British American Tobacco is facing questions over whether it was involved in covertly lobbying MPs to persuade the government not to ban cigarettes from being displayed for sale in shops.
It is under pressure to disclose whether it secretly funded a campaign against the plan instigated by the National Federation of Retail Newsagents (NFRN). The plan, which led to tensions in the coalition, involved efforts over many months by the London public affairs firm Hume Brophy to influence MPs and the media.
Hume Brophy works for BAT and the NFRN, which has admitted that it received financial help from unnamed tobacco manufacturers to pay for the lobbying.
The British tobacco company will face questions at its annual general meeting on Thursday from senior Labour MP Kevin Barron, the ex-chairman of the House of Commons health select committee. He has written to BAT chairman Richard Burrows asking "whether BAT has provided any funding or support, both direct and indirect, of lobbying and campaigning activities by third parties against the legislation to prohibit point of sale display of tobacco products".
He also asked if BAT has "provided any financial assistance, either directly, indirectly or by sponsorship, to the NFRN in support of its campaign against the display ban?" and whether it had any discussions with Hume Brophy about the firm's campaign against the ban on behalf of the NFRN.
Parminder Singh, the president of the NFRN, which represents 16,500 small shopkeepers, recently wrote in its magazine that: "There is no way that the NFRN could afford the resources and expertise to mount such a high profile campaign to fight on its members' behalf to oppose the tobacco ban without some help towards funding. We are grateful, therefore, to have some help from the tobacco manufacturers to do this." but has refused to elaborate when asked by the Guardian to identify tobacco firms which had funded the campaign "as this would breach perfectly reasonable commercial confidentiality" of its donors.
But suspicion has fallen on BAT because of its existing links with Hume Brophy.
"For any major company to seek to covertly lobby MPs through the back door is disgraceful, but particularly when it comes to tobacco. The Government has legal obligations to protect public health policy from the vested interests of the tobacco industry and it can only do this if the tobacco industry is transparent about its lobbying activities", said Deborah Arnott, the chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH). "Lobbying by the NFRN was effective in significantly delaying the implementation of the legislation in small shops and it has already admitted that it received support from tobacco manufacturers for this campaign. The question is which tobacco manufacturers. If BAT was involved it needs to come clean."
BAT, which stresses its commitment to "high standards of behaviour and integrity wherever our businesses operate", denied it had paid for the NFRN's campaign. "To accuse us of underhand tactics and the funding of an independent retailer organisation (the NFRN), via a PR agency that we use solely for work related to the European wide problem of tobacco smuggling, is untrue," said a spokeswoman.
"Hume Brophy does media work for us on the subject of illicit trade and tobacco smuggling across the European Union only. We have not given them any instruction to lobby on regulatory issues, nor have we given them any mandate to lobby UK politicians on regulation."
Singh added: "We do derive commercial incomes from a very wide range of suppliers, including tobacco companies but I can assure you that the incomes received from tobacco companies are very modest and represent less than 5% of our total income.
"Since tobacco represents about 30% of our members' sales you will see that this is exceptional only in the sense that it is so small."
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