Thank you for your letter of 17 February 2000.

  Immediately following receipt of your letter, I instructed our lawyers Simmons & Simmons to consider the most appropriate way of providing you with documents in an electronically readable form. You will appreciate from my letter of 10 January 2000 that, from their review of our files up to 1995, Simmons & Simmons identified approximately 3.2 million pages of paper which might, in the broadest sense, be potentially relevant to issues that have arisen or might in the future arise in smoking and health litigation.

  Having regard to the terms of reference of the Health Committee's inquiry and the need to comply, with your request, so far as we are able, within the timetable that you have set, Simmons & Simmons will be delivering 16 CD roms to your offices containing the Gallaher documents that were provided by Leigh, Day & Co prior to the abandonment of that litigation by Mr Day's clients. At that point in time, the process of producing CD roms containing copies of the documents in Gallaher's disclosure lists was not complete. As a consequence, the CD roms that Simmons & Simmons will deliver will not include all the documents listed in the ring binders sent to you on 10 January 2000. Nevertheless, the categories of material contained on those CDs will include documents relating to the scientific knowledge of respiratory illnesses, chemical and biological testing of tobacco smoke and tobacco, nicotine and addiction, human smoking behaviour, machine smoking methods and Gallaher's relationship with Government.

  You will, of course, understand that the documents provided to Leigh, Day & Co were provided for litigation purposes. As a consequence, the CDs delivered to Leigh, Day & Co were encrypted with special software to reduce the risk of inadvertant disclosure if, for instance, they were left on a train by an expert witness. Given the problems that you would experience in seeking to access and use the necessary software to read the encrypted CDs, Simmons & Simmons is arranging for a set of non-encrypted CDs to be produced for your use. All that will be required to review the documents will be software capable of reading images in a "tiff" format, such as WangImage, which I am told is bundled with Windows98. Simmons & Simmons anticipates being able to complete the technical work necessary to complete the task by 1 March 2000. If, however, unexpected technical difficulties are experienced, they will deliver what they can by that date and will provide the balance of the CD roms to you as soon as practicable thereafter.

  In your letter, you also make reference to the confirmation Mr Wilson provided to the Health Committee that Gallaher was prepared to put onto the Internet those documents that a claimant pursuing smoking and health litigation against Gallaher would be entitled to access. Please note that Mr Wilson asked me to establish a project team to undertake the work necessary to create a Gallaher website containing those materials. That website will be launched when the necessary work has been undertaken and will contain broader categories of documents than those which were responsive to the issues and timescale of the Leigh, Day litigation. I trust that this reconfirmation of Gallaher's position will satisfy the Health Committee that Gallaher is proceeding to take the steps necessary to establish a website to give effect to the commitment Mr Wilson provided to the Health Committee. I also trust that the materials that Gallaher is arranging to be delivered to your offices will satisfy the Health Committee's request for evidence, having regard to the terms of its inquiry.

25 February 2000