Yesterday public health minister Anna Soubry and Andrew Black, head of tobacco policy at the Department of Health, were summoned to attend a meeting of the European Scrutiny Committee which scrutinises draft EU legislation on behalf of the House of Commons.
Members (MPs) were unhappy they hadn't been given the opportunity to scrutinise draft proposals to revise the Tobacco Products Directive (TPD). Reading between the lines, they were furious.They have a right to be furious too, because Soubry and Black surreptitiously crept off to Europe to make decisions on behalf of the government and people of this country without consulting a democratically-elected committee as they are supposed to do.
Or, as Clark puts it.
To sum up:
A committee of elected MPs has been denied the opportunity to scrutinise far-reaching proposals put forward for discussion by unelected EU bureaucrats.
A UK government minister, having failed to correspond with the relevant committee, took it upon herself to "agree and negotiate" UK government support for hugely controversial measures such as a ban on menthol cigarettes.
The chairman of the committee believes that there has been a breach of the rules. I would put it a little stronger than that. It's scandalous. So much for Parliament. So much for open and democratic government.Quite.
Do go read the whole shameful story, it will astound you.
Then ask yourself this - where is the outrage from Labour? Yesterday at PMQs, Labour MP after Labour MP rose to condemn what they imagined was a case of one individual interfering in government business.
On the same afternoon, though, a Tory minister was excluding parliament entirely and committing the country to EU laws on the say-so of, well, herself and herself alone.
If Labour are going to allow such sleazy actions from a Conservative - and you know how they love to attack Conservatives - without so much as a murmur of criticism, you have to wonder which industry's lobbyists might be pulling their strings, eh?
You can watch the committee's grilling of Soubry in the ParliamentLive.tv clip below.
Whiffs like a week old trout, doesn't it?
15 comments:
Andrew Black must be sacked for wilfully failing to communicate to the scrutiny committee. Black said his failure to reply is a "learning point." What a cunt. Both Anna Soubry and Black need to go, but especially Black.
I also note that in the audience is the Dreadful, who must also be one of Soubry's "officials."
PS: I have an earlier comment in moderation. I suppose the C-word is disallowed?
It's true that Black could deserve more blame. He would have been more aware of what was happening with plain packs in the UK than Soubry, perhaps this was his back up plan. If his idea of proper civil service protocol is ignoring elected members of parliament, he should be out the door rather than just being let off with a humble apology.
I've blogged it. Still time to get rid of Black -- would require those highly-motivated vapers to help make it happen.
The point at which Soubry declares that her portfolio is too big for her to know what's going on is surely a confession that she is incapable/incompetent with regards to doing her job.
An utterly inept performance from both her and Black.
She's a disaster and it was rumoured that she would be canned in the reshuffle, but it never happened.
In any normal government she would be shifted out of the position sharpish due to her incompetence and regular bouts of embarrassing David Cameron, but integrity largely left the Westminster building long ago.
Outrageous! Throw them out!
Because this is what Labour want. You only have to look back to the original RIPA paper to see it. Ministers able to change Laws and refer to Parliament at some later stage? They'd love it.
Ah, the “conspiracy” theory just keeps rolling along. Now even the Australian Health Minister, rabid antismoker Plibersek, claims to have the “inside knowledge” on the UK situation.
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/health/lynton-crosby-firm-lobbied-to-stop-plain-cigarette-packs-minutes-reveal-8711333.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/australian-health-minister-tanya-plibersek-adds-fuel-to-lynton-crosby-row-over-cigarette-packaging-8710075.html
Antismoking has been obscenely funded by the taxpayer and Pharma interests for the last few decades. The great “skill” of activists is in propaganda - how to make headlines, how to maintain a high media profile. There has essentially been no questioning of their conduct. They are used to getting their way. The more fanatics are accommodated, the more hysterical and inflammatory become their claims, and the more deranged, draconian, and inhumane become their demands. On the rare occasion that fanatics don’t get their way, they resort to Plan B which is occurring now concerning “plain packaging” – it’s all a tobacco industry “conspiracy”. “There’s that “evil” tobacco industry thwarting our wonderful work”, screech the fanatics.
This entire “us vs them” framework was also contrived by the fanatics
decades ago. This mythological good vs evil drama was suggested by Chapman at the 1983 [antismoking] World Conference on Smoking & Health. It was in the presentation of his paper, a manual on how to do propaganda, “The Lung Goodbye”:
“Such a list could be added to considerably, but most entries would be characterized by being somehow cast in a mythological good versus evil battle in an arena observed by mass numbers of people. The good (health/clean air/children) versus evil (cancer/uncaring, callous industry) dimension is the ineluctable bottom line in the whole issue and a rich reservoir for spawning a great deal of useful social drama, metaphor, and symbolic politics that is the stuff of ‘news value’ and which is almost always to the detriment of the industry.” p.11
It’s all for manipulative, theatrical effect and has been quite successful
on an essentially gullible political class, media, and public. The zealots must
have regular belly laughs at how all too easy the brainwashing has been.
Antismoking has been obscenely funded by the taxpayer and Pharma interests for the last few decades. The great “skill” of activists is in propaganda - how to make headlines, how to maintain a high media profile. There has essentially been no questioning of their conduct. They are used to getting their way. The more fanatics are accommodated, the more hysterical and inflammatory become their claims, and the more deranged, draconian, and inhumane become their demands. On the rare occasion that fanatics don’t get their way, they resort to Plan B which is occurring now concerning “plain packaging” – it’s all a tobacco industry “conspiracy”. “There’s that “evil” tobacco industry thwarting our wonderful work”, screech the fanatics.
This entire “us vs them” framework was also contrived by the fanatics decades ago. This mythological good vs evil drama was suggested by Chapman at the 1983 {antismoking] World Conference on Smoking & Health. It was in the presentation of his paper, a manual on how to do propaganda, “The Lung Goodbye”:
“Such a list could be added to considerably, but most entries would be characterized by being somehow cast in a mythological good versus evil battle in an arena observed by mass numbers of people. The good (health/clean air/children) versus evil (cancer/uncaring, callous industry) dimension is the ineluctable bottom line in the whole issue and a rich reservoir for spawning a great deal of useful social drama, metaphor, and symbolic politics that is the stuff of ‘news value’ and which is almost always to the detriment of the industry.” p.11
It’s all for manipulative, theatrical effect and has been quite successful
on an essentially gullible political class, media, and public. The zealots must
have regular belly laughs at how all too easy the brainwashing has been.
Black is not inept. He is dishonest and manipulative. He is also unaccountable along with the rest of the DoH. He is probably impossible to sack which is one reason why the DoH seems to think that the normal rules of society do not apply to it.
Totally off topic here, but I just booked a flight with Qatar Airways, and having done so wondered what their stance on e-cigs is. This is the first result I clicked on from Google.
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/qatar-airways-privilege-club/1411735-avoid-qatar-airways.html
WTF? This woman smoked an e-cig on a Qatar flight and got arrested when they landed at Doha! What is it with these people? And this cropped up in the thread:
"Operators should not permit the use of any item which could insinuate that smoking is permitted on board aircraft." Although the link provided didn't work: http://www.iata.org/whatwedo/safety_...cigarettes.pdf
Any item which could insinuate...? Ferfuxake, you could smoke real ciggies on an aircraft until ten years ago! And we've come to this already? God help us all...
Excellent point on Soubry and Black, but I'd like to expand a moment on Crosby from a post on Junican's blog where he pointed out that the latest You Gov survey asked the following question with the following preface:
===
Some people have criticised the Prime Minister’s appointment of Lynton Crosby as the Conservative party’s election strategist as Mr Crosby’s company also does work for a tobacco company, saying it risks a conflict of interest. Do you think…
1. It is acceptable for Mr Crosby to work part-time for the Conservative party and part-time for other commercial clients.
===
It's a highly prejudicial question that would have been MUCH more fairly stated if it was set in a true general form:
“Do you think it is acceptable for people to work part time for political parties and part time for commercial clients?”
Note that there's no need to say “for commercial clients whose business could be impacted by political decisions” since EVERY business can be impacted by political decisions.
A negative response on that survey would mean that political parties could NEVER hire anyone on a part time basis who also worked part time for commercial clients. That would somewhat limit their ability to hire just about ANYONE on a part time basis... including such people as pollsters, contract typists, plumbers, caterers, etc.
- MJM
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