One of the world’s largest tobacco companies has admitted funding a retail association’s high-profile campaign against a government ban on cigarette displays in shops
The National Federation of Retail Newsagents claimed the ban, approved by the government earlier this year, would put thousands of small shopkeepers out of business.
But it has now emerged that the federation’s campaign received funding from British American Tobacco (BAT) whose lobbying firm, Hume Brophy, emailed MPs claiming the ban would have a “devastating effect on the small business sector in your constituency”.
By Jamie Doward for The Guardian