I have had more correspondence on Lords amendment 92 than on any other in the past 12 years. I shall vote accordingly, against Baroness Sugg’s amendment and against the Government’s amendment in lieu.
As chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on smoking and health, I support Lords amendments 85 to 88, which require the Government to have a consultation on the polluter pays levy on tobacco manufacturers. The levy was the central plank of our recommendations to the Government to deliver their smoke-free 2030 ambition. We had other recommendations, but that was the central one because funding for smoking cessation and tobacco control has been reduced every year since 2015 and has not been reinstated in the spending review or the recent spring statement.
Additional funding is vital to reducing smoking rates among the most disadvantaged in society and particularly among pregnant women. The current target to reduce the national prevalence of smoking in pregnancy to 6%
by 2022 will be missed, and I think we should be clear about that. Last year alone more than 50,000 women smoked during pregnancy, which caused damage to them and to their unborn children. If we want to create a smoke-free society for the next generation, we must step up our efforts now.
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The APPG’s recommendation for a levy was strongly supported in the other House, which is why we are discussing it today. We are discussing a number of amendments today, but the Government received its heaviest defeat on these amendments. They were backed by 213 votes to 154, and those voting for them included two former Health Ministers and two former chief executives of the NHS, one of whom was also a former permanent secretary to the Department of Health. Lord Naseby spoke against, using a quote from the Exchequer Secretary about the Treasury’s 2015 consultation, when she said it had concluded that a levy would
“add complexity and additional costs, while the amount of revenue it could raise is uncertain.”––[Official Report, Finance (No. 2) Public Bill Committee, 5 January 2022; c. 77.]
That may have been true in 2015, but it is not the case today. In 2015 we could not prevent tobacco manufacturers from passing the cost on to consumers because we were in the European Union. One of the benefits of Brexit is that, now we are out of the EU, we can. Lord Young of Cookham said in the other place that the levy would allow the Government to
“put the financial burden firmly where it belongs, on the polluter”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 6 March 2022; Vol. 820, c. 290.]
We should not forget that tobacco manufacturers have the highest profit margins of any consumer companies in the world. Imperial Tobacco, for example, which sells about four in 20 of the cigarettes smoked in the UK, makes £71 in profit for every £100 in sales, far more than the average for consumer businesses, which is £12 to £20. Big Tobacco can afford to pay to fix the damage that it does. The Government first promised to consider a “polluter pays” levy three years ago, in the 2019 prevention Green Paper, but they have failed to do so. Economists from the University of Bath have estimated that if the levy were introduced, we could raise £700 million a year. At a time when the public purse is depleted, that is not to be sneezed at.
As I said on Report, the Government
“may resist these measures”
—and they may resist them today—
“but we on the Back Benches who are determined to improve the health of this country will continue to press on with them, and we will win eventually.”—[Official Report, 22 November 2021; Vol. 704, c. 74.]
I know for a fact that when Javed Khan produces his recommendations, he will recommend even more stringent measures that the Government will need to introduce.