Jump to full article: The Guardian (uk), 2003-01-22
Author: Patrick Butler
Intro: One of Britain's most outspoken anti-smoking campaigners is to take a job at the heart of government policy development as an adviser to the prime minister.
Clive Bates, 41, for the past five years the high-profile director of Action on Smoking and Health (Ash), leaves the charity in March. He will join the prime minister's strategy unit, based in the cabinet office, in May.
Bates, formerly a Greenpeace activist, will work as a team leader across a range of policy issues - but is unlikely to be involved in work on tobacco.
His move to Whitehall as a civil servant will surprise some, given his reputation as a vigorous lobbyist for the anti-tobacco cause. . .
His most important achievement at Ash, he believes, has been the charity's work on exposing the role of the tobacco industry in tobacco smuggling. He is also proud of the charity's role in holding ministers to account on their 1997 election promise to ban tobacco advertising - a promise finally met last year with the passing into law of the Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Act. . .
Simon Clark, Bates's opposite number at the pro-choice, pro-smoking group Forest, describes Bates's tenure at Ash as "a breath of fresh air" after the "antics" of his predecessors.
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