My Lords, I support Amendment 158 and the others in this group, to which I have added my name. Last Wednesday was national No Smoking Day, and there was an excellent event in a Commons dining room hosted by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Smoking and Health—I declare an interest as an officer of that group—to celebrate the 50th anniversary of ASH. The star speaker was the Public Health Minister, Maggie Throup. She reaffirmed the Government’s commitment to achieving a smoke-free England by 2030 and rightly said that stop-smoking services would be at the centre of the forthcoming tobacco control plan.
NICE has estimated that, for every £1 invested in stop-smoking services, £2.37 will be saved on treating smoking-related diseases and reduced productivity. However, cuts to local public health budgets have disproportionately hit stop-smoking services. They have lost a third of their funding in real terms since 2015, accompanied by a decline in the number of smokers setting quit dates.
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If the Government truly want stop smoking services to be at the centre of the tobacco control plan, these funding cuts must be reversed. The spending review did not reverse the cuts and the levelling up White Paper has also not provided the additional funding. But these amendments, based on a polluter pays levy, could do the job the Government say they want to achieve. The polluter pays levy could also pay for
other vital measures, because smoking is an addiction and to overcome that addiction, smokers need to be motivated to quit.
In the States, a mass media campaign called Tips from Former Smokers is funded by a levy on manufacturers. Over a six-year period, the campaign increased the number of successful quitters by 1 million; it was equally effective with ethnic minorities and smokers with poor mental health, and had healthcare cost savings of $11,400 per lifetime. All those people quit as a result of that campaign. In England, funding for mass media campaigns, which was at US levels in 2009, fell by 90% to only £2 million in 2019. This was matched by a 25% decline in the proportion of adult smokers in England who tried to quit in the previous year. If smokers do not try to quit, they cannot succeed.
I commend to the House the words of the chair of the Government’s independent review of smoking, Javed Khan. Speaking to the Times last week, he said:
“Just look at the Covid experience, mass marketing has a big effect, it really works. The Government went hell for leather, it made an enormous difference in vaccination rates. So why not do something like that again, if we really want to save people’s lives.”
We agree, but the funding must be found, and the best and most realistic option is for the polluter—that is, the tobacco companies—to be made to pay. I support these amendments.