Health Bill [HL]

I support the noble Earl’s amendment to create a new offence of proxy purchase. I do so because of my experience in campaigning for the introduction of a similar offence in relation to alcohol when I was chief executive of the Portman Group, and from seeing the value of that offence in action once it was brought into law in the Licensing (Young Persons) Act 2000, which came into force in January 2001. However, it is relevant to add that in Scotland proxy purchase for alcohol has been an offence since 1976. Comparisons with alcohol legislation are relevant to the tobacco issue. If I remember correctly, the proxy purchase proposal on alcohol began life in another place as a Private Member’s Bill, although in the end, as the noble Earl said, the Government supported it. One of the most compelling parts of the evidence which supported the offence in relation to alcohol was a research finding that showed that the people most likely to approach strangers in the street and ask them to buy alcohol for them were 13 year-old girls. I am not aware of any parallel evidence in relation to tobacco, but I bet 13 year-old girls are the group most likely to approach strangers in the street. Those young girls, of course, will expose themselves to all manner of other dangers as well as to the dangers of smoking. If an offence of proxy purchase was a good idea in relation to alcohol, how much more so is it a good idea in relation to tobacco? I hope, for example, that, as with alcohol, it would trigger a large number of awareness and enforcement campaigns—there are already dozens of these all over the UK in relation to alcohol—involving the police, PCSOs and trading standards officers working together to raise awareness of the law and to enforce it. Of course, comparisons between alcohol and tobacco are not always, or even often, justified and relevant. I support the proposals in the Bill to restrict some of the marketing freedoms around tobacco, but were they made in relation to alcohol I would not support them. That is not to say that there is not sometimes a need for legislation in relation to alcohol, not least for a legal purchase age, but with alcohol there is a genuine role for education to promote moderation and responsibility; that is not the case in relation to tobacco. There is a sensible drinking message but there is no sensible smoking message. However, the amendment which proposes an offence of proxy purchase would introduce a measure which holds good across both alcohol and tobacco. I believe it would command broad support across a wide range of stakeholders, from parents to retailers. We have seen with the smoking ban, first in Scotland and then more recently in England and Wales, that there is an interesting relationship between legislation and culture change; no one now thinks it is right or normal to light up a cigarette in pubs or restaurants. A new offence of proxy purchase is now needed to help change the culture so that unscrupulous adults no longer think it is either right or normal to go into shops and buy cigarettes to pass on to children in the street. Perhaps this time the Government could be on the front foot and not leave it to Scotland to try it first or to a Private Member’s Bill. The Government should give serious consideration to this measure, take the lead and bring it into the main body of the Bill.