Health Bill [Lords]

Underpinning this debate is the principle that smoking is an addiction of childhood; it is not an adult choice. Today, 1,000 under-16s will have started to smoke for the first time by trying a cigarette, and 80 per cent. of smokers start to smoke before they are 19. The tobacco industry needs to recruit more than 100,000 new smokers each year to replace those who die or who cease smoking. Smoking plays a huge role in perpetuating health inequalities and accounts for half the difference in life expectancy between social classes 1 and 5. The Bill introduces two important measures that will protect children from smoking and help smokers who are trying to quit. It includes measures to restrict or prohibit cigarette vending machines and to put an end to the tobacco industry's power wall promotional displays. Regrettably, it does not include a third measure: the requirement to sell tobacco products in plain packaging. Those measures are proposed not in isolation but as part of comprehensive strategy; it is a proper plan to reduce the terrible burden of tobacco-related death and disease. Campaigners on both sides of the argument have long been vocal, as we have heard in today's debate. In one corner are those who would promote public health and in the other are those who would protect private profit. These are not equivalents. If the measures in the Bill would not work, health professionals would have nothing to gain from promoting them, but it is precisely because they will work that the tobacco industry is fighting so hard to defeat them. I have mentioned vending machines, and the case against them is unanswerable; I was pleased to hear that Her Majesty's Opposition will be pressing for the measures in the Bill to be toughened. Hon. Members who are still to speak, including the Minister, will doubtless make more detailed arguments, but, in short, mine is as follows: tobacco vending machines provide young smokers with about one in six, or 17 per cent., of the cigarettes they consume, whereas the figure for the entire population is about 1 per cent.; these young smokers use the machines as a ready supply of cigarettes because there is no real risk of their being asked for proof of age; those who profit by these illegal sales are almost never prosecuted—we must never forget that; and the machines are unpopular with regular smokers and are sited mostly where alcohol is sold and the resolve of smokers who are trying to quit will be at its weakest. I welcomed the Secretary of State in an intervention. I think he will be a superb Secretary of State, because he has the experience, track record and vision to make a success of the job. I urge him to draft, on behalf of the Government, the strongest regulations possible to introduce an immediate and total ban on tobacco vending machines. I turn to the central feature of point-of-sale displays. Those who make and sell cigarettes hotly contest the evidence that point-of-sale displays increase youth smoking. However, very few smokers start smoking as adults and if we were to succeed in stopping under-age smoking, the industry would be bankrupt in a generation—that is self-evident. The Bill is against the tobacco industry's interests, as we have seen in the furore and the campaign that it has mobilised, yet again, against any tobacco control measures. The more the industry tells the Government that they are off track, the more certain we and they can be that we are bang on target. Saskatchewan was the first Canadian province to end point-of-sale display. At the time, its youth smoking rates were rising sharply, but when it put an end to tobacco displays those rates began to fall. The tobacco lobby had the ban suspended for a time, during which the youth smoking rate flatlined, but once the regulations were reintroduced the rates began to fall again—to me, that is proof positive that there is a strong link between the two. Overall, a rising trend had been reversed and the subsequent fall, despite the temporary suspension of regulations, was faster than the Canadian average. Hon. Members listening to this debate should pay close attention if they receive briefings on this matter from the tobacco industry, as I am sure many have done. In the past, the industry sought to undermine the evidence—part of its modus operandi is always to muddy the evidence, challenge the science and breed uncertainty where something significant is going on—by referring to irrelevant adult smoking rates, by quoting an average decrease that starts years before the legislation came into effect and by comparing Saskatchewan not with the average Canadian province but only with those where youth smoking was falling fastest. I move the discussion on 1,000 or 2,000 miles, to Iceland, which provides further evidence both of the effect of point-of-sale displays and the lengths to which the tobacco lobby will go to disguise it. In a long-term study that included almost all year 10 students in Iceland—those aged 15 to 16—smoking rates were seen to have fallen by a third, from about 20 per cent. two years before the ban to less than 14 per cent. two years later.