ASH and the mystery of the draft Cigarette Stick Health Warnings Bill

The Cigarette Stick Health Warnings Bill, a private member’s bill introduced by Conservative peer Lord Young of Cookham, received its first reading today.

The first reading is merely the announcement stage. The second reading (date to be announced) is when there should be a debate on the issue.

More interesting perhaps is who drafted the bill. Did Lord Young, a former health minister, have some help?

Yesterday, following an ‘exclusive’ report about the Bill in the Mirror, ASH issued a press release that featured comments by both Deborah Arnott, CEO of ASH, and Lord Young.

Draw your own conclusion but at the bottom of the press release was a note:

Copy of the draft bill available from press@ash.org.uk

Not from Lord Young’s office, you will note, but ASH.

So today I emailed ASH and requested a copy of the draft bill and got this polite brush off:

Dear Simon,

The Bill will be published on the Parliament website once it has been introduced.

Best wishes,

A few minutes ago I checked the parliament website which confirms that the Cigarette Stick Health Warnings Bill has indeed been introduced.

There’s no sign of the draft bill, though, just a note that reads:

There are no publications for this Bill yet. This can often happen in an early stage of a Bill, when it has not been fully drafted.

So where is it? I’ll keep you posted.

Update (21:30): The draft Bill has now been uploaded to the parliament website. You can read it here.

The list of warnings is quite something. I think someone may be overthinking this but read it for yourself.

PS. I was on TalkRadio with Deborah Arnott on Saturday night. I was promised a “deep dive” into the issue of smoking but it ended up being the usual intemperate ‘discussion’ which was a bit disappointing because I genuinely thought the 15-20 minute slot would give us the opportunity for a serious well-balanced conversation.

The presenter however quickly made clear which side of the debate he was on and Deborah resorted to her tiresome habit of playing the man not the ball - ie raising the issue of Forest’s links with the tobacco industry.

I’m beginning to think she does it not merely to try and undermine our credibility (I’m not sure it works) but to reduce the time available to discuss the issues we are supposed to be talking about.

Either way I take heart from the fact that it makes her sound not just petty but a bit desperate.