Health Bill [HL]

That is a question for the Norwegian Government. I now turn to the other part of the equation, the collateral damage that will be caused if this measure were approved. It is striking how little we hear from the Department of Health about commercial rights and freedoms. In the document called Smoking Kills in 1998, the Government referred to, ""the legitimate desire of retailers to display products for sale"." That is in paragraph 3.12. The same phrase was used in consultation on the 2002 Act. The Health Minister, Yvette Cooper, speaking in the other place in 2001, said: ""It is perfectly legitimate … for products to be displayed, with prices, so that they can be sold because after all, tobacco is a legal product".—[Official Report, Commons, 13/2/01; col. 220.]" We need to remind ourselves of those words. To prevent a retailer from displaying a product that may be legally sold is a step that we should take only with the firmest of evidence that it is justified for overriding reasons. The supermarkets are big enough to look after themselves. The retailers that I am worried about are the small shopkeepers, the proprietors of corner shops. There are about 50,000 small corner shops in the UK. The organisations representing those small shop keepers have told me of their acute worry that a point-of-sale ban on the display of tobacco will do serious harm to their trade. The level of concern is very high. A year ago, before the proposals were published, the Tobacco Retailers Alliance had 16,000 members; it now has 26,000. They are most worried about the effect that a display ban will have on the footfall in their shops. Tobacco sales represent the bedrock of a small shop’s turnover. People who come in to buy cigarettes typically buy other things as well—often goods with a higher profit margin than tobacco. If those people cease to patronise small shops, first, because they cannot see the product and, secondly, because they believe that supermarkets are bound to carry a larger range of goods at lower prices, the effect on trade for many small shops could well be terminal. What do the Government think they are doing in bearing down on small shops at a time when retailers are already under acute pressure from the economic downturn? From the start of this whole consultation, retailers have been consistently excluded. No Minister has met a representative of the National Federation of Retail Newsagents. The concerns of the trade and the evidence that it has produced for those concerns are simply dismissed.