Examination of Witnesses (Questions 920
- 939)
THURSDAY 27 JANUARY 2000
MR MARTIN
BROUGHTON, MR
PETER WILSON,
MR GARETH
DAVIS, MR
DAVID DAVIES
AND DR
AXEL GIETZ
920. As far as you know, all your company's
documents are available?
(Dr Gietz) To the best of my knowledge.
921. Mr Davis, are your documents currently
available on the Web to researchers?
(Mr Davis) Chairman, the situation as regards the
depositories is, as I understand it, that the documents on the
Internet were part of the Master settlement in the United States
in recent legal actions over there, which Imperial were not a
party to. We are not in the United States situation, so there
is not a requirement on us and as far as I am aware there is nothing
other than our corporate website and corporate information which
is on the Internet.
922. But currently there is nothing from your
company available on the Web?
(Mr Davis) Not specific to this particular subject.
923. Would you be prepared to look at the possibility
of doing so, not just for this Committee, but for the wider Web?
(Mr Davis) As I say, obviously there are certain practical
and legal issues which I would need to take advice on but I am
willing to do that, yes.
924. Mr Wilson, yours is currently being scanned
because you said they have been scanned for the legal issues.
(Mr Wilson) Yes.
925. Yours currently exist in electronic form
and you are now saying to us that you will be prepared to examine
the possibility of making them available on the Web?
(Mr Wilson) I am saying yes, subject to sorting out
the technical aspects of doing that, which I am just not qualified
to...
926. But in principle you would look at that?
(Mr Wilson) Yes. At the moment there is nothing available
on the Web because there is no requirement on us to do so. Our
website just contains the usual corporate information.
927. You are prepared to say that you will look
into that?
(Mr Wilson) Yes, that is what I am saying.
928. Mr Broughton, are yours scanned currently
in electronic form?
(Mr Broughton) The information which is available
in the US may be scanned in electronic form. In other words, all
the information that was supplied under the same litigation by
Brown Williamson, our US subsidiary, would be scanned and available.
The information that was extracted from the Guildford depository
by the litigants was shipped to Minnesota. We kept copies in Guildford
just for the integrity of the files, but they were shipped to
Minnesota, so all of the documents that the litigants considered
to be relevant are available. The other documents are not scanned.
929. So the eight million pages that you have
currently got on the subject are scanned?
(Mr Broughton) No, they are not.
930. Do you have plans to scan those?
(Mr Broughton) No, I do not. Perhaps I should explain
a slight difference here. Did you go to Guildford yesterday?
931. Yes.
(Mr Broughton) I think you will have seen from those
files that those files are not the same as you are asking other
parties sitting here because those files cover a great deal more
than the health issues. As you will recall from the information
we sent you—
Chairman
932. I did not intend to imply that the only
records that we were interested in were those relevant to health
from your companies. Clearly within those records will be issues
relating to health, as is the case with your records.
(Mr Broughton) I understood from your question—I
do not know whether the other people here understood from your
question—that you were talking about things that would help
the health issue.
933. Yes, within those records, but I was not
simply talking about releasing issues relating to health. I was
talking about releasing exactly the same areas that you have released.
I think this is important because I do not want to give the wrong
impression to the other witnesses that I was just concerned with
the health areas. We are concerned as a Committee with the entire
records and it will be a matter for the people searching those
records to extract what they regard as being relevant to their
interest areas or not.
(Mr Wilson) I understood your question to be documents
relating to the topics under discussion in this Committee. The
answer that I gave related to those documents which are contained
within the files, the details of which we have already furnished.
934. I think we need to revisit this point because
clearly the point that I was making was that when we looked at
the BAT depository, and it may be that I have not framed my question
clearly, your records cover a whole range of areas over many years
and it is a matter for the individual accessing those records
to extract what they want from them, so that we were shown the
computer access, to title records so that we could key in on specific
areas relating to health or not. I think it is important to clarify
this because if I gave the impression that I was talking about
records just relating to health that is not correct. My concern
is the entire records, some of which may relate to health. I think
you have misunderstood my question and in fact we need to revisit
this. Can I apologise if I gave you a misleading impression of
what I asked.
(Mr Wilson) As I said, the records that we have are
in electronic form and are those contained or listed in the files
that we have given you. They relate to anything that a potential
plaintiff might seek discovery of, all the smoking and health
research that has been carried out, a number of marketing documents
and this kind of activity. They do not include the administrative
files of the business, personnel files, the files relating to
the running of the canteen and certain factory ongoing process
files, and they do not include technical financial information
but they certainly do cover all the aspects relating to smoking
and health and the marketing of our brands that a litigant would
have access to in any litigation. Those are the files that we
have scanned.
935. Perhaps, Mr Broughton, you might like to
describe the areas covered by your own records. I am anxious to
distinguish between the answers given by your colleagues and what
we know exists within the Guildford depository.
(Mr Broughton) The position was that we were required
to provide information that was being responsive to the discovery
requests in the Minnesota litigation. The US operations, because
they have been party to litigation for many years, were able to
meet that requirement and be responsive to the questions and they
submitted all documents that were responsive to the questions.
We were not prepared for litigation in the same sense. We were
unable to meet the deadlines to go through all the papers and
extract all those papers, so we got an agreement with Minnesota
that we would put into the depository every file that might contain
a document that would be responsive and we would put the entire
file in.
936. This met the legal requirements?
(Mr Broughton) That met the legal requirement, but
it was obviously a great deal more than the legal requirement
but if we thought there was likely to be a document int he file
we would put the entire file in, which meant that the file could
cover anything. There were no specific areas that the files would
cover and we would not have all the files that might cover one
particular subject. It was wherever we thought there was a document
that might be responsive, then the entire file would go in. Frankly,
of the eight million or so documents that are in Guildford, a
huge number of those are not particularly relevant to any subject
of interest, as indeed people have gone there have discovered.
It is quite difficult to say what is in there because it really
covers any file that might have included one document that was
relevant to the litigation. They cover a whole range of things
but they certainly would not be comprehensive necessarily on those
other things.
Audrey Wise: When we went to the depository
yesterday we had the index demonstrated to us on the computer
and, as you say, it is files, it is not individual documents,
but in order to make the demonstration work we suggested words
to key in, to see what came up. I think some of the problems around
this are illustrated. I said "disease" and there are
thousands of files, as you know, many thousands. Sixty nine entries
came up on disease. We tried health, we tried other words. Really
the number which came up was very small. That was because it was
only the title of the whole file that was on the index. I am not
surprised if people who go with a specific research interest in
mind find it really hard to get anything useful out of those files.
It did seem to me, and I do not know about my colleagues, that
although this might comply with the letter of any arrangement
to make it publicly available, it was not exactly in the spirit
of making it easily accessible or readily available or understandable.
It also struck me that it was a very labour intensive process
from your point of view, whereas, if the things are scanned, that
is undoubtedly a heavy job to do but when it is done, it is done,
whereas you have got people scampering up and down stairs and
physically handling boxes. It seemed old-fashioned. In fact, we
noticed you are still on Windows 95. Most of us are on Windows
98.
Chairman: Speak for yourself, Audrey.
Audrey Wise
937. We even noticed the difference in the speed
of operation of your computers. I wonder why do you not simply
go the whole hog? It is not possible to extract the relevant documents
through the system that you have got.
(Mr Broughton) The system was set up for a specific
purpose. I think you will find that the number of people of gone
there have managed to find their way around the files. We have
had a lot of letters from people who have gone there thanking
us for access, the way it has been handled, the help they were
given. Frankly, it is there. It is available to anybody who wants
to look at it.
938. Excuse me: access is booked up until June,
so if I was a researcher and I got in touch with your company
and said, "I want to come to look at the documents in the
depository", I would be given a date after June. That is
not encouraging, is it?
(Mr Broughton) It has been open—I think you
have received our response—since February last year. I think
on 45 per cent of the days that it was open nobody attended. That
is actually the time when one might have expected to have most
attention, when it was first open. I think it is interesting to
note that in the time it has been open we have not had one single
scientist go, one single academic go. The kind of people who might
be looking for research have not attended at all, not once. The
only people who have attended have been lawyers for prospective
litigants and public advocacy groups. We have only had one party
in the entire year, 1999, ASH, which is a UK based party which
has attended to my recollection. The access is there. There is
no indication to me that serious researchers are showing any interest
in the papers whatsoever.
Mrs Gordon
939. Can I follow that up? First of all, could
I say that it was a very interesting visit yesterday to Guildford
and staff were very helpful and we appreciate that. But if I take
up the question of access again, given that it is not on the Internet,
the physical access, the place itself, is fairly inaccessible.
It is between stations. You are talking about researchers who
may have to travel there independently. It is quite a difficult
place to reach, so that is one issue. The opening hours I understand
are between 10 and four and we were also told that sometimes one
of the boxes or documents can take up to half an hour to come
up from the depository. Obviously there is a limited amount you
can do in that time if you are waiting for documents. I wanted
to ask you about opening hours. They did tell us there that it
is now up to 60 per cent booked up, which is quite good, and the
fact that there are only six people at a time allowed in. It was
a fairly sparse room and that was the only room they were allowed
to go into and you only allow one organisation at a time to use
those facilities. I would like your comment on that, whether you
feel it could be open longer hours. The other thing was, while
we are talking about the Internet and scanning, I understand that
the documents in the boxes are not the original documents because
of wear and tear, so they are photocopies of documents. I would
like to ask why, when all that was being done and all these millions
of documents were being photocopied, it was not possible, instead
of photocopying them, to scan them at that time.
(Mr Broughton) As to the last question, I have absolutely
no idea. It was done over a period. As I say, it was put together
very quickly.
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