Clause 8 - Prohibition of free distributions
Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Bill
12:00 pm
Ms Yvette Cooper (Parliamentary Secretary (Public Health), Department of Health; Pontefract and Castleford, Labour)
The clause makes it clear that the person who is guilty of committing an offence in the course of a business is someone who gives out any product or coupons to the public or causes or permits that to happen. Such people have defences under clause 8(4) if they did not know, had no reason to suspect or could not have reasonably foreseen that that would be the effect. Appropriate defences are provided for people who were not aware that products or coupons were being distributed at an event that they had organised or were simply attending an event at which products or coupons were being given away. The people involved in giving away the products or coupons—those who had been paid to stand around and hand them out—are involved in the course of a business in giving away a product.
Under the amendment, the offence would relate to activity in the course not of ``a'' business but of ``his'' business. It would catch the owner of the company but no one else in the chain for devising and commissioning a free distribution to the person making the free distribution. That would unacceptably narrow the scope of the offence. There may be a case in which the owner of a business was overseas, and therefore, beyond United Kingdom jurisdiction. It would be unacceptable if the ban on free distributions did not apply to anyone else involved in the business who distributed free coupons or products and was clearly in breach of the intention behind the Bill. If that person did not own the business and the owner was abroad, we could do nothing to stop the free distribution. That would clearly be wrong and against the intentions of the Bill.
The defences are clearly set out and perfectly reasonable. They parallel defences set out earlier in the Bill. The amendment would narrow the scope of the offence too far and would rule out cases that we want to catch under the terms of the Bill.