Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair personally intervened to secure Formula 1’s exemption from the tobacco advertising ban, according to the Sunday Telegraph.
After seeing documents released under the Freedom of Information Act, the paper states that Blair took the decision just hours after meeting F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone.
New documents released under the Freedom of Information Act show he demanded a change of policy within hours of a meeting with Ecclestone on October 16, 1997, and his aides went on to blur the truth.
The new documents expose the extent to which he was the driving force behind plans to exempt F1 from Labour’s manifesto pledge to end tobacco sponsorship of sport, pushing a reluctant Department of Health into agreeing. Before Ecclestone’s £1m donation, Labour had planned a universal ban.
Tessa Jowell, a health minister at the time, emerges as having had serious reservations about the move. But a Whitehall memo written on October 31, 1997, states: “The prime minister has made clear his wish to see a permanent exclusion for Formula One from the scope of the tobacco advertising ban.”
The documents show how mandarins warned Blair that he could be misleading MPs over the sequence of events.
Blair defended the plan for a dispensation on the grounds that the ban could lead to big job losses in Britain’s motor racing industry. However, it has emerged that the then Department for Trade and Industry (DTI) cast doubt on this claim. A memo from the DTI to the health department, sent in November 1997 when the government was still trying to decide how to implement the ban, says: “We believe it is unlikely that if F1 should leave the UK there would be an immediate effect on the industry as a whole.”
UPDATE: October 14, 2008 01:44 am
Claims Tony Blair lied to Parliament over a £1million donation from Formula 1 chief Bernie Ecclestone are to be investigated.
Commons Speaker Michael Martin vowed yesterday to look into a claim that Mr Blair misled MPs over exempting the sport from a tobacco advertising ban in 1997.
Tory MPs John Maples and Peter Luff claimed papers newly released under the Freedom of Information Act showed Mr Blair had intervened to exempt Formula 1 hours after he had met Mr Ecclestone.
They appear to show that he instructed his chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, to signal his support for an exemption just hours after meeting Mr Ecclestone on October 16, 1997.
At the time of the scandal, Mr Blair said the decision was taken several weeks later and famously protested that he was a ‘pretty straight sort of guy’.
Mr Martin promised to intervene after Conservative MPs John Maples and Peter Luff told the House the new evidence proved Mr Blair had misled Parliament.
He wanted to know on what date the decision was taken to exempt Formula 1 from the ban.
But before that answer could be given, on November 12, Mr Blair told the Commons it had been a ’ collective decision, made in the normal way’.
He also told MPs that ‘no decisions were taken’ when he met Formula 1 chiefs.
Mr Luff told MPs yesterday: ‘I understand we would know what to do were he (Mr Blair) still a Member of this House. That is not the case but it’s all the more important that the record is corrected.’
But a spokesman for Mr Blair said: “There is nothing new here. The documents released are entirely consistent with Tony Blair’s answers at the time.”
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