THURSDAY 27 JANUARY 2000

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

  960. People may or may not be wasting their time.
  (Mr Davis) Maybe.
  (Mr Wilson) I really do not know if litigants would be entitled to a discovery of documents if litigation arose, but I really do not know.

  961. You do not know whether there is anything at all that may or may not be useful?
  (Mr Wilson) No.

  962. Mr Broughton?
  (Mr Broughton) Yes, I am quite sure. We have seen litigants, particularly in the US, very skilful at extracting documents and lines of documents and trying to concoct a story, so I would say yes.

  963. Thank you. Mr Davies.
  (Mr Davies) I think that those lawyers who have chosen to represent claimants seeking to recover damages would certainly take the view that they are interested in reviewing the documents and it is their belief that they would find within the documents something of value to them.

  964. Mr Broughton, first of all let me say that I thought we did have a valuable visit yesterday and we were grateful particularly to the man in charge of the depository because, after we had done the scan initially, we were taken down to the depository, which we understood was very rare. It seemed to me that some of his qualifications must have included some very strict security training and I think it was liberal of him to take us down so that we could see the boxes and the difficulty of accessing them and how they did access them. That was helpful. But obviously there is a very great variety of papers. We were attempting to access those papers which related both to nicotine and addiction, and obviously there are a great number of papers on file which could be accessed by those words as part of their titles, but it seemed to me that certainly the one which we accessed and which I had a look at rather gave me a refresher course in chemistry which I learned a number of years ago and I could not say that I understood it, but I did recognise the differential equations and I recognised what could be got out of it, but it would be useful, I would think, simply for the conclusion of the experimental work that was described to be available because the conclusion would be more interesting to the majority of people than reading the chemical background which went into the paper. I think it could be held in a more helpful form in which the conclusions from the work were summarised. The paper was unprivileged. It had not been checked for privilege and all the papers that get taken out by bodies are checked first for privilege, so it would seem to me that again is part of the security system. I wondered whether any of the staff that are employed get training in archive work rather than training in security work.
  (Mr Broughton) You actually had some advantages over me, Mr Gunnell. I have never actually been taken round the depository as you have. I think you are also at least two stages ahead of me on chemistry. I do not know whether you asked yesterday about archival training. I am not clear. I think some of the people there have had archival training. I am not absolutely certain on that.

  965. We got the impression that none of them had. We were told none of them.
  (Mr Broughton) I was not absolutely certain on that. I thought some of them had. Can I just come back to the underlying issue you were making which is on research. I think this is the area where, looking forward, a constructive dialogue and arrangement would be most helpful. It seems to me that masses of dusty archives of the past means frankly a lot of people wasting a lot of time going through a lot of the irrelevant material is not a very constructive way forward. It seems to me that with research, having close co-operation between the Department of Health and our researchers, as you saw in Southampton for example, is a much more profitable way forward, and certainly agreeing with the Department as to which research they would like to see made publicly available. Clearly the issue comes back to what is competitively secret and what is not competitively secret. Those issues come up. I think one can make a much more constructive move forward with that kind of dialogue than with ages-old dusty archives which I do not think is a very constructive way forward.

  966. Can I take you up again on access? The photocopies are going to wear out at some point and you are going to have to replace them. Would you consider scanning them and putting them on the Web? It is again about public access. For instance, we went to the University of Strathclyde. If they want to access those papers are you saying they have to get on the train and come down and see them, which is a very inefficient way of accessing those for everybody? Would you change the system?
  (Mr Broughton) We have no current plans to change the system. If it reached a situation that you describe where the documents needed to be replaced then we would look at the most efficient way of replacing the documents. The job is to keep the integrity of the files. Most of the material that is of any relevance can be found on the Internet already.

  967. From the Minnesota files?
  (Mr Broughton) Either from the Minnesota files or from various other people who have been to it. Once you take a document out of Guildford then it is in the hands of whoever has taken it out, whether it be ASH or anybody else, and they are free to put it on the Internet so you will find most of the documents are on the Internet.

  968. You said about 300,000 had been accessed.
  (Mr Broughton) 350,000.

  969. Out of eight million, so it is not a large percentage.
  (Mr Broughton) Frankly, the other seven and half would be just filling up the Internet to no purpose.

  Mrs Gordon: You do not know that because you do not know what is in them.

  970. Can I address this question to all of you? So far my colleagues have, for understandable reasons, confined themselves to asking about the depository and that sort of thing. Common sense dictates that if you base potential litigation on what is in the depository and available on the Internet, your company has to be able to respond to that in a sensible way, and indeed a fairly fast and cost effective way. Also from replies it is clear to me that your companies at various points will have had to photocopy documents and deal with these documents to some extent. Can I ask therefore each of you in turn whether, for your own internal purposes, not the depository or anything to do with those issues, those documents are now electronically scanned and available for your own internal purposes so that they are available on disk form for your own needs of data retrieval, so that within the companies they are available by electronic means?
  (Mr Davies) In relation to the documents which are in the depository they are obviously on the Internet which is equipped with a search engine.

  971. I am not talking about the Internet. I am talking about electronic data retrieval for your own internal company purposes.
  (Mr Davies) I understand that. I wanted to make it clear that I was differentiating between some categories. Those documents clearly have been scanned and exist in electronic form. I am not aware of the extent to which any other documentation is maintained in electronic form. Certainly at our headquarters for Europe very few of our documents are maintained in electronic form.

  972. Do you have access to what might be an American database?
  (Mr Davies) No, I do not, other than I have access to the Internet, obviously, and to the documents which we have scanned on to the Internet.

  973. Mr Broughton?
  (Mr Broughton) No. An increasing number of documents are generated electronically and therefore increasingly they are available and traceable electronically. Have we gone back over all of our historical documents? The answer is no. To some extent we may have done but frankly I could not tell you and we can probably get back to you on that, as to what the extent is, but fundamentally the answer is no.

  974. Could you let us know for electronic retrieval purposes how far that availability goes back for company purposes?
  (Mr Broughton) Yes.

  975. Mr Wilson?
  (Mr Wilson) Our electronic warehouse if you like, as I explained before, is managed by our lawyers because that is why it was prepared, for litigation. They will have, and I cannot help you because I do not understand the technicalities myself, their mechanism for retrieval of what might be needed in litigation. If it would help, the Committee or the Clerk are more than welcome to visit our lawyers and see that system working for yourselves.
  (Mr Davis) I am not aware that ours are in the way you describe, quite frankly. As I said earlier, I am really not an expert on the archive situation or the scanning that has been done, so I really cannot say that they are. Certainly we could get back to you on it.
  (Dr Gietz) Beyond what is in Minnesota and on the Internet, I honestly would not know. I am not familiar with the practices and procedures of librarians and archivists in Winston Saley, North Carolina. I honestly do not know.

  976. Can you find out?
  (Dr Gietz) I can try to find out, yes.

  977. We did spend some time last week, as I am sure you are aware, on advertising, marketing and lobbying. Could I press you on the issue of political lobbying. One of the areas of concern this Committee has is the way in which, despite the way statements were made in the House in the 1950s regarding the connection between smoking and lung cancer, so little effort has been made until very recent times to seriously address the issue of smoking as a health concern of government policy. Would it be fair to say that you as an industry have been effectively able to buy MPs over the years? I looked up the register of interests and some of my colleagues on the Committee will also have seen the names of people on the register over a number of years who have had very clear connections with your industry. I can recall when I was on the front bench covering health a long and vigorous battle over a Private Member's Bill which tried to block tobacco advertising where you were very well organised with a number of Members of Parliament. Have you been able to buy people over the years in this place? The question I ask is: are you continuing to buy people to promote your own interests in this place?
  (Mr Wilson) No.

  978. You have not bought people?
  (Mr Wilson) We have not bought people at all, but of course we lobby.

  979. Tell us how you lobby. I appreciate things have changed in recent times, but we are looking back over a number of years. I have been here nearly 13 years, and I have certainly seen MPs who have quite overtly acted on behalf of your industry in wrecking attempts to deal with health issues that had an impact upon the tobacco industry.
  (Mr Wilson) Let me tell you how we do lobby. We lobby in two ways. First, through our trade association, who will represent us in speaking to government, in speaking to civil servants, in speaking to Members of Parliament. We do some of it directly ourselves. I have a Head of Corporate Affairs, a large part of whose job is getting our views communicated to civil servants, government and Members of Parliament. I have done some of it myself. I have met in the past with senior ministers, secretaries of state, with civil servants, in order to inform them of the facts relating to our business and to try to make certain that whatever comes out in legislation or in voluntary agreements or any other arrangement is fairly based on the facts of the situation.