No wonder the successive Conservative governments he was a member of did all they could to protect the tobacco industry's interests at terrible cost to the health and lives of British citizens. Although, taking a cynical view, I suppose on average more Labour than Conservative voters will eventually die as a result.

Those responsible for the tobacco industry - and Mr Clark must surely rank among them - are morally, if not legally, every bit as criminal and ruthless as those who deal in hard drugs. For despite all the evidence of the terrible harm it does (about 3 million deaths every year), they continue to spend billions of dollars promoting their addictive and deadly products.