Health Bill [HL]

My Lords, it is a real pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Masham of Ilton. I think that I speak for all your Lordships when I say that it has been a great privilege to be able to listen to speeches not only from her but also from my noble friend Lady Wilkins and the noble Baroness, Lady Campbell of Surbiton. We are fortunate to have them present when we debate health issues and to hear their powerful and effective speeches. I intend to speak on the subject of tobacco control and the Bill’s related measures. In doing so, I declare an unpaid interest as a trustee of Action on Smoking and Health and as a patron of the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation. Like most other speakers, I warmly welcome what the Government are proposing in the Bill. I congratulate them again on securing such overwhelming popular support for the measures that were taken in the Health Act 2006 to protect workers and non-smokers from the dangers and discomfort of second-hand smoke. It is perhaps hard to recall now what it was like to have a drink in a pub or a meal in a restaurant in a smoky environment, and it is great that one country after another around the world is following the lead that we in the British Isles set—I say the British Isles because Ireland was first and Scotland was second—in passing comprehensive legislation. Since the publication of the tobacco control White Paper, Smoking Kills, a decade ago, progress has been remarkable. Your Lordships will recall that it started in this House, when we passed the Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Act as a Private Member’s Bill in 2002, which brought the vast majority of tobacco advertising and sponsorship to an end. That legislation in addition to a wide range of stop-smoking services and the subsequent measures in the Health Act 2006 have succeeded in persuading 2 million fewer people to smoke compared with 10 years ago. Millions of people are now protected from exposure to second-hand smoke in the workplace, and in the first year since the introduction of the smoke-free legislation, many thousands more smokers have given up the habit. So this is clearly the right moment to consider how we can build on that progress and address the need to tackle the problem of children and young people thinking about starting to smoke. That is behind the measures in the Bill, which I hope will be part of a wider tobacco-control strategy. Let us be clear what we mean by this. Every day, hundreds of children try smoking for the first time. Eight out of 10 smokers become addicted before they turn 19. As other speakers have said, smoking remains the single biggest preventable cause of death, killing more people than alcohol, obesity, illegal drugs and road accidents put together. This debate is about protection—the protection of children and young people from a deadly addiction. One in seven 15 year-olds is a regular smoker. As we know, since the introduction of the Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Act, the tobacco industry has worked hard to produce smarter and innovative measures to target and recruit ““new customers””. One example of this is tobacco point-of-sale displays which have become more elaborate and eye-catching. I am delighted that the Government have based their proposals in the Bill on research. Some of the most important research has been carried out by Professor Gerard Hastings, director of the Centre for Tobacco Control Research. He investigated the complex relationship between tobacco marketing at the point of sale and young people’s intention to smoke. He found that: "““In 2006, almost half —46 per cent of UK teens—were aware of tobacco marketing at point of sale””." Moreover, the likelihood of a young person stating an intention to smoke may increase by 35 per cent with each brand that they can recall having seen at the point of sale. Bans on point-of-sale displays have been introduced in a number of jurisdictions. A useful case study is Iceland, which introduced a ban on point-of-sale displays in 2001. The result, which is contrary to the misleading briefing sent to some noble Lords by the Tobacco Manufacturers’ Association, is that prevalence in 15 to 16 year-olds dropped from 18.6 per cent in 1999 to 13.6 per cent in 2003. This rate of drop was twice the rate of decline in the prior four-year period. There is similar evidence from other countries. I am sure that the Minister will be able to elaborate on that when we discuss these issues in Committee. Can the Minister outline how it is intended that trading standards officers will be involved in the enforcement of the point-of-sale legislation? When the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill was debated last year in this Chamber, the Minister committed to giving to Parliament a report on the effectiveness of orders in preventing under-age tobacco sales. Will he monitor the enforcement and impact of the prohibition of point-of-sale displays and in due course report back to Parliament? I turn briefly to tobacco smuggling, to which a number of noble Lords have referred and which resulted in an estimated £1.7 billion loss of revenue to the Exchequer in 2006-07. The supply of cheap illegal tobacco is severely undermining other tobacco control measures. I would welcome comments from the Minister on how trading standards officers will play a part in enforcing the age restrictions and can be empowered to play a greater role in tackling smuggling. The case for a positive licensing system, where each local authority is required to keep a list of all retailers and establishments which sell tobacco and apply for a licence, is very strong. It would be a proportionate measure to tackle smuggled tobacco. Local authorities are already obliged to keep a list of all establishments that sell fireworks and alcohol. Why is there not a similar case for selling tobacco? If the Government are serious about taking action against smuggling, why not give our trading standards officers the strongest framework in which they can operate? We must remember that the personal cost of smuggling is very large: 22 per cent of all UK smoked tobacco products are smuggled. If we were to eliminate it, the result could be a 5 per cent reduction in tobacco consumption, which in turn could lead to 4,000 fewer deaths each year in the longer term. As the Minister said at the beginning of our debate, there are no UK-specific laws which govern the use of vending machines. While only 1 per cent of all cigarette sales are from tobacco vending machines, there is a disproportionate number of sales to under-18s. An estimated 17 per cent of 11 to 15 year-olds who regularly smoke get their cigarettes from vending machines. A recent test-purchasing survey by the local government regulatory authority, LACORS, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, referred earlier, found that, on average, young people were able to buy cigarettes from vending machines on more than four in 10 occasions. Indeed, a number of councils reported that test purchases by young people failed to be prevented on any occasion. It is clear, therefore, that young people obtain their cigarettes from tobacco vending machines and that the current voluntary restrictions on their location do not guarantee protection for young people. I know that the Government are thinking in the short term of age-proofing the machines. I hope that that they will not; I hope that they will go for an outright ban from the beginning, because age-proofing was tried in Japan and did not succeed in preventing young people buying tobacco. It would make much better sense if they were taken out of establishments or converted to sell other goods rather than tobacco. Several noble Lords have referred to something that is not in the Bill, namely a provision to force the industry to introduce plain packaging. My view is that that would reduce the appeal of cigarette packets to young people. Again, if we look at Professor Hastings’ research, we find that the proportion of young people who are aware of new pack designs increased from 11 per cent to 18 per cent between 2002 and 2006. The Government are already committed to further research; I know that they have already carried some out into the impact of plain packaging. I wonder whether my noble friend will, in Committee, consider taking advantage of this Bill by giving the Secretary of State an enabling power to introduce plain packaging at a later date when more evidence is available. We need to bear in mind that the WHO framework convention on tobacco control has agreed guidelines which define retail displays, vending machines and tobacco packaging as forms of advertising and promotion. It would seem sensible for us to fall in line with what others are doing. Finally, I remind the House that the measures on tobacco control proposed in this Bill are overwhelmingly popular with the public. Over 50,000 people signed Cancer Research UK’s ““Out of Sight, Out of Mind”” petition calling for the prohibition of tobacco point-of-sale displays and tobacco vending machines and the introduction of plain packaging. Over 80 per cent of the 96,000 responses to the Department of Health consultation also supported these proposed measures. I wish this Bill well and believe that it will make an important contribution to reducing the number of children and young people who take up smoking, and thus further significantly improve public health.