Clause 1 - Meaning of ``tobacco advertisement'' and ``tobacco product''.
Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Bill
12:00 pm
Mr Ian Bruce (South Dorset, Conservative)
I think that the Minister is getting to one of the definitions that it would be much more sensible to have in the Bill: the provision should cover advertisements, or promotions that are paid for by the tobacco industry. At present, that is not within the Bill. An advertisement is an advertisement, whether it is paid for or not.
One of the problems with editorial is that a person writing about medical research may have been paid out of a trust set up by the tobacco industry—at the urging of politicians—to investigate the harmful effects of tobacco. Under the definition that the Minister has just given about paid advertising, or paid editorialising, effectively, anyone who had been paid by the tobacco industry, no matter how independent they were, could not publish the results of that research.