Brexit: Advertising of Duty-Free Shopping

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Monday 30th September 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bethell]

The Government remain absolutely committed to addressing the harms from both alcohol and tobacco and to improving the nation’s health. We have many measures that echo efforts by Governments in the past and have long-term plans in all those areas. However, there is a large number of ambiguous aspects of a no-deal Brexit in the eyes of both business owners and consumers that we must clear up. Not all of these ambiguities are going to be bad news: some of them might actually be welcomed by consumers and business owners. I can report considerable interest by consumers in the prospect of duty-free and that it is not something that I necessarily regret.

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, in his Answer to my noble friend Lady Thornton, the Minister seemed to be enunciating an interesting doctrine: namely, that if advertising is not paid for at the point of advertising, it does not count as advertising. That seems to me to be a major hole in a lot of our legislation, let alone the campaign on tobacco. Could he look into this and clarify whether not just a Twitter account but anything that is not paid for but is advertising should be considered as advertising?

[Lord Bethell]

The noble Lord makes a very good point, but the guidelines on what constitutes advertising and was what does not constitute paid-for advertising are very clear. They are laid down by the Advertising Standards Authority, which looked into this in great detail and responded in the extremely clear terms which I read out—so I am not sure that that is an entirely ambiguous point.