Health Bill [Lords]

The hon. Lady is right to suggest that many factors influence smoking prevalence. Trying to control for those factors, including for levels of taxation, and to identify and isolate what is happening at point of sale is difficult. The Tobacco Retailers Alliance certainly found doing that inconvenient and instead chose to use a small sub-sample of what was in essence a survey of adults. It continued to misrepresent the evidence until the Public Health Institute of Iceland, which was responsible for both studies, told it to stop doing so. I am pleased that the institute was moved to do that. The health and medical communities are united in saying that tobacco displays increase awareness of tobacco brands and prompt purchase by young people. Jurisdictions that end such displays have seen the prevalence of youth smoking decline, and that is what this part of the Bill is about. If the opinion of leading researchers, health campaigners and royal colleges were not enough, Channel 4's fact-check service concludes:""The evidence points pretty firmly the government's way. And to say, as the opposition parties do"—" by that it probably means opposition in the tobacco industry, rather than Opposition parties—""that there's no evidence the ban will have an effect on smoking among young people seems pretty misleading."" We also have the economic counter-arguments, and we saw those in profusion when we considered the banning of smoking in workplaces and public places a couple of years ago. Members will remember that one of the main reasons given for opposing the smoke-free legislation was the harm that it was forecast to do to the hospitality trade. The tobacco industry understands that the only business that would really be harmed by smoke-free public places is its own, but it succeeded in alarming publicans who already felt under threat. Members may not be aware that in the year following smoke-free legislation the number of premises licensed to sell alcohol in England went up by 5 per cent. The tobacco industry knows that it has lost any public sympathy it might once have had, so again it has identified a group of small businesses to manipulate as its front men to campaign on its behalf. The industry has suggested, for example—and the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) suggested this earlier—that compliance with the legislation could cost a small shop substantial sums of money, and figures have been quoted of up to £5,000. It has claimed that staff would be injured, thefts would increase and not only would smokers stop buying their cigarettes from small businesses, but they would stop coming into those shops altogether. I understand the alarm of some small shopkeepers, and we have all been to shops where tobacco is the heart of displays behind the counter. The industry has claimed that in Quebec 12 corner stores closed every week. Like the claim that 40 pubs close every week in the UK, it is difficult independently to verify such statistics. It is never said how many shops closed before the legislation nor how many new premises opened since the legislation was implemented. The industry attributes the change entirely to the regulations, ignoring even the effect the global recession might have. It is almost as though some PR executive hit the "find and replace" button to recycle the old press releases that the industry used last time on smoke-free legislation. The fundamental flaw in the industry's argument is that it is simply not credible to suggest that there will be no change in smoking rates and, at the same time, that tobacco sales will fall. In truth, it will take several years before we see a major impact on tobacco sales to adults. Tobacco packaging has become the industry's most potent advertisement, especially when it comes to encouraging and recruiting young smokers. Traditional advertising is plainly a message from the manufacturer, but with packaging the customer becomes the message carrier. The hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs. Miller) mentioned the time when she had a tobacco company as a client and how the smoker who carries a particular brand is saying, "This is the brand for people like me." That message is especially powerful to young people eager to fit in. The Government have committed to fund further research into the effect of plain packs and to include a review of the evidence in the course of their promised tobacco strategy. That is to be welcomed. However, the evidence of how the industry attracts and deceives young smokers is growing and there is no time to waste. For example, manufacturers have long known that so called "mild" variants are as lethal as "full strength". Only last month the appeal court in Washington ruled that some of the biggest tobacco companies in the world were guilty of racketeering and fraud by calling their products "light" or "mild". In the words of the judges, manufacturers""made the statements with the intent to deceive"." Some people might think that advertising is a systematic attempt to deceive, but this was advertising at its worst. In the UK, I am pleased to say, the terms "light" and "mild" to describe cigarette brands have been illegal since 2003. Not only that, it has been illegal to give the misleading impression that one tobacco product is less harmful than another. We have stopped the industry using those words, but it continues to send the same misleading message through the use of colour codes: red for full strength, gold for light and even silver for ultra light. Researchers have shown how smokers and young people read these "smoke signals" and fall for the fraud. It is the same low-tar lie—exploiting smokers' health fears but keeping them hooked—only this time it is in code. Branding is especially important to young people, whether for trainers, tracksuits or tobacco. A brand choice says a lot about how a smoker wants the world to see them. Most start before they are 18 and become brand-loyal, and the industry well understands that. But what if plain packs made smoking more attractive to young people? In fact, studies that gave young people a choice between plain packs and branded packs found they consistently favoured the branded packs. The tobacco industry depends on its ability to recruit 100,000 new smokers a year—300 a day and 12 or 13 in the hour since 7 pm. The industry insists that we cannot know that plain packaging will work until it is tried in the real world, but it opposes any country that dares try it. The hidden hand of the tobacco industry is at work in all attempts made in democracies to introduce tobacco control and legislation. Those who make their money from the manufacture and sale of tobacco have been very active—as they are entitled to be—in lobbying this House. There may be nothing wrong with that as those who will be affected by regulations have the right to lobby about them, but we have a right to expect that those representations be honest and transparent. Much of what the tobacco lobby has offered us is neither. Tobacco manufacturers and retailers are experts in tobacco marketing, but when they offer us their opinion on health, psychology and behaviour, we are bound to ask "Are they reliable, independent and expert?", or are their vested interests so great that we must put their evidence aside. The tobacco industry has a long, long history of lobbying Government. Over the past 50 years, it used the same core tactics, in disputing whether smoking causes cancer—a point that was eventually conceded after a very long battle—and in fighting a rearguard action against smoke-free public places. I said to the Secretary of State, when he kindly allowed me to intervene, that the main planks of its campaigns are very similar. They manufacture uncertainty. One tobacco executive has even said:""Doubt is our product, since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy."" Members will have heard claims that compliance with the law will cost between £3,000 and £5,000, or that smuggling in Canada increased after point-of-sale regulations were introduced there. The campaigns manufacture uncertainty. In the face of all the scientific evidence given by all the independent experts and research studies, the industry consistently challenges causation—the link between tobacco smoking and ill health. As much as 50 years ago, the industry was advised by its public relations experts always to dispute the signs. Its line was that cause and effect relationships have not been established in any way, that statistical data do not provide the answers and that much more research is needed. That is always the case. We can always push off things and procrastinate by saying that more research is needed—that we need to do pilot studies on this, and that we need to trial that. However, every year we hear that many tens of thousands of people die prematurely because of smoking. They cannot stand aside and wait for pilot research and yet more roll-out studies. The third of the four tactics that the industry tries to use is to hide behind third-party advocates, which it does very successfully. We will all have received postcards from the "Save our Shop" campaign. Who funds that? An organisation called Responsible Retailers. Who funds that? The Tobacco Retailers Alliance. Who underpins that? The Tobacco Manufacturers Association. There is no surprise in any of those relationships. The Tobacco Manufacturers Association, as my neighbour the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) would confirm, is a club made up of Imperial Tobacco, British American Tobacco and Japan Tobacco. Having followed the current Chair of the Select Committee on Health as chair of the all-party group on smoking and health, I have received a good number of letters from the British Brands Group, which has a keen interest in tobacco policy but seems very shy about disclosing the involvement of BAT. Other Members might have heard Dave Bryans, the president of the Canadian Convenience Stores Association, who is often cited by the tobacco lobby, when he spoke at a meeting here in the spring. I doubt, however, whether he cited or they heard him mention that he was a former executive at Canada's biggest tobacco manufacturer. Finally, the fourth element of the strategy that the tobacco manufacturers and tobacco industry have rolled out every time that progress has been made on tobacco control legislation is, if all else fails, to seek to delay the inevitable. There are measures, among them plain packaging, which the tobacco industry considers inevitable. However, the longer those reforms can be prevented, the greater the industry's profits will be. I said to the Secretary of State that Philip Morris had described that as throwing sand in the gears of regulatory reform. When Members consider the evidence, they will need to be more than usually careful about the origin of that evidence. When they see the strong case for putting a stop to promotional displays and under-age sales from vending machines and in favour of plain packaging—as well as the case for the benefits to be gained from driving down yet further the rate of smoking among young people—they will realise that the social and health benefits will outweigh all the costs, all the angst and all the delays that we regularly endure when we face the tobacco industry over such measures.