Ban on tobacco advertising to be law 'within months'

A ban on tobacco advertising is likely to become law within months after the Government backed legislation to outlaw it yesterday.

Forty years after the Royal College of Physicians first called for a ban, Alan Milburn, the Secretary of State for Health, confirmed ministers would open up parliamentary time to enable it to pass the Commons by the autumn.

He condemned manufacturers for promoting a "deadly habit" as he backed a Private Members Bill, sponsored by Liberal Democrat Lord Clement-Jones, which cleared the Lords yesterday.

The decision, which came as a Department of Health survey showed one in 10 children aged 11 to 15 are regular smokers, prompted celebrations among medical groups, who said a ban would save up to 3,000 lives a year. The Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Bill reintroduces legislation which collapsed last year when it ran out of time in the Commons before the general election.

A Department of Health source said last night: "We are going to take this on as part of Government business and the only thing that would stop it is another election."

The Bill will ban billboard and print advertising, marketing promotions and the sponsorship of sporting events. There will also be curbs on the way cigarettes are displayed in shops. But the controversial concession to Formula One, which sparked the Bernie Ecclestone affair, has been kept, allowing its teams to retain tobacco sponsorship until 2006.

Simon Clark, director of the Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco (Forest), claimed the Bill may violate the European Convention on Human Rights.

He said: "A ban on tobacco advertising is an unwarranted attack on the rights of adult consumers to receive information about a legitimate consumer product."

But a spokeswoman for the Royal College of Physicians said: "In the long term the banning of tobacco advertising could mean a significant reduction in the number of people dying from smoking-related diseases, which currently is 120,000 people every year, making it our single biggest killer."