Health Bill [HL]

I am most grateful to the noble Baroness for her patronage. She will know that there are hundreds of tiny little items on a gantry in the shop, most of which cost less than £10. If that is upmarket, so be it. It is to be hoped that the Minister will give the Committee guidance on precisely how the relevant regulations governing the selling of a retailer’s legitimate tobacco products will be framed. I wish to spend a few moments discussing the illicit market, which I do not think anybody has addressed with the exception of my noble friend on the Front Bench, who did so relatively shortly. As I said in my opening remarks, we should be clear that Her Majesty’s Revenue is losing something like £3 billion to £4 billion a year through counterfeit tobacco products and illegal smuggling. Seventeen per cent of all cigarettes, and 59 per cent of hand-rolling tobacco, are estimated to be brought into this country illegally. Since 2000, something like £26 billion worth of such goods have come into this country. The appeal of the illicit products is obvious—the price. There is a 50 to 100 per cent price differential between the UK and the Continent. I am sorry to say that these illicit products are particularly attractive to young people. Why? If you are a student or a young person who has just started work, your income is restricted. Obviously, if you want to smoke, you buy from the cheapest source; and if the cheapest source is the local boot fair or the local environmental fair, that is where you will go. In the last survey undertaken by Trading Standards North West, a large survey involving 11,000 14 to 17 year-olds, some 36 per cent claimed that they had bought cigarettes from an illicit trader, while 56 per cent had bought packets with a foreign language health warning—in other words, not duty paid, and they probably could not understand the health message either. So this is a very serious point, and it is no good the Department of Health suggesting that out of sight is out of mind because that presumption is totally incorrect. It needs to get its act together in this area because I am a great believer in public health. It is one of the reasons I came into politics at all, and certainly when I was leader of the London Borough of Islington, it was clear that public health is absolutely vital. This trade is totally undermining our public health policy, it will grow and grow with a display ban, and the Government need to be very conscious of that. I conclude by saying that the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, gave an extremely good précis of the situation in relation to the effects on competition, and I do not need to repeat a word of his other than totally to agree with him. With that, I end my remarks and hope that I have followed what the Chief Whip requested, and I look forward to listening to and hopefully getting some real, positive and clear answers from the Minister.