Great turnout for last night's event on plain packaging at the IoD hosted by Forest, Parliament Street and Liberal Vision.
Speakers were Mark Littlewood (Institute of Economic Affairs), John O'Connell (TaxPayers Alliance), Madsen Pirie (Adam Smith Institute), Claire Fox (Institute of Ideas), Rory Broomfield (Freedom Association), Emily Barley (Conservatives for Liberty), Angela Harbutt (Liberal Vision) and Chris Snowdon (IEA Lifestyle Economics Unit).
Each speaker was given a couple of minutes to make their point and the rapid fire format worked rather well, I thought.
Soundbites (courtesy of Dick Puddlecote who was live tweeting), included:
Pirie: "Anti-smoking is a faith industry, not based on evidence."
Harbutt: "MPs, stick to the facts, not fiction. Vote no, stop the nonsense."
Fox: "Plain packaging is a free speech issue" and "My nephew has watched hundreds of ads for washing up liquid but has never washed the dishes."
Snowdon: "There is no doubt that this will be studied by those who want to do the same with alcohol, food and sugar."
Littlewood: "Deficit of £100bn, international instability, Ukraine/Greece, yet last act of government is to regulate colour schemes."
Former criminal justice minister, the Rt Hon Damian Green, also sent a message that was read out by former Forest spokesman Brian Monteith:
As a former Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice I cannot support the current proposals on plain packaging. Our police are engaged in a permanent battle against organised crime gangs which this proposal would make more difficult.
Last week’s report from RUSI [Royal United Services Institute] makes disturbing reading. It describes how organised crime operates in Britain today. It is diverse, sophisticated and largely invisible to the general public. The Report highlights the danger of illicit trade.
Many of these criminal gangs are global. As a Home Office Minister when I visited China I was told by officials there that whole villages were devoted to producing cigarettes for smuggling, and they were now concentrating their activities on Australia, which was the first country to introduce plain packaging for cigarettes. They were politely incredulous that Britain would follow suit, as they knew it would make life easier for criminal gangs.
This is what worries me about the Government’s stated intention to proceed with the introduction of standardised packaging for tobacco. Standardised packaging will make it easier for counterfeiters to produce and sell counterfeit cigarettes. Australia has seen the illicit trade in tobacco reach record levels.
As a Minister I saw at first hand the damage that crime does to people’s lives and the dangers it poses to society. We should be making criminals’ lives as difficult as possible. I hope that the Government will now reconsider standardised packaging. As it stands this is a dangerous proposal.
There was a strong reaction from the audience to the news that a Conservative-led government was pressing ahead with legislation when 99 per cent of the responses to last year's consultation were opposed to plain packaging.
A video of last night's event will be posted online later this week and sent to MPs and ministers.
I'm told Tory election strategist Lynton Crosby was also at the IoD last night. We didn't invite him to our event and I can categorically deny he was there!
Finally, I haven't totted up the bar bill but it was substantial. I think people enjoyed themselves.
