RECENTLY re-elected North Wiltshire MP James Gray has dismissed concerns over his acceptance of hospitality from the tobacco industry as “snide and absurd”.

The British Medical Journal found 38 MPs accepted more than £60,000-worth of hospitality from the tobacco industry since 2010 including tickets to the the men’s final at Wimbledon, Chelsea Flower Show and a Paul McCartney concert.

Twenty of the MPs recently voted against plain packaging on tobacco products, including Mr Gray, who accepted hospitality worth £1,132 from Japan Tobacco International at the Chelsea Flower Show in 2011.

Responding to criticism from campaign group Action on Smoking and Health Mr Gray said: “That visit, which came about partly as a result of my membership of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Horticulture and Gardening, is properly declared in the Commons Declaration of Members’ Interests.

“Any suggestion that that perfectly legitimate and properly declared visit to Chelsea was in any way connected to my voting against plain packaging of cigarettes some five years later is, of course, both snide and absurd.

“There are powerful arguments in favour of, and against, plain packaging. On balance I concluded that banning brand differentiation would not help reduce smoking.

“The insinuation that that decision was in any way connected with a visit with 37 of my colleagues to the Chelsea Flower Show some five years earlier is both nonsensical and insulting, and I shall be making no further comment on it.”