Andrew Lilico

Dr. Andrew Lilico is an economist and the Executive Director of Europe Economics, a financial consulting company advising on “economic regulation, competition policy and the application of economics to public and business policy issues”.¹

Background

Lilico has featured on the blog sections of British newspapers The Telegraph and The Guardian. Between December 2008 and September 2013, Lilico had nine opinion pieces published in The Guardian’s Comment is Free section. The majority of these pieces were first published on the Conservative Home website, a purportedly grassroots website of Conservatives “independent but supportive of” The Conservative Party.²
Lilico’s Guardian profile, describes him as:

“One of Europe’s top experts on the economic impact of financial regulation, he led the teams doing the European Parliament’s assessment of the impact of the Financial Services Action Plan, the European Commission’s assessment of the costs of complying with financial regulation, and the FSA’s assessment of the benefits of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive. He is a member of the IEA/Sunday Times Shadow Monetary Policy Committee and a regular commentator on economic issues on BBC television and radio, and on Sky, Bloomberg and CNBC Europe.”²

Relationship with the Tobacco Industry

Research Funded by Japan Tobacco International

From 2008 to 2012, Lilico wrote four reports for Japan Tobacco International (JTI) which cautioned against introducing a tobacco display ban and tobacco plain packaging. Each report contained a disclosure statement which acknowledged JTI’s commission. The reports included:

• Economic Analysis of a Display Ban and/or a Plain Packs Requirement in the UK – 8 September 2008
  In this report, Lilico argued that a tobacco display ban would impair innovation in the tobacco sector, and that plain packaging would all-but end it. He further claimed that the tobacco control measures would not have any measurable impact upon smoking prevalence, yet might lead to increased tobacco smuggling and counterfeit tobacco products, which would have negative consequences for UK employment and UK tobacco tax revenue.
• The Impacts of Restrictions on the Display of Tobacco Products – 8 October 2009
  This supplemental report echoed Lilico’s earlier conclusions, but included a new claim that Canadian evidence pointed toward a correlation between tobacco display bans and increased smoking prevalence amongst 15 to 19 year olds.
• Economic Analysis of Restrictions on the Display of Tobacco Products: 2009 Canadian Annual Smoking Data – letter – 30 November 2010
  Lilico’s conclusions in this report were based on more 2009 Canadian data, and supported his earlier conclusions.
• Economic Analysis of a Plain Packs Requirement in the UK – 29 June 2012
  In this report, Lilico echoed once again his earlier conclusions that plain packaging measures would eliminate tobacco sector innovation, undermine competition, and possibly lead to increased counterfeit tobacco and have a negative impact on UK employment and tobacco tax revenue. In addition, Lilico argued that the tobacco control measure would also lead to large scale down-trading to lower-quality tobacco products (with price being the main characteristic upon which brands can compete for market share), which would see many tobacco players and products driven out of the market, and the market dominated by a small number of brands. Lilico argued this was in direct conflict with the principles of Better Regulation: “…a key reason competition are assessed in regulatory analysis is to avoid introducing regulations that so vest market power and damage competition.”³
  For more information on how and why the tobacco industry funded research to oppose tobacco measures, go to Tobacco Industry Funded Research, Expert Opinion and Public Relations.

Image 1: Screengrab of Andrew Lilico Biography in JTI’s Response to the UK Consultation

Lobbying Against Regulation: JTI Cited Lilico’s Work

In its submission to the 2012 consultation on the introduction of plain packaging, JTI referred to Lilico’s expertise and work extensively, forming the basis of the company’s arguments of the impacts on competition. ⁴
JTI failed to disclose that it had funded Lilico’s research, although URLs given to access Lilico’s reports linked to JTI’s website (see image 1).
JTI’s submission to the 2014 consultation on plain packaging reiterated Lilico’s argument that plain packaging would have ‘significant negative competition effects in the UK’, yet cited him less frequently, and acknowledged that Lilico’s studies had been “at the request of JTI”.⁵

Affiliations

Institute of Economic Affairs

Lilico is a Fellow and Member of the Advisory Council of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a British right-wing think tank.⁶ The IEA has a history of working with tobacco companies and has received funding from the tobacco industry. As mentioned above, Lilico is a member of the IEA/Sunday Times Shadow Monetary Policy Committee.

TobaccoTactics Resources

• Japan Tobacco International
• Tobacco Industry Funded Research, Expert Opinion and Public Relations
• 2012 Consultation
• Third Party Techniques
• Hiring Independent Experts
• Institute of Economic Affairs

TCRG Research

• Ulucanlar, S., Fooks, G. J., Hatchard, J. L. and Gilmore, A. B., 2014. Representation and misrepresentation of scientific evidence in contemporary tobacco regulation: a review of tobacco industry submissions to the UK government consultation on standardised packaging. PLoS Medicine, 11 (3), e1001629.
• Hatchard, J. L., Fooks, G. J., Evans-Reeves, K. A., Ulucanlar, S. and Gilmore, A. B., 2014. A critical evaluation of the volume, relevance and quality of evidence submitted by the tobacco industry to oppose standardised packaging of tobacco products. BMJ Open, 4 (2), e003757.