No To Plain Packs signatures were genuine, admits DoH

From The Times...

Imperial Tobacco ‘did not fake campaign signatures’

Imperial Tobacco was asked by the Government to prove that thousands of postcards opposing plain packaging on cigarette packets were not fakes after questions were raised over the similarity of the handwriting.

The world’s fourth-largest tobacco manufacturer was asked by the Department of Health to inspect 4,900 signed postcards, correspondence obtained by The Times under the Freedom of Information Act shows.

... Imperial has now inspected the postcards and said: “We were able to confirm that we were fully satisfied of their genuine nature.

“The Department of Health has subsequently agreed and confirmed that the responses will be considered as part of the ongoing consultation process.” It added that there had in total been about half a million responses to the consultation expressing views against plain packaging.

The department confirmed that it was now satisfied with the postcards.

Jolly good. That's all sorted then. However, as Tim Worstall says...

But note that no queries were made over the responses in favour of plain packaging...

Indeed. After all, there is good reason to suspect foul play on the part of the pro-plain pack supporters. Let's remind ourselves of the round robin e-mail sent by the quasi-academic UK Centre for Tobacco Control Studies back in summer.

You can only vote once on each petition, but I would seriously doubt that there will be cross checking between charity petitions so it may be worth signing all of them to get your money's worth!

How blatant does the corruption have to be before these people are investigated?