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** 24 August 2023
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** UK
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** Opinion: Our political leaders lack the courage to take tough decisions (#1)
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** More than 100 MPs received freebies worth £180,000 this summer (#2)
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** International
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** US: Vape firm Juul cuts down on workers (#3)
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** UK
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** Opinion: Our political leaders lack the courage to take tough decisions
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** Writing in the Times, former director of the Social Market Foundation, James Kirkup argues that politicians “know the answers to most of the big problems” but aren’t brave enough to implement them.

Kirkup says that whilst we need new small ideas, we do not need to generate any new big ideas because we already know what our biggest policy problems are and what should be done to solve them. The problem is ‘‘we just don’t want to’’.

Kirkup specifically highlights the need for “proper interventions on obesity” and “rebalancing health spending away from acute hospitals and towards preventative and community health”, stating that these are not new or particularly grand ideas.

The problem is that implementing such ideas will likely involve some short-term pain before the realisation of a wealthier, fairer country. In other words, their outcomes are unlikely to be felt before the next election.

This is why, Kirkup believes, politicians are so hesitant to back these policies, they fear they will lose votes, instead championing immediately attractive causes.

But according to Kirkup representative government is about leaders acting in our best interest rather than ‘‘telling us what we want to hear’’, he goes so far to say ‘‘sometimes is better to ask for forgiveness rather than permission’’.

‘’The minimum wage; the indoor smoking ban; auto-enrolled pensions — the most successful policy changes of the last quarter century — were all decisions to do the right thing now and trust the public to accept them in the future.’’

Source: The Times, 23 August
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** More than 100 MPs received freebies worth £180,000 this summer

More than 100 MPs have enjoyed free hospitality to concerts and sporting events worth more than £180,000 this summer, with tickets given away by banks, oil companies, the gambling industry and media firms.

The chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, the deputy prime minister, Oliver Dowden, and the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, are among those who have benefited from a growing trend for politicians accepting giveaways.

Critics said the free tickets could leave MPs open to influence from the companies providing benefits, and questioned whether it was appropriate in a cost of living crisis to be taking thousands of pounds in hospitality not available to ordinary members of the public.

Paul Scully, a science and technology minister, accepted £1,100 worth of tickets to a Billy Joel concert from the Betting and Gaming Council, and Wimbledon hospitality to the tune of £1,560 from the oil and gas company, BP, while Andrew Griffith, a Treasury minister, accepted a £400 ticket to the Ashes and £2,000 of hospitality at Silverstone from his former employer, Sky.

From Labour, Starmer was given tickets to a Coldplay concert in Manchester worth £698 by a concert promoter, while the Jockey Club gave him a box and hospitality at the Epsom Derby worth £3,716.

The total of £180,000 of hospitality since late May could be an underestimate. This year a Tory MP, Scott Benton, was filmed by undercover journalists talking of how MPs can get around the hospitality rules by accepting tickets worth just under the £300 limit for declarations.

Under rules brought in at the start of March, MPs can no longer participate in debates or table questions if their actions would directly financially benefit a company that has given them more than £300 of hospitality.

Rose Whiffen, from Transparency International UK, said ‘’In order to ensure that lobbying no longer happens behind closed doors, the government must update the rules to address the informal lobbying loophole.”

Source: The Guardian, 23 August 2023

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** International
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** US: Vape firm Juul cuts down on workers

The struggling e-cigarette company Juul Labs is planning to cut about 30 per cent of its workforce in its latest bid to recover from regulatory and legal setbacks in the United States.

Juul has been struggling since regulators last year briefly ordered its vaping products off the market, and has been seeking funding or a sale of the company.
The cut would see their staff numbers reduced to about 650, compared with 4,000 four years ago, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Juul is awaiting a final decision from the Food and Drug Administration on whether its products can remain on the market in the US after the ban was lifted pending an appeal by the company.

The business managed to avoid bankruptcy last year after it secured emergency support from early backers, but attempts to secure a longer-term deal have been hampered by uncertainty over the FDA’s decision and concerns about competition from illegal disposable e-cigarettes.

Juul was the former market leader that upended the tobacco market in 2018 when sales of its e-cigarettes surged. However, the company has suffered from a clampdown by regulators and claims that its marketing had fuelled a surge in teen vaping.

The company still accounted for about a quarter of the e-cigarette market by sales in retail stores in the US in three months to late July, the Wall Street Journal reported, and is the number two player, according to analysis by Goldman Sachs of Nielsen data.

Source: The Times, 24 August 2023

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ASH Daily News is a digest of published news on smoking-related topics. ASH is not responsible for the content of external websites. ASH does not necessarily endorse the material contained in this bulletin.

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