reveals' that the Adam Smith Institute and other "right wing think tanks" including the Institute of Economic Affairs have received money from tobacco companies.
The paper adds that:
Tobacco Tactics, part of the Tobacco Control Research Group at the University of Bath, notes that both think tanks took part in a series of debates organised by the pro-tobacco pressure group Forest in June 2011.
Oh no!
That would be the Voice of Freedom debates, one of which was called 'Civil liberties up in smoke'. Funnily enough, I invited Deborah Arnott, CEO of ASH, to take part but she didn't bother to even reply.
I got a similar response a few weeks later when I invited her colleague Martin Dockrell to take part in a debate entitled 'Risk and the pursuit of happiness: is smoking, drinking, gambling good for you?'.
I've said this before and I'll say it again. There are at least two sides to every public policy discussion. The tobacco control industry receives millions of pounds of taxpayers' money to lobby government. Those who oppose excessive regulation in areas such as tobacco, food and drink get nothing from the public purse.
Britain is a democracy (allegedly) and there is nothing wrong with think tanks receiving support from private sources. In fact, if I have a complaint it's that they (and Forest) don't get a whole lot more financial support!
In a perfect world there might be total transparency but before "health groups" point the finger at "right wing think tanks" let's have similar transparency from them. For example, we shouldn't have to resort to Freedom of Information requests to discover how much public money was spent on the Plain Packs Protect campaign.
The Observer, naturally, wasn't interested in that angle. Instead, today's report is essentially a re-hash of an ASH briefing for the All Party Parliamentary Group on Smoking and Health – Tobacco Front Groups and Third Party Lobbying Tactics – published last year.
Meanwhile, what of the Tobacco Tactics website – "a ground-breaking new online academic resource". How much does that cost to 'research' and run?
Or the University of Bath's Tobacco Control Research Group, which is part of a network of British universities with departments dedicated to tobacco control. Others include the universities of Nottingham, Stirling and Aberdeen.
How much public money do they receive each year to twist statistics conduct research and lobby government – or is that a secret?
I'd be interested too to know how much money it costs ASH to run the All Party Parliamentary Group on Smoking and Health.
PS. The Financial Times did this story better, and more impartially, last year. The FT report (Big tobacco campaigns on freedom) began with my all-time favourite description of a Forest event:
The footage resembles a music video for an anarchist punk-rock band. Policemen, warning signs, CCTV cameras and spiked fences appear in a rapid sequence of black and white shots. A thrashing guitar soundtrack begins – cue the message: “Welcome to Nanny Town”.
If you haven't seen the video click on the image below. By a remarkable coincidence, it includes contributions by Mark Littlewood, director-general of the Institute of Economic Affairs, and Sam Bowman of the Adam Smith Institute.
We didn't pay them a penny. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.
