Health Bill [HL]

My Lords, as I continue my remarks it may, perhaps, help the noble Earl, who was not here for the first part of the debate. I shall not repeat every detail that all noble Lords said earlier about the policy, but the national statistics on youth smoking show that, from 2002 to 2007, the proportion of children between 11 and 15 who ever smoked fell from 42 to 33 per cent, and the number who smoked regularly fell from 10 to 6 per cent. We know that our tobacco control strategy has been effective so far; we want to go further. We also know that nicotine is highly addictive. It is easy for people to become addicted to smoking and, once addicted, someone who smokes is not making a choice to smoke—they are hooked. Research clearly shows that seeing a tobacco display when you are trying to quit makes it much harder to give up. It prompts impulse purchases, tempting people who want to give up smoking to buy cigarettes and carry on smoking against their will. We have a responsibility to do everything that we can to support those people who want to give up. We are satisfied that there are benefits to removing displays: it will remove the promotion of smoking to children and support those people who want to quit. We are convinced that removal is the right and responsible decision. What, however, are the downsides? Plenty of information has been given to Peers suggesting that removing tobacco displays will be a doomsday, for all sorts of reasons. For example, we have heard a great deal about how covering tobacco displays in shops will make life difficult for customers who want to choose their brand, yet 90 per cent of smokers know exactly which brand they wish to buy before entering a shop and, as I have said in a previous debate, brands enjoy incredibly high brand loyalty. Whether a huge, well lit and colourful display is available will not deter the smoking customer, who will still make the additional purchases that are so important for the small shopkeepers. For those who want to check prices when buying tobacco products, the retailer will still have prices on show in their shop. On the cost, over the past few months we have seen the tobacco industry and tobacco company-funded retail organisations attempting to panic shopkeepers about this proposed change. We are working closely with retailer groups, such as the Association of Convenience Stores and the British Retail Consortium, to ensure the most straightforward and cost-effective solutions can be found to remove tobacco displays. Frankly, I say shame on the tobacco industry scaremongers for unnecessarily panicking decent, honest shopkeepers who serve their communities well. I turn to the points made on this issue by the noble Lord, Lord Naseby. We have not misled the House but given information in good faith, based on quotes received by the Department of Health from the vice-president of a Canadian company with experience of how Canada removed tobacco displays. The company told us that the cost of a permanent solution for a single business with 25 square feet of display, with magnetic flaps applied to existing gantries, was £8.47 per square foot. It would total £212 to remove that much display. The same quoted costs should be as little as £120 for a minimal display of around 14 square feet in a very small, independent newsagent. Those costs have been used to illustrate that other countries have used low-cost solutions; they are not, for example, the basis for the analysis of our impact assessment, which uses a more generous figure of £1,000 per shop, but have been used to combat the alarmist figures circulated by the tobacco industry. We understand that the same company also provided quotes to the charity ASH, and my noble friend has answered that point. The costings given to ASH were not the basis of the letter to Peers from my noble friend Lord Darzi, or for the information given through debates and in other government briefings provided for Peers. The information given by the Government relates to the quotes received directly by us in good faith. I add that we understand that, in Canada, tobacco companies continue to pay for the tobacco gantries even after the display ban—meaning that the covers cost nothing to the retailer.