Health Bill [HL]

I offer my support for a comprehensive strategy. Indeed, my name is added to Amendment 107A, which proposes such a strategy. The noble Lord, Lord Patel, spoke about youth. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, described how difficult it is to give up as an adult. We know that 80 per cent of smokers begin smoking when they are children. I would welcome a strategy that focused on what more we can do to prevent children smoking. Sixty-eight per cent of teenage mothers are smokers and 45 per cent of them smoke during their pregnancies. That must be a further way of holding them back, depriving their children of opportunity and perpetuating a cycle of deprivation. This country in particular needs to think about the welfare of its children. On many occasions my noble friend Lord Northbourne has raised in the House the difficulties experienced by families. The right honourable Iain Duncan Smith has reported on the difficulties that many of our families face. A recent UNICEF report placed us bottom of the developed world in terms of the welfare of children, with the United States just above us. The Children’s Society’s Good Childhood Inquiry highlighted how many children are now growing up in the absence of one or other parent. A third of our 16 year-olds now live apart from their biological father. When parents are absent, overwhelmed or unprepared, society has to do more to give children the right lead. Given these difficulties, we need to think very carefully about how we can avoid children getting sucked into a lifetime habit which will be so harmful to themselves and to their children. I hope that the noble Baroness will give this amendment very serious consideration.