Angela Harbutt (Liberal Voice) crosses swords with Lord Faulkner

Further criticism of Lord Faulkner's article yesterday comes from Angela Harbutt, new entrant to the world of professional campaigning who is now working on the hands off our packs campaign. Angela's voluntary campaigning has produced blog posts like this in the past.

She takes issue with Lord Faulkner's view that tobacco companies have undue influence with politicians by pointing at the raft of recent legislation restricting smoking, and points instead to the disproportionate influence of tobacco control.

If there is a need for transparency – it is a need for government to come clean on just how much public money is being spent on Tobacco Control and just how far the tentacles of Tobacco Control have reached into government health policy. It might not be a bad idea to also get a truly independent body to evaluate how effectively this money has been spent. In August 2010 Eric Pickles MP announced that the government was going to stop "government lobbying government". This must surely apply to Tobacco Control.

She points out that like many of us in the population, her campaigning has so far been voluntary.

What drove me to campaigning? A richly funded and politically active health lobbying industry that has agitated constantly to price out of reach, limit access to, or otherwise bully people into ending consumption of, things deemed undesirable or unhealthy.

She has accepted payment from Forest to undertake a campaign against plain packaging.

Perhaps not surprisingly, her piece was published with Lord Faulkner's response immediately below.  It has since been edited, but the original read as follows:

For Angela Harbutt to compare "Big Tobacco" to organisations devoted to improving public health is laughable, but hardly surprising from someone who admits to being funded by FOREST, an organisation set up by the Tobacco Manufacturers Association to promote the interests of the tobacco industry.

Leaving aside the point that Angela Harbutt has not been paid for her previous five years of campaigning, rendering the point he makes inaccurate, Lord Faulkner somehow also has the belief that Forest was started as a tobacco industry front group. Its actual funding from tobacco companies is listed on the front page of its website. Simon Clark of Forest wrote to the PoliticsHome website pointing out the error, and clearly His Lordship has no evidence for his belief (other than that it is received tobacco control wisdom): hence the corrected version.

All that is left to Lord Faulkner after his attack on Angela Harbutt are (1) the somewhat pointless supposition that not smoking would save many hundred thousand lives, (2) the assertion that it is important that universities participate in studying the causes of disease (is that what happens in universities party to the UK Centre for Tobacco Control Studies, which seems to have a loaded name) and (3) the suggestion that tobacco is the only consumer product that kills when used as intended. That old chestnut – never mind the fact that alcohol, salt and now sugar are catching up fast.

Does that mean that the health lobby will be fighting within itself for resources soon? That will show them as the one-trick ponies they are.

EDIT: background to latest edit of Lord Faulkner's response.

National Federation of Retail Newsagents complains at extent of ASH influence: Liberal Vision

Good for Liberal Vision for reporting this letter from the NFRN to the Prime Minister complaining about the close relationship between the Health Minister and Action on Smoking and Health:

This statement and public acceptance and deliverance of awards to an organisation that has been lobbying her department, MPs and other government departments (and indeed is granted government funding on the basis that it not be used for lobbying purposes) has called into question the manner in which recent tobacco display ban legislation has been made; and the ability of the Minister to be considered unbiased on the issue.

I attach a copy of the event report from an independent parliamentary reporting service and would ask that you formally conduct an investigation into the conduct of your minister in the light of her public admission that she had worked with an officer of an ASH funded parliamentary lobby group on recent legislation “behind the scenes”. Moreover, this inappropriate conduct necessitates a review of the legitimacy of the legislation itself. [emphasis added]

[...]

In light of these recent statements, I regrettably now see proof of these suspicions which is deeply offensive to our members who have campaigned so hard to see the government fulfil its pre-election commitments to bring the debate back to the House of Commons for a free vote and which the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats publically opposed in opposition. 

[...] 

Writer Angela Harbutt also has hard words to say about ASH and its aims and working methods:

ASH receives huge amounts of money from the taxpayer  and sadly, like so many publicly funded bodies with too much money and too little scrutiny it has NOT gone about its task well. ASH has now become a fat, over-staffed, political, and single-minded organisation hell bent on eradicating smoking from the face of the earth, by whatever means necessary.  Where it could have worked with the industry to find solutions to the issues, it has set itself up against the manufacturers, the retailers and the consumers. And much of its so-called advice has been at best ineffective, and all too often counter-productive, with huge financial and social unintended consequences.

ASH's destructive behaviour is of course in line with the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. It does not sit well with ASH's original remit, as Angela Harbutt points out in the comments below:

As I understood it ASH was set up in 1971 as a campaigning health charity to work towards eliminating THE HARM caused by tobacco – not created to work towards eliminating tobacco. If that remains their public aim then working with the industry is surely a pretty sensible thing to do?

 Angela ... come to Scotland!

Further call to stop funding anti-smoking groups

Following Forest's report yesterday (27 October) the Institute of Economic Affairs has also called for a halt to anti-smoking groups like Action on Smoking and Health. The UK's government grant to ASH in London, at £142,000, is relatively modest, but 'the Government should be clear about limiting the scope of the public sector, not merely its size'. Not only are taxpayers forced to finance charities via taxes that they don't sympathise with, but also, far more importantly, it can seem to casual observers that the state-funded 'charities' actually function thanks to voluntary donations – even though very little money comes from the general public.

ASH Scotland's government grants are both higher in cash terms and as a proportion of the whole. 'The Scottish Government funds ASH Scotland for the contribution it makes to the development and implementation of national policy designed to reduce smoking levels in Scotland,' says the Scottish Government's summary of an external review carried out in 2007. This relationship is less one of a charity than a quango. Where is the accountability, when a body poses as a charity and yet is substantially state funded because it helps to design tobacco and smoking cessation policies for the Scottish government.

Public awareness that ASH Scotland is not a charity in most people's understanding of the word is growing. For example the IEA's view:

No one can object to citizens establishing campaigning groups to draw attention to the potential health risks of tobacco consumption or to pharmaceutical companies aggressively lobbying to promote their alternative nicotine products, such as chewing gum and patches. But for taxpayers’ money to be given over to such causes is wholly unacceptable.

Not only the funding of these groups is excessive, but also its perceived activities are quite unsuited to be funded by the public purse. 'Drawing attention to the potential health risks of tobacco consumption' becomes, in the hands of a government funded campaigning group like ASH Scotland, a drive for a water-tight policy against public tobacco consumption that will tolerate no loop-holes or flexibility. I might have more sympathy for them if they were a single-person organisation earning a small annual income (£1,500) from local fundraising events, but they are far too powerful for their own good, and everyone else's. A more modest organisation might have more modest and tolerant ambitions. One can dream.

It is good to see this undemocratic form of charitable giving coming under criticism: how far will it go: let's hope the consensus will grow.