MEP boycotts 'tobacco cash' university

Mel Read finds the university's decision "incomprehensible"

A member of the European Parliament has resigned as a special lecturer at a university which has accepted funding from a tobacco company.

Last December it was revealed that Nottingham University had accepted a £3.8m grant from British American Tobacco to set up Britain's first International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility.

But the move has been widely criticised by cancer charities and by some staff and students at the university.

Now the East Midlands Euro MP, Mel Read, has decided to resign as a special lecturer at the university's adult education centre and as a member of the University Court - a formal body made up of local dignitaries.

When news of the deal broke, Ms Read - herself a graduate of Nottingham University - wrote to the vice chancellor, Sir Colin Campbell, to her express her concerns.

Tobacco is an industry that kills 1,500 people a day in the European Union

Mel Read

The reply was, she said, "rather anodyne" and merely suggested another university would have taken the cash if Nottingham had not.

"I am disappointed there has not been a review or a change of heart on the part of the university," Ms Read said.

"Tobacco is an industry that kills 1,500 people a day in the European Union.

"Although it's a legitimate product, produced legally, it is a killer and for the university to take money from BAT I find incomprehensible," she said.

Individual's concern

A spokesman for BAT said it was hard for the company to comment on this.

"Obviously the decision to resign rests with the individual concerned," the spokesman said.

"It should be remembered, however, that it was the university which approached us, not the other way around," he added.

In May the editor of the British Medical Journal, Richard Smith, resigned as a professor at the university in protest at the deal with BAT.

Mr Smith resigned his unpaid, part-time post as a special professor of medical journalism after asking BMJ readers to vote on the issue.

The decision was "a serious mistake", he said.