Health Bill [HL]

Last Thursday, the noble Baroness, Lady Young, questioned where I was coming from in arguing against the provisions. Very simply, I come from a school that rates personal and commercial freedoms more highly than many societal goods. I do not come from the school of big government. Big government may sometimes be necessary, but we have to justify its intrusion into our lives before allowing it. It is right that we look at the scientific evidence both for and against, but in the end this is a political judgment. It is a judgment that weighs up prospective public health benefits on the one hand and the risk to commercial freedoms and the viability of businesses on the other. Therefore, this debate is both appropriate and necessary. Those of us who were prepared to sign up to the ban on tobacco advertising and smoking in public places judged that the case for those measures had been sufficiently made. I fear that in this case I am in the other camp. Unfortunately for her, the Minister's reply has taken me no further forward in accepting the Government’s arguments, although I shall of course look carefully at all the sources of reference that she highlighted. It is not clear to me why, if the Government are so exercised about point-of-sale displays and the possibility that they may have come to resemble de facto advertisements, they do not regulate to restrict the size and content of such displays instead of banning them altogether. After all, it is not so long ago that Ministers felt able make a clear distinction between what constituted an advertisement, which, in their eyes, was harmful, and what constituted a display, which they felt was not. If we accept for a moment without further evidence that some displays have changed and become more eye-catching and glitzy, why not regulate to make them less glitzy and take us back to how displays supposedly used to be? That option does not appear to have been considered at any length by Ministers. Another issue needs to be mentioned, but the Minister did not do so. If tobacco companies are prevented from engaging in commercial competition at point of sale, which is what a display ban would mean, they would resort to competing on price. One brand of cigarette is already trying to do that. The recommended retail price of that brand per pack is only 1p above the aggregate amount of government taxes. What do we want to achieve? Do we want cigarettes to become cheaper? As far as the young are concerned, the cheaper, the better. We have only to think of the damage done by the illicit market in smuggled tobacco, which can be half the price of the duty-paid product to appreciate the risk that we are running with this measure. Incidentally, is the Minister aware that the black market in cigarettes does not feature in Iceland? That is another reason why comparisons with that country are somewhat dangerous. The Canadian Convenience Stores Association stated: ""In Canada (since the inception of display bans) we have seen unprecedented growth of contraband/illegal tobacco and now one in every two cigarettes sold are sourced through the black market"." If we look at what drives young people to take up smoking, the main influences are: peer pressure; image consciousness, because it is seen as being cool; and having parents who smoke. We are simply not in a position to say that they take up smoking because of displays in shops. There is no evidence for that other than repeated assertion. We can produce a collection of speech bubbles from kids who have been interviewed about the eye-catching nature of displays but we cannot base an evidential case on speech bubbles. The most that these show is that some displays are eye-catching; they do not show that they affect smoking behaviour. A number of noble Lords, including the Minister, have pointed to legislation in other countries. Perhaps I may end by stating the obvious. Passing legislation in this House is not a matter of routinely copying other countries or jurisdictions. If it were, our lives would be immeasurably easier. It behoves us as responsible legislators to decide these issues for ourselves, looking at the circumstances particular to our own country. I do not think that we should be deflected in the slightest from having a thorough debate and reaching our own conclusions. We will doubtless continue the debate and reach those conclusions at the next stage of the Bill.