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Tory U-turn on smoking ads

The move was hailed by anti-smoking campaign group Action on Smoking and Health (Ash) as a major shift in the opposition's position.

The group's director, Clive Bates, told BBC News Online: "It is a U-turn, but when you're in opposition you're supposed to sit down and analyse why you did so badly in the last election and come up with some new ideas.

"I would say it is a fairly seismic rethink on what they would do on tobacco compared to what they did last time they were in government."

Mr Bates said the results of the Tory working group on smoking were mainly important for what they did not explicitly say.

But the clear implication was that the party would not seek to have the European ban on tobacco advertising withdrawn and would no longer campaign for a freeze on cigarette taxes, he said.

"They are not going to back the tobacco industry in their attempts to overturn the advertising ban, which is great," Mr Bates said.

"And really important - and this is a very recent change - they're emphasising law and order as the primary response to smuggling, not caving into what is a very sensible tax policy.

"I think what they were saying, although they were trying not to say it, is that they didn't want to have a policy of tax-freezing or tax-reducing on tobacco. That would send all the wrong signals."

Targeting older smokers

The Conservatives on Tuesday also said they wanted anti-smoking efforts to focus on persuading smokers in their late 20s and early 30s to quit.

Hard-hitting advertising campaigns highlighting side effects of smoking such as impotence should be targeted at this group, the party said.

Shadow Health Secretary Liam Fox said stopping smoking among this age group would bring a greater fall in disease and fatality than focusing on teenagers.

But tobacco industry spokesman John Carlisle said the new approach amounted to "shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted".

He urged the Tories to back plans for compulsory proof-of-age cards for young smokers and to re-state its former commitment to a tax-freeze.

'End nonsense EU subsidy'

The other proposals put forward by the Conservatives following the review of policies on smoking instigated by Dr Fox are tighter controls to stop tobacco smuggling and an end to EU subsidy of tobacco crops.

"These measures will be formed into more detailed policy over the next few months," the shadow health secretary said.

About 28% of cigarettes and tobacco smoked in the United Kingdom are brought into the country by smugglers, representing a loss to the exchequer of £1.7bn, he said.

This worked out at equivalent to 1p on the standard rate of income tax, Dr Fox said, and could be stopped by measures such as bar coding and tobacco sniffer dogs.

He said the government should also do more to stop the "scandal" of the European Union paying £8bn a year to tobacco growers as subsidy.

"That has to stop," he said. "It is a complete nonsense for us to be talking about the evils of smoking while paying money into this programme."

No commitments on tobacco tax

On the key issues of raising tobacco taxes and the advertising ban, the Conservatives refused to give any definite policies for the future.

"Raising prices sends the correct health message, but the question is does it achieve the right results, which is cutting the levels of disease associated with smoking?" Dr Fox said.

"My view is that it's good to keep raising the duty to send out the health message, but there are so many problems already attached to it."

On advertising, the Tories are refusing to support the complete European ban, but say they would not seek to unravel the deal after it has been put in place.

But Dr Fox said he believed the government could be attaching too much importance to the advert ban and stressed other measures were also needed.

The party refused to say whether it still received money from tobacco companies.

But Conservative Chairman Michael Ancram said: "We've always had a rule that whatever money we take, we never give anything in return."

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