Health Bill [HL]

There are three further reasons why Clause 19 should be rejected, over and above those advanced so ably by the noble Lord, Lord Naseby. The first is that during the passage through Parliament of the 2002 Bill, Ministers in both Houses said repeatedly that they were content with the way tobacco products were displayed at the point of sale, and how they are displayed has not altered noticeably since then. The second is that even the zealots, by which I mean above all ASH, have conceded that the evidence is shaky. Indeed the ASH Daily News wrote that, ""it is not possible to definitely claim causation at this stage"." The split infinitive does not detract from the validity of that admission. The third reason is the valuable contribution made last time round by the noble Baroness, Lady Golding. She took the trouble to investigate how young people aged between 14 and 17 or thereabouts actually think and behave as opposed to how political theorists imagine they think and behave. She told us that young people do not go into tobacconists, grocers and supermarkets to buy their cigarettes; they get them from friends in the playground, from people at street corners and so on. This is borne out by the figures just quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, from a survey of 11,000 teenagers undertaken by Trading Standards North West. All these things put together make an overwhelming case for rejecting Clause 19.