Further re AGM Statement

British American Tobacco PLC
21 April 2004

              Unreasonable regulation - the "unfinished business"

Martin Broughton, who retires as Chairman of British American Tobacco in June,
told shareholders at his final Annual General Meeting today that, after 11 years
at the helm, he had one area of regret for "unfinished business".

He criticised unreasonable regulation which can harass, offend and socially
exclude people who smoke.

Mr Broughton said British American Tobacco seeks to work with governments to
achieve sound and fair regulation that can help to reduce the impact of tobacco
on public health, can tackle under-age smoking and can also ensure that adult
consumers are allowed to continue making informed choices about a legal product.

Many governments welcome this constructive approach, he added, but "some health
policy makers show signs of having been 'captured' by narrowly-based, vociferous
anti-tobacco activists, who are sometimes even funded by the regulators they are
lobbying.

"I would ask a single-interest pressure group that operates in this peculiar
mode: whom exactly do you represent, and to whom are you accountable?"

"For tobacco," said Mr Broughton, "policy-making can flout accepted good
regulatory practice.  Laws can go far beyond what is reasonable and can appear
to be 'cut and pasted' from pressure group proposals with little basis in sound
science, cost / benefit or even basic notions of a fair society."

Graphic picture health warnings, for example, "can offend and harass consumers"
yet in fact give them no more information than the print warnings.

He warned that if regulators are "captured" by lobbies driven by narrow and
unrepresentative interests, consumers who choose to smoke - and pay ever
increasing taxes to do so - will have every right to ask if their governments
have let them down.

Any regulator could see openly whom British American Tobacco represents, he
added.  The Group stands for its consumers "who should not be criminalised or
made to suffer social exclusion", for its commercial partners, shareholders and
employees and for "concepts that matter in making laws, such as justice, balance
and avoiding perverse outcomes".

The full text of the AGM speech is published separately and on www.bat.com.

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