Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said on Friday (12 July) that a decision on plain packaging had been postponed in order to assess how a similar scheme was operating in Australia.
'Protect jobs'
Former managing director of Weidenhammer UK and spokesman for seven well-known packaging firms Mike Ridgway told PN that the government had made a "common sense decision" on the matter.
He explained: "The packaging industry welcomes the decision by the government to not move ahead with the standardised (plain) packaging of tobacco products. By not moving ahead they have taken a sensible decision to support industry and protect jobs rather than adopt a policy upon which there is no evidence that it will work.
"The simplification of packaging in this case would help drive the illicit trade, have an adverse economic impact, risk manufacturing jobs with uncertain consequences that excessive regulation introduces.
"The packaging industry supports efforts to reduce the uptake of smoking levels by young people but believes that this is better done by education, information and cultural awareness rather than by questionable control measures."
Ridgway also said "as a measure to achieve the objectives of reducing the uptake of tobacco smoking by young people the example of Germany should be more closely followed where there has been a recorded significant reduction of smoking up take in a country with no display ban; no vending machine ban and no overall smoking ban in public places".
Devolved administrations
The Scottish government said it will press ahead with its own plans to introduce plain packaging. The Welsh government said that it was "disappointed" that the UK government delayed the plans and will be liaising with the Department of Health and other colleagues in "the other devolved administrations on this issue".
Elsewhere, the BBC reported that two shadow ministers have written to ask whether David Cameron's strategy advisor Lynton Crosby was involved in the decision to delay plans to bring in plain cigarette packets in England. However, Conservative Party chairman Grant Shapps told the BBC that Crosby had no role in setting policy.
