Health Bill [HL]

I think this is a cracking amendment. I hope that those who tabled it will move it on the Floor of the House on Report so the House has the opportunity to vote on it. This should be in the legislation. I am convinced it would have the support of the majority of the British people. It is constructed in the normal language of legislation. I have put aside my rather lengthy brief on this matter because I understand that we are short of time. We are running against the clock and have a lot of business. One reason why I support the amendment is because, if used in the way I would like it to be used, it would isolate imports. If we had a standardised, single-colour pack for all cigarettes with the name of the manufacturer in very small print on the side, it might make life a little easier for those who want to help others stop smoking. To be even more radical, if we are intending somehow to isolate imports—we have an opportunity to deal with that on the next amendment—perhaps we should have coloured cigarettes. My noble friend Lord Patel referred to Sobranie Black Russian, which I remember from when I was a boy. We used to smoke them behind the bike shed at school. A cigarette that is individually identified—it might be yellow—could be a cigarette distributed within the United Kingdom, so those who smoked non-yellow cigarettes would be indicating to others that they were smoking imports that had come through under the ludicrous European regime we have at the moment. The system that operates now is that I can ring up a tobacconist in Italy, order my fags and they are sent to me through the post. I understand that is now within the law. I have just checked with a relative who told me that that is the case and that you can buy cigarettes on the phone and have them posted to you in the United Kingdom. It seems to me that we have lost total control over cigarette consumption from abroad. Smuggled imports and, indeed, legitimate imports that do not turn up in our figures probably play havoc with the statistics on the domestic market in the United Kingdom. I hope that this amendment goes through when it comes to Report. I am sure that it will have a lot of support on the Floor of the House of Commons.