Lord Naseby – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Naseby on 2016-01-28.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answers by Lord Prior of Brampton on 21 December 2015 (HL4603 and HL4606), whether they plan to investigate the activities of the group Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) in providing the secretariat to the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Smoking and Health and the use of public grants for lobbying activities in the light of the fact that the Department of Health has received 90 items of correspondence from the APPG originating from a postal or email address belonging to ASH in the last five years.
Lord Prior of Brampton
The conditions applicable to grants awarded to Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) are set out in the grant award letters. The Department has made clear that none of this funding is to be used for lobbying purposes.
The Section 64 grant must be spent in delivering the the agreed project outputs set out in the grant award letter and it does not fund secretariat support for the All Party Parliamentary Group on Smoking and Health.
ASH’s compliance with the conditions of the grant is assessed at the grant monitoring meetings held between the Deputy Director of tobacco control and representatives from ASH as well as in the final full year grant monitoring and governance reports.
The Department is required to retain information relating to Section 64 grants for six years. The full amount of the grant was spent for each year that a grant was provided to ASH in the past six years.
