Clause 3 - Advertising: newspapers, periodicals etc
Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Bill [Lords]
2:30 pm
Ms Yvette Cooper (Parliamentary Secretary (Public Health), Department of Health; Pontefract and Castleford, Labour)
I, too, welcome you, Mr. Pike, to the Chair this afternoon.
The clause makes it clear that in the case of press advertising, anyone in the chain from commissioning to selling an offending publication could be guilty of an offence. Such people could include proprietors, editors and employees of advertising agencies. We set out a special clause on press advertising because given the number of people who might be involved in the chain between commissioning a tobacco advertisement and selling a publication, it is important that the Bill provides further clarity.
Clause 5 provides for defences if a person did not know and had no reason to suspect, and subsection (6), in particular, provides a defence for a person charged under clause 3(c). The defences make it clear that, under such circumstances, a person is not expected to take responsibility.
The proprietor is the owner of the publication—for example, Associated Newspapers or the Telegraph Group Ltd. The editor is the person who is ultimately responsible for editing and deciding on the content of the publication. I appreciate that in the world of job title inflation, people can use many different titles, but the Bill is about those who are responsible given the traditional meaning of the word ''editor''.