Health Bill [HL]

We could avoid all this rather complex and convoluted, but very real, argument about European regulations—I say that as a member of the EU Select Committee who has concerns about this—if the manufacturers stopped using the packs as covert advertising and we found ways of not showing the brands, so ensuring that children do not see them. The noble Baroness asked where we had all been. I had been around the shops and, despite never having been a smoker, I now know new brands of cigarettes because huge branding can be seen across brightly lit and colourful displays. We have already had this debate. As I have said before, this branding is continually displayed next to sweets or attractive items. We know from the statistics produced by the tobacco industry in the past that in adult life people tend to go for the brand that they have smoked for many years and they stick to that brand. Why do we want advertising that will entrap children at an early stage into a brand which they will then smoke continually as they grow up? I shall not repeat all the arguments about the effects that that will have on their health. We have had that debate and the arguments have been made. Anyone who works with children day in and day out will know how they are impressed. All cognitive behavioural psychology now tells us about the way in which children learn. I simply want to make the point again that, whatever intellectual argument we have about property rights—and I know that there is a possible legal argument there—the underlying reason for wanting plain packaging is to ensure that children are not caught at an early age, that they do not then continually smoke that or another brand, and that we have a healthier nation in the long run.