Health Bill [HL]

My Lords, we all knew that today would be a hard fought and passionate debate, and so it has been. The Smoking Kills White Paper of 1998, the Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Act 2002 and the "smoke-free" legislation of 2006 have educated people about the harms of smoking, have controlled tobacco advertising and have stopped people smoking in public places. These measures have been spectacularly successful in reducing the number of people who smoke; we now have the lowest smoking rates on record. There was no way of knowing how far-reaching the good effects would be when we passed legislation on advertising and for smoke-free public places. The noble Lords, Lord Clement-Jones, Lord Walton of Detchant and Lord Patel, my noble friend Lord Faulkner, the noble Baronesses, Lady Howarth, Lady Finlay, Lady Emerton and Lady O’Cathain, and many other noble Lords fought hard against hostility, scepticism and misinformation to win these great reforms. We are asking noble Lords to do this again this evening. The success of the past means that, since 1998, 2.4 million fewer people have been smoking and countless lives will be saved as time moves on. However, this success also means that the future of the tobacco industry depends increasingly on recruiting new people to smoke and keeping them smoking. We know that two-thirds of people who have smoked regularly started smoking before they were 18. We also know that if they had not started smoking before age 21, there is a very good chance that they would never have become addicted smokers. It is to help ensure that our children and young people do not become addicted smokers at an early age that we want to remove tobacco promotion through cigarette displays. We do not want cigarettes in our corner shops alongside the sweets, the magazines, the soft drinks and the newspapers. The noble Earl completely failed to address that point, or the point about how susceptible children are to promotions; advertising, sponsorship and celebrity association are all tools that marketing agencies use to promote a product and to encourage young people to use it, to want it and to feel uncool without it. It is true that we have stopped tobacco advertising; why, then, do we need to go further? It is because the tobacco displays in our shops constitute promotion in themselves. In 2002, when we debated the Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Bill, we were prepared to leave tobacco displays in stores alone, but we have since seen them develop with lighting, colours and features designed to draw the eye such as clocks and tower cases. There are glass containers strung from the ceiling, and transparent counter-top boxes on which you place your change. Display is enough to cause a problem on its own, without those fancy trimmings; it, along with in-store product positioning, is a central feature of marketing. Being close to the till is a prominent and highly valued position, which is exploited to great effect. Cancer Research UK has clearly identified the role of tobacco displays in prompting young people to smoke in the UK. Even when the role of other, important factors that noble Lords have mentioned—including parental smoking, sibling and peer smoking, gender, age and social background—is taken into account then brand awareness, based on packaging and point-of-sale display, drives smoking among children who have never smoked before. The noble Earl tried to cast doubt on the research that has been mentioned; I will respond briefly to that. The Smee and Goddard reports were both conducted in the 1990s before measures were taken to limit tobacco promotion and, since 1998, we have had smoking prevalence fall from 11 per cent to just 6 per cent among 11 to 15 year-olds. The noble Earl, Lord Howe, is correct that smoking uptake does not depend on a single factor; that is why we need to continue to educate, to provide services for stopping smoking and to prevent tobacco promotion. The Cancer Research UK report is based on a long-term study, which several noble Lords have mentioned. I shall not go into detail on that, but there is no doubt that a study that, over nine years, involved 5,900 children between 11 and 16 is one that we need to take extremely seriously. We have a responsibility to protect young people from tobacco promotion.