The chief executive of Imperial Tobacco has said that proposals to change the way in which cigarettes, cigars and other tobacco products are sold in Britain would not affect sales of his company's brands.

Suggestions including packaging cigarettes in plain boxes, banning shops from displaying cigarettes or stopping packets of ten cigarettes being sold are being put forward by the Department of Health. The consultation into future tobacco regulation closed yesterday.

Gareth Davis, chief executive of Imperial, the world's fourth-largest tobacco company, told The Times: “If these became regulations, they would be anti-competitive and hit small retailers. How could a company launch a new brand of cigarettes? We have to allow adult smokers to make an informed decision.

“We need to concentrate on making sure that existing legislation, such as the change in the age you can buy cigarettes from 16 to 18, is properly enforced.” Mr Davis said that he did not expect any negative impact on sales of Imperial's brands, which include Lambert & Butler and Gitanes, if the proposals were to become law.

Action on Smoking and Health (Ash) told the Department of Health: “Plain packaging with the name of the product in a standard font on a standard background would radically reduce brand appeal to young people and children and should be implemented at the same time as the ban on retail display of tobacco products.”

Tobacco groups argue that the proposals could lead to more counterfeit cigarettes entering the UK, as smokers would find it harder to differentiate between their brands and counterfeits.

Cigarette displays are banned in several Canadian provinces and in Iceland. In Saskatchewan, the first Canadian province to ban displays of cigarettes in retailers, the percentage of adults who smoked increased from 21 per cent in 2002 to 24 per cent in 2003, after the ban was introduced.

Mr Davis attacked plans to ban cigarette vending machines, pointing out that more than 90 per cent of them were in pubs, where under-18s should not be able to buy them.

British American Tobacco (BAT) said that if the Government did not do more to tackle the large black market in tobacco, more young people could take up smoking because counterfeit cigarettes were cheaper.

BAT also argued that a display ban would penalise small retailers, such as corner shops, who derive up to a third of their sales from tobacco.

Michael Prideaux, BAT's director of corporate and regulatory affairs, said: “Care is needed to avoid ineffectual laws with unintended consequences: fuelling the black market that makes cigarettes more accessible to children; ruining the livelihoods of small retailers; undermining a competitive market; and breaching companies' intellectual property rights.”

Ash has proposed setting up a new Tobacco Control Commission to monitor how regulations are changing Britain's smoking habits, and monitoring pregnant women's saliva to see if they are smoking. The UK's smoking rates are falling by about 0.4 per cent each year.

Time please
By Dominic Walsh

— The besieged pub industry yesterday attacked the Government’s proposed ban on cigarette vending machines, claiming that it would exacerbate the devastating impact of last year’s smoking ban

— A survey of 1,000 publicans by the BII, the professional body for the licensed retail sector, found that almost half — 42 per cent — believed that the removal of cigarette machines would further harm their businesses

— About 74 per cent of licensees claimed that the ban on smoking in pubs had been bad for business, with 47 per cent laying off staff as a direct result. Only 14 per cent said that the ban had been good for the industry

— The BII survey comes on the back of figures from the British Beer & Pub Association suggesting that pubs are closing at the rate of 36 a week due to factors including the smoking ban, weak consumer confidence and spiralling costs

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