Sir Alexander Maxwell

Facing him were Sir Alexander Maxwell, the TAC chairman, R S W Clarke and E J Partridge, chairman and vice-chairman of Imperial Tobacco, R W S Plumley and C A C Bulpitt, managing director and assistant managing director of Carreras, E J Foord from Gallaher, Geoffrey Todd as Director of the TMSC and (a new arrival) A D McCormick of British American Tobacco.
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Maxwell wrote the next day to confirm the industry's agreement in principle:

the interpretation of these principles and their application to the other media are not without difficulty.They will, however, give further thought to these matters - in particular to the problem of how to ensure reasonable uniformity of interpretation - and will let you know their conclusions.They will also consider whether or not it would seem desirable for the industry to announce its intentions in this regard at some suitable time.

It was not until November that the industry produced a statement: Partridge called at the Central Office of Information on 8 November to give Fife Clark a copy and, on Fife Clark's advice, Maxwell wrote the next day to Lord Hailsham, saying that since their meeting

On 18 December, Sir Alexander Maxwell, who occupied an ambiguous position between the tobacco industry and the Board of Trade[31], handed to Sir Harold Himsworth, the MRC Secretary, a memorandum rehearsing the industry's doubts about the link between smoking and lung cancer but making an offer of £250,000 - over £4 mn in 1999 money - over seven years ‘for specific research into the real cause of cancer of the lung.
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Such research would, of course, embrace other possible factors besides smoking.' Maxwell signed the memorandum as chairman of the Tobacco Advisory Committee ‘on behalf of the leading U.K. Tobacco Manufacturers'.
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31. A Board of Trade file opened in 1955 records that Sir Alexander Maxwell, a tobacco leaf merchant, was appointed Tobacco Controller in 1940 to deal with wartime shortages.He had two committees to advise him - the Tobacco Manufacturers Advisory Committee and the Tobacco Distributors Advisory Committee.After the war, he became unpaid Tobacco Adviser to the Board of Trade while continuing with his own business.The TDAC had last met in 1949, but the TMAC, commonly known as the Tobacco Advisory Committee, was still meeting ten times a year on Board of Trade premises and with Board of Trade servicing.However, it was operating purely as a manufacturers' association: the Board of Trade (the file records) rarely had need of advice and never asked the Committee for it.Maxwell, moreover, was inclined to use his position to obtain or seek to obtain commercially confidential information lodged with the Board of Trade by tobacco companies, which he was not above making use of for his own ends and revealing to others, again to the Board of Trade's embarrassment.The Board of Trade decided to wind up the two committees but did not succeed in doing so until Maxwell retired three years later - PRO file BT 258.284. [back]

32. Personal communication, 19 January 1998.

The Cabinet approved this version with minor amendments[19] and the same day Turton arranged to see Sir Alexander Maxwell ‘as Chairman of the Tobacco Advisory Committee of the Board of Trade' - presumably to inform him of the terms of the statement, although there is no minute of the meeting on the file.
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Maxwell was its chairman, and Sir Alfred Egerton FRS and Sir Ronald Fisher FRS had ‘consented to act as Scientific Consultants to the Committee'.
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44. Sir Alexander Maxwell, as chairman of the Tobacco Manufacturers Standing Committee, wrote to Sir John Hawton on 7 June 1957 with the typescript of their first annual report, and about the same time Partridge asked Sir Herbert Brittain at the Treasury for advice about the timing of publication of the report.