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British American Tobacco cuts 2,300 jobs in shift towards vaping
British American Tobacco (BAT) has announced plans to cut 2,300 jobs by 2020 in readiness for a shift towards non-tobacco products.
The vast majority of BAT’s £24.5bn revenue in 2018 came from cigarettes – its brands include Rothmans, Dunhill and Lucky Strike – but the company said it could save money to invest in alternative products such as vaping and heated tobacco by stripping out layers of management around the world. The company declined to say how many of the job cuts would fall in the UK, where 2,500 of its 55,000 staff are based, including at its London headquarters.
BAT is aiming to derive £5bn of its revenue from what it called “new category” or “potentially reduced-risk products” by the 2023-24 financial year. That would mean more than doubling the £1.8bn it made last year from vaping, tobacco-heated products and oral tobacco, which includes pouches such as Snus, popular in Scandinavia.
Source: The Guardian, 12 September 2019
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Public health will get 1% real terms growth, Selbie reveals
The public health grant is due to increase by 1% in real terms next year, the Public Health England chief executive has said, adding that it should spell the end of cuts to the budget.
Duncan Selbie told HSJ the Treasury had promised growth of “inflation plus 1 per cent” for local government public health budgets. At the time of the spending review the Treasury said only that it would be “at least a flat real [terms] increase” to be confirmed “in due course”.
Mr Selbie said of the modest real terms growth “you wouldn’t write home” about it, but that it was a “powerful message” now was the time to stop cutting public health spending. The increase will only “take us to the cash position of 2018-19”, recovering the £85m cut in the current financial year, he said.
The public health budget had seen £850m real-term cuts between 2015-16 and 2019-20. The increase announced in the 4 September spending review is far short of the £1bn the Health Foundation said in June was needed to replace lost funding.
Source: Health Service Journal, 13 September 2019
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New funding is a step back from the abyss for councils
Nick Golding, editor of the Local Government Chronicle, discusses the impact of the recent spending review on local authority budgets.
“In contrast to the grim tidings brought by George Osborne and Philip Hammond previously this decade, Mr Javid delivered a spending round in which even the least fortunate departments of government saw their budgets stand still, while most saw hefty real-terms rises. This, of course, does not undo austerity – there have still been massive net cuts – but it does nevertheless constitute a step in the right direction, back from the abyss in the case of councils."
“And there is no certainty that Mr Javid’s spending round will actually be implemented – and the same is true of the ‘fair funding’ review and national rollout of business rates retention.”
“Communities secretary Robert Jenrick said the latter two would be subject to a one year delay, which in current political terms is light years away.”
Source: Local Government Chronicle (Physical edition), September 2019
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Business rates retention unworkable say MPs
The business rates retention system is too complex to work properly and the government should revive the revenue support grant as the main funding mechanism for councils, according to a committee of MPs.
The Commons housing, communities and local government committee also said councils needed funding certainty and called for a radical revaluation of council tax.
In the report Local Government Finance and the 2019 Spending Review the committee said business rates retention was “too complex and lacks transparency”. Business rates were coming under pressure from changes in the economy and “it is hard to see how it will endure over the long term”, it added.
Source: Local Government Chronicle (Paywall), September 2019
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India: Experts ask government to regulate rather than ban E-cigarettes
Though the Indian government has been planning to ban E-cigarettes in India, experts and the traders are arguing that instead of banning these products, regulation is the key to reducing cigarette smoking which is much more harmful than using e-cigarettes.
Mark Lewis, Executive Director and Board Member, Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) claimed that banning e-cigarettes would be harmful to public health in India as these devices can help millions of smokers to quit and also protect bystanders from secondhand smoke.
Lewis said: "I agree that nicotine might also be addictive, but one needs to understand that e-cigarettes are far more safe then traditional smoking. It’s better that we educate youngsters and people in rural India to give up smoking."
Source: British Asia News, 13 September 2019
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Interview: ASH’s Ciaran Osbourne discusses vaping
ASH’s Director of Policy discusses e-cigarettes in a panel discussion on France 24.
Source: France 24, 12 September 2019
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Video: We're quitting smoking, so why is big tobacco booming?
The Guardian has produced a short video explaining how big tobacco continues to make record profits using online marketing and price manipulation.
Source: The Guardian, 12 September
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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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