Why are Tony Blair and Sadiq Khan speaking at a ‘Big Tobacco allies’ summit?
Exclusive: Calls for former prime minister and London mayor to pull out of New York conference that features Philip Morris CEO and lists tobacco giant as patron
Tony Blair, Sadiq Khan, Nick Clegg and David Milliband are among the speakers at a conference in New York that has been funded by the tobacco industry, this newsletter has learned.
The former and current UK politicians will all be speaking at next week’s Concordia Summit.
Self-described ‘as the leading public-private sector forum’ that runs alongside the UN General Assembly, Concordia has been accused previously of promoting the tobacco industry’s interests.
Tobacco giant Philip Morris International is listed as a ‘patron member’ of Concordia. The company’s CEO Jacek Olcak is among the speakers at this year’s annual summit.
British anti-tobacco campaigners and researchers have called on Blair, Khan and others to pull out of this year’s Concordia Summit.
Andy Rowell, investigators editor of the Tobacco Control Research Group at Bath University told this newsletter that they “should boycott the event and not allow themselves to become pawns in Big Tobacco's dirty lobby game.”
Deborah Arnott, chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health, said: “In London, where Sadiq Khan is mayor, more than one in ten people smoke and every hour someone dies from smoking, costing the city over £3 billion a year in lost productivity and health and social care costs.
“Once the mayor is aware that Concordia is giving the makers of Marlboro a platform we feel sure he’ll pull out.”
WHO Director General Tedros Ghebreyesus pulled out of the same event in 2018 after discovering that it was sponsored by Philip Morris.
Tony Blair, who has become increasingly prominent in British domestic politics in recent months, was criticised for appearing at an event at the World Economic Davos supported by Philip Morris.
Blair’s wife, Cherie, is also among the speakers as the president of the European Parliament Roberta Metsola and the United Nations under secretary general Melissa Fleming.
The summit’s sponsors this year include Facebook parent company Meta, where former Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg now works, and DP World, which owns P&O, the cruise company that sacked 800 staff on Zoom last year.
Philip Morris has been a Concordia ‘patron member’ since 2020. The tobacco giant has previously sponsored the annual summit, although it is not doing so this year.
The Concordia Summit is open to the public. As well as more basic tickets, for $20,000 you can get a year-long ‘global patron membership’ that promises priority access to private receptions and the ‘opportunity to host and participate in invitation-only roundtables’.
The tobacco lobby has long been among the most powerful lobbying operations in the world. For decades ‘tobacco tactics’ focused on denying the science linking smoking and illness, especially cancer.
But in recent years the tobacco industry’s approach has had to change.
The WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control - signed by more than 180 countries - requires governments to limit interactions with the tobacco industry. Since then, the tobacco industry has cultivated a network of seemingly independent third-party organisations to rebuild its reputation and promote its agenda.
Based in the United States, where it is registered as a non-profit, Concordia listed over 100 members, including corporations, NGOs and governmental agencies across the globe as well as Philip Morris. The tobacco giant makes over $80 billion net revenues a year from sales of over 600 billion cigarettes.
“Concordia has a history of working with Philip Morris, where the company spins that it is somehow reforming, despite still selling hundreds of billions of cigarettes. Philip Morris uses these events to quietly lobby politicians and policymakers, despite an international treaty saying it should be excluded from influencing health policy,” says Bath University’s Andy Rowell, who co-authored A Quiet Word: Lobbying, Crony Capitalism and Broken Politics in Britain.
Deborah Arnott, chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health, said: “Concordia’s reputation is sullied by giving a platform to Philip Morris, the leading global player in Big Tobacco, which killed 100 million people in the twentieth century and is on track to kill 1 billion in the twenty first, mainly in low and middle income countries. Philip Morris is part of the problem, not the solution."
A spokesperson for Tony Blair said that he would be speaking about AI and was not being paid.
A spokesperson for the Mayor of London said that Khan was in New York to champion London, and “to meet with and influence as many leaders, campaigners and businesses as possible to remind them there is nowhere better than London to set up, or grow a business.”
A spokesperson for Concordia said that Philip Morris said: “we welcome the participation of diverse views at our events, [and] it is important to recognize that our supporters do not influence our programming, our agenda, or who we choose to participate.”
I got a very pleasant surprise when I read last Sunday’s Observer: this newsletter was recommended in an (excellent) round-up of Substacks to follow.
As the Observer put it, “investigative journalist Geoghegan, whose recently launched newsletter borrows the name of his excellent 2020 book, is the person to read if you want to know all about dark money and its corrosive effect on British politics.”
I’m still blushing at that one. But please do consider recommending this newsletter to a friend - thanks!