Clause 3 - Advertising: newspapers, periodicals etc
Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Bill [Lords]
2:45 pm
Ms Yvette Cooper (Parliamentary Secretary (Public Health), Department of Health; Pontefract and Castleford, Labour)
The hon. Gentleman is obviously desperate to find loopholes for us to close, and I appreciate his concern. Ultimately, such issues will be matters of fact for the courts to decide on, but the key test is whether people produce such newsletters
''in the course of a business''.
If they produce them in an organised way, the courts may well decide to interpret that as being in the course of a business. However, purely day-to-day conversation might not be in the course of a business, and might not be an advertisement, either.
Those will be the tests: whether it is an advertisement, in the normal understanding of that word, and whether it is produced in the course of a business. The other issue will be whether the producers are effectively sponsored to do so—that is, even if they are not doing it themselves in the course of their own business, whether they are effectively being sponsored by the tobacco industry for which they work, for example, and have a sponsorship agreement.
The second issue relating to not-for-profit student publications involves issues surrounding journalism. An advertisement is one thing. A piece of journalism, whether written by a student or someone else, would not be covered in the same way—unless the person involved were paid or received free distribution or sponsorship to write the article.
Ultimately, a judgment will be made. Some people would like anything that promotes tobacco products to be banned. We have made a decision to ban advertising in the course of a business and to allow free speech and discussion about the merits and health risks of smoking and of different tobacco products—when that is not done in the course of a business and when it does not constitute an advertisement.
That is right, because ultimately the purpose of a tobacco advertising ban is to protect people who want to give up smoking and children, who should not be bombarded by tobacco advertising. That is the
fundamental principle behind the Bill, and it is consistent.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 3 ordered to stand part of the Bill.