Angela Harbutt

Background

Angela Harbutt works for the Hands Off Our Packs campaign, which run by the smokers' group Forest. She is also the Executive Director of Liberal Vision, an offshoot of Progressive Vision, co-founded by Mark Littlewood. The Liberal Vision FAQ describes the relationship with Progressive Vision as follows: "In strict legal terms, we are a wholly-owned subsidiary of the classical liberal think tank, Progressive Vision, and describe ourselves as an 'affiliate'." In fact, there are close connections between the organisations and the people involved, which are outlined here and on related Tobacco Tactics pages. Harbutt and Littlewood for instance were partners in 2010, while Progressive Vision has been registered at his home address since 2007.

Harbutt is a former TV marketing consultant. She worked for Sir Menzies Campbell when he was leader of the Liberal Democrat party and is a former Head of Communications for the campaign against identity cards in the UK, NO2ID.

Pro-Tobacco Activities

Hands off our packs

In a press release to announce her employment by the Hands off our packs campaign, Harbutt used three of the well-used Industry Arguments Against Plain Packaging. She said: “Plain packaging is not just an attack on the intellectual property rights of legitimate companies, it’s a direct assault on individual freedom and a smack in the face for millions of law-abiding consumers who don’t appreciate being denormalised and treated like second class citizens... It is likely to be counter-productive if the aim is to reduce smoking rates. I didn’t start smoking because I was attracted to the packaging and I don’t know anyone who did. If government insists on telling teenagers how to behave they are far more likely to rebel.”

The Letter to the Daily Telegraph

In March 2011, she was one of 11 signatories of a Letter to the Editor to the Daily Telegraph attacking the Government's position on tobacco control and arguing against further restrictions.

Anti-Tobacco Control Activities

A week after chairing the debate, Harbutt attacked the anti-smoking charity, ASH on the Liberal Vision website, and argued that its public funding should end:

Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) is a campaigning health charity set up in 1971 by the Royal College of Physicians to work towards eliminating the harm caused by tobacco. This could have been a force for good - after all there is nothing intrinsically wrong with wishing to reduce the harm caused by tobacco. It rather depends how you go about it – and that is so often determined by who is footing the bills.

ASH receives huge amounts of money from the taxpayer and sadly, like so many publicly funded bodies with too much money and too little scrutiny it has NOT gone about its task well. ASH has now become a fat, over-staffed, political, and single-minded organisation hell bent on eradicating smoking from the face of the earth, by whatever means necessary.

Other Affiliations

In June 2011, she chaired a debate entitled 'Risk and the pursuit of happiness', organised by The Free Society and the Democracy Institute, at the Institute of Economic Affairs (which has a history of being funded by the tobacco industry) in London. The speakers were Dr Patrick Basham (Democracy Institute), Mark Littlewood and gambling addict Jake Brindell. She was also listed as a speaker at the Global Tobacco Networking Forum, a tobacco industry event, in Antwerp in June 2012.