British American Tobacco - Independent assurance

Independent assurance

Ensuring confidence in our processes

Independent review of our sustainability reporting is crucial to helping stakeholders place trust in our processes and in what we report. It also supports our commitment to openness and transparency.

Our approach to independent assurance builds on our long history of open engagement with our stakeholders. This is the fourth year our Independent Stakeholder Panel has commented on the materiality of our ESG Report and provides a collective opinion on BAT’s performance, while we provide a response to their statement as part of our commitment to continuous improvement. In addition, the consultancy Corporate Citizenship also provided limited assurance, in accordance with the ISAE 3000 standard, of selected ESG data in our 2020 ESG Report.

The Stakeholder Panel members are::

Philippa Foster Back CBE (Panel chair), Member of the Institute of Business Ethics International Advisory Council – Philippa is a long-standing advocate for high standards of business behaviour based on ethical values.
Scott Ballin, Health Policy Adviser – Scott has spent more than 40 years involved in issues related to tobacco and health and is a key opinion leader on tobacco harm reduction.
Prof John Boardman, Emeritus Fellow, Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford – John has published over 150 papers primarily focused on soil management and land degradation.
Peder Michael Pruzan-Jorgensen, Founder and Director at ORCA & Co. ApS – a strategy advisory firm committed to working with companies and capital owners to maximise business value and societal impact by placing ESG at the heart of decision-making

We also provide a response to the Panel’s statement as part of our commitment to continuous improvement.

The independent statements, as well as our response to the Panel’s statement, for our reporting in the previous years can viewed below.

Stakeholder Panel's Statement and Our Response (117 kb)

Corporate Citizenship's Statement (101 kb)