Smoking: Cigarette Packaging

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Tuesday 16th July 2013 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is the basis for the decision not to proceed with standardised packaging of cigarettes.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe)]

Standardised packaging remains a policy under active consideration. The Government have not ruled out its introduction. However, we want to spend more time assimilating information about the likely effect of such a policy in this country and learning from experience abroad. Let me be clear: we are not going soft on tobacco, which is a leading cause of premature death. We have an ambitious tobacco control plan and will press ahead with tobacco control policies, including removing tobacco from displays in shops.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

I declare my interest as president-elect of the BMA. As 200,000 11 to 15 year- olds start smoking each year in the UK, what are the criteria and time frames that the Government will use to judge the outcomes of standardised packaging in Australia? The high mortality rate does not appear until about 25 years after these youngsters start smoking. As this is fundamentally a child protection issue, how will the Government now prevent vulnerable children—particularly those in local authority care—from starting smoking, given that the Department of Health’s own systematic review showed that current packs are particularly attractive to youngsters and that they mislead them into thinking that some brands are less harmful than others?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, we want to keep a close eye on what is happening around the world before making a decision. We are keeping standardised packaging under active consideration. It has been newly introduced in Australia, and other countries are intending to follow suit, so it is sensible for us to see what we can learn from other countries’ experience. The impacts could be several. They could include, for example, health benefits, as well as impacts on businesses such as retailers and tobacco manufacturers, and could possibly bring about a change in attitude to smoking.

On the risk to children, the noble Baroness is of course absolutely right. Evidence suggests that action needs to be taken to reshape social norms around smoking so that tobacco becomes less desirable, less acceptable and less accessible, particularly to the young. That is why we are committed to ending tobacco displays in shops. We have a TV-led marketing campaign to encourage smokers not to smoke at home or in cars and we have banned the sale of tobacco in vending machines, which has removed a source of cigarettes that underage smokers could access as often as they liked. There is a range of work going on.