THURSDAY 27 JANUARY 2000

MR MARTIN BROUGHTON, MR PETER WILSON, MR GARETH DAVIS, MR DAVID DAVIES AND DR AXEL GIETZ

  901. Can I first of all apologise to our witnesses for the delay in starting but once again thank you for coming before the Committee. Can I express our appreciation for the information that you have supplied subsequent to the hearing we held recently. We appreciate that you were under pressure to supply us with that information and we are grateful. It would be helpful if you could again briefly introduce yourselves to the Committee.
  (Mr Davies) I am David Davies. I am the Vice President of Philip Morris Europe.
  (Mr Broughton) Martin Broughton, Chairman, British American Tobacco.
  (Mr Wilson) Peter Wilson, Chairman of Gallaher Group PLC.
  (Mr Davis) Gareth Davis, Chief Executive, Imperial Tobacco Group.
  (Dr Gietz) Axel Gietz, Vice President of JT International.

  902. One of the areas we want to look at today is the issue of the archive material that is available in certain areas and, Mr Broughton, your company kindly allowed us to look at the Guildford depository yesterday and we appreciate the co-operation we had. It was extremely useful from our point of view to be able to see what is happening there. I wonder, Mr Broughton, other than yourself and your company, whether your colleagues here might wish to describe the archive material, the records and documents that are currently available from your companies. What kinds of documents are there and in what form are they and basically why are they available?
  (Mr Wilson) Documents are available through a document management system prepared by our lawyers. They are available and have been scanned into an electronic warehouse if you like because we are subject to litigation and in litigation we can be required to discover documents and so it is necessary to prepare for that. We have sent you a number of folders containing details of the files that exist on that electronic scanning mechanism which, as I said, is operated by our lawyers.

  903. We can assume perhaps that the sole reason that these records have been made available relates to litigation?
  (Mr Wilson) That is the reason that we have spent large sums of money on preparing this electronic warehouse, yes.

  904. I appreciate that. What I am interested in particularly is whether it might be argued, in view of the concerns you have expressed yourselves about the health implications of smoking, that making some of those records available could assist in the worldwide efforts to wean people off smoking and to assist in some of the health concerns that this Committee are involved with.
  (Mr Wilson) I am sorry; I am not quite certain what you are asking.

  905. The point I am making is that you have indicated that the records have been made available specifically in response to litigation. In looking at particular areas of access to these records, and we have looked at the access at Guildford yesterday and we may well be asking Mr Broughton questions about perhaps in proving the access there, following on from the concerns that most of you expressed two weeks ago about the health issues, would it not make sense to offer these records in a more readable form, a more accessible form, in some way to look at what the industry has known over the years about the health implications, and to make that more widely available to governments, not just this government but governments elsewhere, in an effort to address some of the health issues that we talked about two weeks ago?
  (Mr Wilson) The documents we have of course are company documents. They relate to the history of the company. They were prepared for internal use by the company. If you are saying to me are we prepared to make these documents more publicly available, that is something that I think we probably would be, if it is going to help the debate, yes.

  906. We know there are extracts from certain documents that we have seen. We have extracts here going back to 1957 where the industry is actually talking about the evidence that they have got establishing beyond reasonable doubt that cigarette smoke is a causal factor in the rapidly increasing incidence of cancer of the lung. If the information that you had at that stage had been made available to those who were doing research on the medical side in this country and elsewhere, perhaps we would have made more rapid progress on some of the issues that we have up to press. Do you understand the point I am making?
  (Mr Wilson) Yes, and I am saying to you that we would be prepared to make those documents available. You have a list of the number of files of all the documents that we have relating to the smoking and health issue, the documents that would be discoverable in litigation. That is why these documents exist on the electronic warehouse that we have got. Yes, if the Committee would find that helpful, we would be prepared to make that publicly available.

  907. So from your company's point of view, Mr Wilson, you are willing to co-operate in any way possible with as wide as possible a distribution of these documents to people to look at the health perspective; you understand that it may well be that a great deal of information could be made available that is currently not in the public arena of use to organisations and governments who want to seriously address the issue of smoking and the health implications of that?
  (Mr Wilson) I am prepared in principle to agree that the documents relating to smoking and health, the issues that we are discussing today that would be discoverable to a plaintiff's lawyer, ie, the documents that you have on the list that we have sent you, I am prepared to make those documents publicly available on the Internet.

  908. Mr Davis, please say a little bit about your position on this. You were somewhat different on one or two issues in terms of your company's position, your personal position, when you were here two weeks ago. Would you go along with Mr Wilson's statement?
  (Mr Davis) I think, Mr Chairman, it is a similar position we are in to Mr Wilson's company in that we have no depository such as you saw yesterday and we have been going through a similar process of scanning documents. We are in a situation where we are part way through that and that was indicated as to where we were in the amount of files and the number of documents we have in our letter a few weeks ago to the Committee. The situation is one, as I said last time, that we would very much like to help the Committee in any way possible to further its work and I want to try to be as helpful as possible as regards this. As I said last time, I think the best thing I can do is put your people and our people in touch to see how we can best help in that process.

  909. I am not specifically concerned with this inquiry. We are more concerned with the wider availability to others over and above the Committee in respect of the records that you hold, the kind of information that may be of use to individuals doing research in this area.
  (Mr Davis) I would be very happy for the respective people in our company and your representatives to get that sorted out.

  910. So in your company the will exists to co-operate as it does in Mr Wilson's company?
  (Mr Davis) Oh, certainly.

  911. Mr Davies?
  (Mr Davies) We have a depository in Minnesota in the United States where very broad access is provided under conditions which facilitate an easy review of the documents. In addition to that, Philip Morris developed and has launched and is maintaining a website on which we have scanned literally millions of pages. The site is equipped with a very efficient search engine which enables people to search the documents by subject matter. We are continuing to place documents in the depository and to scan them on to the Internet site, and will continue to do so through 2008.

  912. Dr Gietz?
  (Dr Gietz) My answer is similar to the one given by Mr Davies. As far as smoking and health related documents are concerned, all of this work, as I explained last time, was conducted in the United States by RJ Reynolds and therefore these documents are in the same depository in Minnesota as the one for Philip Morris that Mr Davies referred to. These are easily accessible, some of them are on the Internet now, so the answer is, it is available. As far as my company in the United Kingdom is concerned, as you know from our submission, we have only had at best a marketing and sales representation here but I am sure my company would look favourably at giving you access to documents that we might have here that might be of interest.

  913. I want to be clear about this. I am not looking at just what we have had access to. The point I was trying to make with Mr Wilson was a wider public access. Are you all—and I am not talking to you, Mr Broughton, because obviously we are aware of your arrangements—prepared to make sure that your archives are made publicly available and would they be in a form that can be accessed by the public? We looked at the BAT depository. There was an index there where we can go through and pull out documents. It is a complex exercise but if one knows what one is looking for one can get an idea of what one wants and there is a way of getting to it. The point is not just this Committee but are you willing to allow a wider public access? That is the sort of question I am putting. I understood Mr Wilson said yes to that. I was not clear from Mr Davies's response or from the other response. I believe in the States you have moved in this direction. Clearly you are concerned about the States; we are concerned about here.
  (Mr Davies) Anyone who has access to a computer and to the Internet can access the documents that we have scanned on to that site.
  (Mr Wilson) That is what I was referring to.

  914. Mr Davis?
  (Mr Davis) Again, Mr Chairman, we are saying we would co-operate and are anxious to co-operate in whatever way we can.

  915. You would be prepared to make your records publicly available?
  (Mr Davis) The situation as regards that specific point is that there are certain practical and legal issues, which I would not pretend to be familiar with and I need to take advice on those, but, as I say, I am more than willing for your people and our people to get together to try and resolve that situation and come out with a situation to the satisfaction of all.

  916. So with certain provisos which do apply to the BAT arrangements in relation to competition, and there are certain restrictions which we looked at yesterday, your company would be willing to make some arrangements?
  (Mr Davis) As I say, subject obviously to certain legal and practical issues which I am not familiar with and which I would obviously need to take advice on, I am more than willing to put our people together and try and resolve this one.

  917. Dr Gietz, that applies to your company as well?
  (Dr Gietz) As I said, our sister company, RJ Reynolds, its policy in the States is very much the same as that of Philip Morris, yes.
  (Mr Wilson) Chairman, just for clarification, I am saying that in principle yes, we are prepared to do that. I am not a qualified to comment on the technicalities and the legal and any other restrictions that might exist, but the principle of making our documents, those that you have got on the list of files you have, publicly available on the Internet, is something that we are prepared to do.

  918. I would like to pick up on one or two of those issues. When we were in the States on our inquiry over there, many of the people involved in tobacco control were very concerned to ensure that all the British documents were on the web and available. They said to us that currently there were huge numbers of documents available in this country which they have no access to electronically from the States and they said anything our inquiry could do to widen availability would be very welcome. Could we tease out just how much there is available currently to researchers on the Internet now in your companies relating to documents in the United Kingdom? Can I try and clarify what is currently available now from each of you? Starting with Dr Gietz, what is currently available on the Internet for researchers now about your company?
  (Dr Gietz) Again, the health related documents, the issues we are discussing here, the issues you investigated when you went to the States, are in the Minnesota depository through RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company in the US. RJ Reynolds UK, being only, as I said, a small sales support and representation company, certainly to the best of my knowledge has no research or health related documents at all.

  919. If I were to look up RJ Reynolds on the Web I would find all your documents in the Minnesota depository on the Web available to me?
  (Dr Gietz) I have not done that lately but I would assume so, yes.