Reports: UK to introduce plain packaging legislation

The UK government is apparently set to follow Australia's footsteps by stripping branding from cigarette packets.

National media report that a plain packaging bill covering tobacco products will be revealed in the Queen’s speech in May this year.

A spokesman for the Department of Health told WIPR that the government has an “open mind” about introducing standardised packaging laws and that it must first consider the responses from a consultation on the topic, which closed last August.

The four-month consultation, part of an anti-smoking drive, asked the public whether plain packaging would reduce smoking, noting that the habit claims the lives of 100,000 people a year in the UK.

The government spokesman confirmed that it received “many thousands” of responses to the consultation and it is “carefully collating and analysing” all of them.

Efforts to standardise tobacco packaging in the UK followed Australia’s decision to implement the controversial Tobacco Plain Packaging Act, which came into force in December 2012. The law requires cigarette packets to be sold in a dull greenish brown colour and replaces logos with graphic illustrations.

In early 2012, four tobacco companies argued that the law was unconstitutional, as it transferred their IP rights to the government. The case reached Australia’s High Court, but a panel of judges ruled against the challenge in a six-to-one verdict.

Though the UK government has not confirmed the media reports, Dan Smith, head of advertising and marketing law at Wragge & Co LLP, said new legislation would come as no surprise.

“Before the consultation, the government was pretty clear on its belief that packaging helped to recruit smokers.”

He said it would be interesting to see what arguments about the constitutionality of laws requiring standardised packaging would arise, as, unlike Australia, there is no written constitution in the UK.

“I would suspect there to be a huge backlash and the tobacco industry to be equally as active (as in Australia) in challenging standardised packaging legislation,” he said.

Smith said new legislation would carry the risk of increasing counterfeiting. “But it would be naive to think that counterfeiters are not capable of imitating more sophisticated products,” he said.

He added: “Trademark law doesn’t give unrestricted right to use a mark. Advertising law regularly restricts how you use marks – particularly on tobacco products.”

There have been incremental restrictions on the tobacco industry for the past 50 years, including a ban on tobacco companies advertising their products and on the open display of cigarettes in supermarkets. In 2015, this second ban is set to cover all shops.

Plain packaging legislation covering tobacco could raise fears that similar laws would force other products to restrict trademarks and branding, but Smith said such proposals would be fiercely resisted by a broad range of people.