A UK-wide consultation on government plans to introduce mandatory plain packaging for tobacco is closing.

Sarah Woolnough, director of policy and information at Cancer Research UK, said plain packaging is about making cigarettes less appealing for young people to start to smoke as it "reduces the appeal".

Speaking to the Today programme she said there is evidence from the tobacco industry that there has been a "particular targeting of younger people and females".

Patrick Basham, of the think tank the Democracy Institute, believes the evidence put forward for plain packaging is "methodologically dubious".

"Would plain packaging help [lower smoking rates]? There's absolutely no evidence that is the case," he told James Naughtie.

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