Health Bill [HL]

It would be hard for me to disagree more with what my noble friend has said. I should declare an unpaid interest as a trustee of Action on Smoking and Health and a patron of the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation. I am rather depressed at the way propaganda from the tobacco industry seems to be repeated in this Committee. Back in the 1950s it attempted to deny Professor Doll’s evidence that there was a link between ill-health and smoking. Then it attempted to deny that nicotine was an addictive substance. Then it attempted to deny that second-hand smoke was dangerous. At each of those stages it resisted legislation designed to deal with those issues. When it became impossible for it to advertise, following the legislation passed in 2002, it turned its ingenuity to new forms of marketing and promotion, of which displays in shops are probably the most spectacular examples. I am pleased that the noble Earl has had a conversation with Professor Gerard Hastings. If, like other Members of the Committee, he had attended the presentation, seen the pictures of the displays and realised how they have taken over as the most powerful form of advertising—cigarettes are on sale alongside chocolate and other confectionery, and look like an absolutely normal product to children who go into the shops—he would have realised that Professor Hastings’ case is a substantive one. The noble Baroness asked why tobacco is different from any other product and why it has to be treated in this way. The answer is very simple: it is the only product which, when used in accordance with the manufacturer’s instructions, is likely to kill you. It is a dangerous product and it leads to ill-health. This House and the other place have a responsibility to dissuade young people from taking up the habit. I do not know whether these measures on point-of-sale display will achieve everything that the Government hope for them, but it is the case that 190,000 11 to 15 year-olds smoke. In Scotland, the Scottish Schools Adolescent Lifestyle and Substance Abuse Survey found that 47 per cent of 13 year-olds and 82 per cent of 15 year-olds had bought cigarettes in shops. That demonstrates that we have to do something about the problem of young people acquiring cigarettes from retail outlets. I hope very much that when we consider this provision at later stages, the House will agree to pass the legislation. What we are doing is in accord certainly with what most provinces in Canada and Iceland have already done. It is also much more relevant than the case of New Zealand, where no definite decision has been taken to go back on the prohibition of point-of-sale display. The new right-wing Government are simply reviewing the decision. We have had a decision from Northern Ireland this week to which the noble Lord, Lord Laird, has referred, and we have had a decision from the Irish Republic; we have had a decision from Scotland and we have had a decision from Norway. We are in the vanguard with them in the same way as we were in the vanguard for introducing the ban on smoking in public places. I am very proud of what we did in this House and in this country in terms of making public places more pleasant and safer for people because they do not have to suffer the effects of second-hand smoke. This is a logical extension of that policy, and it is very important that we support it.