Edited by Neil Collins, 28 July 2005.

The thousands of executives who now have to produce Corporate Social Responsibility reports might spare a thought for British American Tobacco. If it's hard to find anything intelligent to say about the corporate social responsibility of a clothes retailer or property company just think of the challenge it poses for a tobacco company. To say that BAT has risen to the challenge would be something of an overstatement but it has done its best to reconcile the fact that its products ruin the health of its customers with the need to follow the rules and look "responsible." Its latest CSR report does at least face the killer question: can social reporting be meaningful for a tobacco company? Alas, the answer seems to be No. "For organisations facing less debate about their social and ethical acceptability, producing social reports is relatively straightforward," it explains. "We are finding that although our products can be seen as controversial, our work in social reporting and embedding our Business Principles are being accepted as meaningful. Stakeholders say we have made a good start and we hope that, over time, our commitment and sincerity will increasingly be recognised."

This is a magnificent piece of gobbledegook, combining as it does a mixture of the self-righteous and the self-satisfied. BAT may have commitment and sincerity, assuming any corporation is capable of such things, but there's no getting away from the basic product; without cigarettes, BAT has no business to be committed or sincere about.

Whatever its "stakeholders" may think, its shareholders have every reason to be pleased that it has stuck to a business it knows, and which throws off cash as well as ash. In the past five years, the shares have gone from ?4 to almost ?11, far outperforming the main indices. If the management must grit their teeth and pay lip service to social reporting, the shareholders will probably understand, even if they have to pay for producing this politically correct nonsense.