BBC Bias on Plain Packaging of Cigarettes?

[Teddy Bear]

If you had to make a guess on how the BBC would cover the government's plan to introduce plain packaging for cigarettes, how do you think they lean?
Would they be balanced, would they be pro, or would they be con?

While this specific instance doesn't have previous form to examine, there are a few elements that would pretty much determine how the BBC would go.
Which one makes them appear caring and concerned, regardless of facts or truth?
How is Labour using this proposed policy?

There's a few articles on the BBC website, that include a video that I'm not going to bother to watch, but just paste what the BBC tells us in the article.
Here's a couple of them

Cigarettes in 'plain packets by 2016' according to government
21 January 2015 Last updated at 22:33 GMT
Cigarettes will have to be sold in standardised packaging by May 2016, according to the government.
Public Health Minister Jane Ellison announced that a vote would be held on the matter before the next general election.
The regulations would only apply in England.
Australia is currently the only country in the world which enforces standardised, non-branded packaging for tobacco products.
Hugh Pym reports.

Cigarettes could be in plain packaging by 2016
21 January 2015 Last updated at 21:48 GMT
The government have announced that a vote will be held on putting cigarettes in plain packets before the general election.
Labour has already pledged to ban images on packets if they win the election.
Most Tories and Liberal Democrats are also expected to back the measure.
Public Health Minister Jane Ellison announced it in the House of Commons.

You will notice in these two articles, both edited around the same time, there is a clear difference between the two. In the first we are told that plain packaging is already a done deal, while in the second we read that it's still to be voted on. But the BBC seem eager to present it as a 'done deal'. They also already credit Labour for it's assurance that they will make sure it happens if they win the next election. Are you beginning to see the angle now for the BBC?

The only article from the BBC that I can see expounds further on this issue is this one, meant to be read by children on the CBBC website. You can know already from the above that it's going to be pure propaganda, designed to brainwash.

This page was made on Thursday 22nd January 2015
Plain cigarette packets to become law in England

The government's planning to introduce plain cigarette packs in England, to try and stop the number of people taking up smoking.

If it's approved in May, the new law would come into force in 2016.

But cigarette companies are against the idea. They say there's no evidence plain packs would stop people smoking.

Wales has already voted to say it'll follow the English law, and similar votes are expected in Scotland and Northern Ireland too.

Australia banned all images and words, apart from public health warnings, from cigarette packs in 2012
'Protecting children'

Speaking in Parliament on Wednesday, Public Health Minister Jane Ellison said the change would make a big difference to the public's health, and especially children.

"We all know the damage smoking does to health," she said.

"This government is completely committed to protecting children from the harm that tobacco causes."

Figures suggest that as many as 200,000 kids across the UK take up smoking every year.

The British Lung Foundation and other health campaigners said plain packaging would reduce the appeal of cigarettes to young people.

But pro-smoking group Forest said: "There's no evidence that children start smoking because of packaging".

Notice the headline Plain cigarette packets to become law in England, when more accurate would be MAY BECOME LAW, which the reader wouldn't know until the third sentence, so why the distortion? Then there's a load of BS to tell us that the reason is to protect kids, and the only ones who deny it are those with a personal interest like the tobacco companies or pro-smoking group.

But what's the real evidence about plain packaging for cigarettes? Funny about what Australia really experienced as a result of going that route is not mentioned by the BBC.

THE TRUE COST OF PLAIN PACKAGING: REVENUE LOSS, JOB LOSS, AND YOUTH SMOKING RATES UP

by DONNA RACHEL EDMUNDS

Yesterday’s announcement by the government that they will bring a vote on legislation to introduce plain packaging of cigarettes before the next general election in May has already caused splits in Prime Minister David Cameron’s government. Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond has told the BBC that the issue is “complex” and that he would have to consider how to vote.

Parliament is expected to have a free vote on the issue of whether or not to replace the branding and logos on cigarette packets with gruesome images depicting the tumours and diseases which can be caused by smoking. The motion is expected to pass, with legislation introduced some time next year.

Speaking to the BBC’s Radio 5 Live, Hammond said that he would have to think carefully on how to vote. “It’s a complex issue because experiments have happened around the world,” he said. “It’s very important to look at the evidence of those experiments and see what the evidence shows. Also some concerns have been expressed about whether it’s going to make the counterfeiting of cigarettes easier and increasing trade, which deprives us of a lot of revenue.”

His comments display mastery of the British art of understatement. The financial cost alone is expected to run into the billions, with compensation to the tobacco companies for loss of intellectual property and trademarks alone being estimated at anywhere between £5 to £11 billion.

Then there is the revenue impact: A packet of 20 cigarettes costs £8.47 on average, of which £6.49 is tax. As the evidence from Australia, where plain packaging was introduced in December 2012, is that illicit sales have been driven by plain packaging (exactly as critics warned), the Exchequer is expected to lose out on between £219 million to £348 million annually, according to a 2013 study by Centre for Economics and Business Research.

The same study also found that between 2,000 and 3,500 jobs can be expected to be lost in the convenience retailing sector, thanks purely to the decrease in revenue through tobacco sales. A further 2,250 to 3,850 jobs are expected to be lost in the tobacco manufacturing sector, despite a rise in tobacco consumption.

It is clear the the government is aware of these likely consequences, but is choosing to ignore them. Writing for Spiked yesterday, Christopher Snowdon, director of lifestyle economics at the Institute of Economic Affairs, said: “Not to be upstaged [by the Labour party], the government resurrected the plain-packaging ruse in November 2013, commissioning a member of the medical establishment, Sir Cyril Chantler, to conduct a new review into the policy.

“This time, however, no social or economic costs would be weighed up and the public would not be invited to voice their views. Chantler said from the outset that he would not concern himself with the impact of plain packaging on smuggling, counterfeiting or international trade, nor with ‘competition, trade-marking and freedom of choice’. Instead, he focused only on the claims made by the say-anything, do-anything tobacco prohibitionists.”

A previous consultation by the government on the measure had been met with 660,000 responses, two thirds of which were against plain packaging. It took the Department of Health eleven months to process them all.

Yet the evidence from Australia has been conclusive: the illicit trade has indeed been boosted by plain packaging. A study by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare found that 12.5 percent of total population (14 or older) “have seen tobacco products without plain packaging (an indication that the product is illicit)”, rising to 34 percent of smokers who had seen unbranded illicit tobacco, and 10.7 percent who are currently smoking it. Around 10 percent of smokers had purchased illicit tobacco, of which “just under half” had bought 15 or more packs. Overall, sales of illicit tobacco rose by around 25 percent between 2011 and 2014.

Moreover, although the policy is explicitly designed to put young people off smoking, ostensibly by educating them on the negative consequences of smoking, youth smoking rates have actually risen by 36 percent between 2010 and 2013.

It seems the only winners from the policy are, in fact, the UK Independence Party, as Conservative voters, dismayed by their preferred party’s lack of evidence based policy and liberalism, are coming over to the usurpers in droves.

As UKIP leader Nigel Farage put it last year: “We are now on the verge of a Conservative-led government going for plain packaging on cigarettes. I can scarcely believable how stupid these people are are. It’s been tried in Australia and it’s been manna from heaven for organised crime and for counterfeiters. It is a daft and stupid thing to do. Frankly, if you’re going to have plain packaging for cigarettes, why not on a bottle of Pernod, or a bottle of beer, or on a Krispy Kreme doughnut? Where does this end? I think the state is really far, far outreaching itself.”

[Teddy Bear]

Despite the BBC presenting this as a 'done deal', apparently many Tory MPs are rebelling and showing that any declaration by the Public Health Minister was done before she consulted the Treasury about such a proposal.

So why does it fall to Breitbart London to bring us the facts? Why didn't the BBC do some investigative journalism before running the story the way they did?

TORIES REVOLT OVER PLAIN PACKAGING FOR CIGARETTES

by DONNA RACHEL EDMUNDS

Further evidence of Tory splits over the introduction of Plain Packaging for cigarettes has emerged as Conservatives lined up to attack their health minister Jane Ellison, who pushed the measure through. It is understood that the plans were not signed off by the Treasury, but were backed by the Prime Minister David Cameron who considers it to be “feel good politics”. (h/t Taking Liberties blog)

Last week Breitbart London reported that Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond had spoken openly of his unwillingness to back the proposal when it comes to a vote in the House of Commons. ““It’s very important to look at the evidence of those experiments and see what the evidence shows. Also some concerns have been expressed about whether it’s going to make the counterfeiting of cigarettes easier and increasing trade, which deprives us of a lot of revenue,” he told the BBC’s Five Live.

But now more Conservatives are being quoted off the record expressing far more damning views. In his Sun on Sunday column yesterday, Westminster blogger Guido Fawkes reported that Conservatives are furious with Ellison: ““Four letter word, starts in S and ends in T” was the ringing endorsement of one colleague. “She is not a conservative” claims another, whilst another simply added “She’s a wrong ‘un’.”

“Guido hears that Ellison may not have the last laugh. Not only will there be a huge rebellion on the right, plans for a very well funded campaign to unseat her in her marginal south-west London seat of Battersea are already afoot.”

Meanwhile Nigel Evans MP took to the pages of Breitbart London to brand plain packaging “deeply un-conservative.”

“Plain packaging for cigarettes is plain bonkers and simply will not work, costing jobs and hampering the smaller newsagents around the country. I am convinced that in an attempt to pander to the politically correct lobby we are shooting ourselves in the foot and going against the core Tory ideals that are at the root of my party and are the reason I joined it 40 years ago,” he wrote.

He was joined by Iain Dale, a former Conservative Parliamentary Candidate and current presenter on LBC who, in an article entitled “So you support plain packaging. Call yourself a Conservative?” wrote “I’m not really sure how any politician can introduce plain paper packaging on cigarette packets and maintain with a straight face that they are still Conservatives. What’s next? Plain packaging on cans of lager? Mars Bars? Packets of crisps? It’s the nanny state writ large. If cigarettes are so terrible then ban them altogether. That’s the only logical thing to do.

The former Conservative Member of the Scottish Parliament Brian Monteith was so disillusioned by the introduction of the measure that he declared, in an article for the Edinburgh Evening News, that the Tories had now lost his vote.

“I wrote last week about how Labour is taking us down this road of lifestyle socialism where every facet of our life is controlled, and hoped that the Conservatives might not be drinking in the same pub,” he said.

“This week, with their proposals to abolish the branding of tobacco ­companies – infringing their intellectual property rights – the Tories showed they have been supping in the Last Chance Saloon. And now their chance of my vote is gone.”

But perhaps most surprising of all was the revelation by Simon Clark, director of smokers’ rights group Forest, that Ellison had not sought the go-ahead for the policy from the Treasury, despite the costs of the policy running into the billions.

“I can now reveal – from a good source – that the announcement by public health minister Jane Ellison surprised even George Osborne who wasn’t consulted,” said Clark.

“If that’s true it’s extraordinary, given how much revenue the Government could potentially lose to illicit traders, not to mention the cost of fighting the tobacco companies in court.

“Another source reports that the decision to go ahead with plain packaging was taken by the PM who considers it “feel good politics”.”

Yet the question remains: feel good for whom? Ben Harris-Quinney, Chairman of conservative think tank The Bow Group, has told Breitbart London that policies such as plain packaging, which are clearly designed to appeal to centre left voters, are leaving the Conservative grassroots disillusioned.

“There was a huge amount of energy among Conservatives going into the 2010 general election. A genuine feeling that a change could be made to reverse the 13 years of debt ridden, nannying, profligate, cultural Marxism and statism that had defined the Labour years.

“None of that energy is present in the Conservative Party going into the upcoming general election. That’s because this government has been more heir to Blair, than end to Blair.

“Plain packaging of cigarettes is the perhaps the perfect example, to cap 5 years of dilution and reversal of conservative values. No conservative would ever support a state so interfering that it sees fit to censor a packet of cigarettes, nor so patronising as to assume it’s citizens wouldn’t know what’s inside anyway.”

[Teddy Bear]

The story grows, now with the Spectator reporting on it.

80 Tories could reject plain packaging
Isabel Hardman

While Cabinet members grumble about the way the government’s plain packaging announcement was snuck out last week, those Tories opposed to the measure have been counting up the number of colleagues who will vote against it.

I understand that they are expecting at least 80 Tory MPs to reject the introduction of plain packaging in the free vote. Their numbers could be reduced because the measure will pass and some will wonder whether rejecting a government proposal even in a free vote is worth it.

Some are absolutely opposed to the idea on principle. Others are really annoyed at the sneaky way ministers brought it out. Others still are annoyed that this is the sort of distraction that the party, which is supposed to be saying ‘long term economic plan’ over and over again until the whole country is blue in the face, is supposed to be avoiding yet ministers have chosen to strike up a distracting row with just 100 days to go till the election.