Appeal judges have rejected a legal action brought by a tobacco giant to challenge Scottish Government plans to ban the open display of cigarettes and prohibit the use of vending machines for the sale of tobacco.

They turned down a challenge brought by Imperial Tobacco, which claimed the measures were beyond the legislative competence of the Holyrood Parliament.

Lord President, Lord Hamilton, sitting with Lord Reed and Lord Brodie, at the Court of Session in Edinburgh, ruled the measures in the Tobacco and Primary Medical Services (Scotland) Act 2010 were not outside the Parliament's powers.

He said: "Such display is conceived to encourage the purchase of such products. As the consumption, particularly by smoking, of such products is believed to be adverse to health, the section is designed to inhibit, without prohibiting, their purchase."

He said the vending machine ban was concerned with a different, but linked, problem – "the ready access by children and young persons to tobacco products by way of automatic vending machines".

"Such ready access is conceived to be harmful, as if facilitates the acquisition and ultimate smoking, by children and young persons, of tobacco products."

Public Health Minister Michael Matheson said: "Each year in Scotland, 15,000 children and young people start smoking and the potential impact on their health is frightening. A child who starts smoking at 15 or younger is three times more likely to die of cancer as a result than someone who starts smoking in their mid-twenties."