Children and Families Bill

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ribeiro]

I greeted that event with jubilation. I would not want that grandson to go through life having his young lungs damaged by cigarette smoke. I am concerned about that. Cigarette smoke contains a cocktail of carcinogens: arsenic, cadmium, formaldehyde, benzene and in particular the fine particulate matter that comes out of cigarettes when they are smoked. This can cause long-term damage and illnesses.

My Amendment 62, which mimics the Private Member’s Bill that I took through this House in 2012, serves to make parents and the public aware of the risks and to provide educational programmes to rehabilitate them through smoke-free driving awareness courses. I believe strongly in education and behavioural change, rather than the imposition of punitive measures. It is about providing incentives to change behaviour, not dissimilar from the police driving course which noble Lords may have been offered if they have ever been unfortunate enough to have been caught speeding. There may be some in this Chamber who can endorse the benefits of that.

In that sense, my amendment is exploratory, seeking to obtain answers from the Government on two specific issues. The first is education to change behaviour, as I explained. Here, I applaud the Government for their successful advertising campaign launched last year, with its graphic films of children assaulted by smoke in the back of cars while parents in the front are oblivious to the damage being done behind them, probably because the driver has a window open and therefore assumes that all the smoke is going outside. I should like assurances from my noble friend that the Government will repeat that successful campaign and undertake an extensive evaluation of its effects. We must know that behavioural change is happening.

I am sure that the Government have taken note of the Welsh Government’s Fresh Start Wales campaign. I made reference to this at Second Reading and asked whether the Government would again consider mirroring what the Welsh Government were doing. That Government are due to report in the spring on the result of their campaign, following which they reserve the right to introduce legislation if no improvement in behaviour is apparent.

My second question to the Government relates to a national consultation, which should involve the public, the profession and the retailers, to decide whether legislation or non-legislative measures are required to protect children from smoking in confined spaces. I am pleased that my noble friend has asked Sir Cyril Chantler to undertake an independent review of the public health evidence on standardised tobacco packaging and its effects on public health. Might he perhaps also consider asking Sir Cyril, at the conclusion of this review in March, to undertake a similar review of the effects of second-hand smoke on children travelling in cars? There is plenty of evidence out there but what is now needed is the clinical evidence that shows that smoke causes long-term damage. We know that the long-term sequelae from smoking in adults are quite severe. If we can demonstrate that they start at a very early age, that will be very good evidence for taking action now rather than later.

My amendment provides the Government with measures to change behaviour. They may have started with good intentions—and I am sure that they have. Standardised tobacco packaging will reduce the risk of smoking and its damaging effects on children. I hope that the Government will take the view that legislation, although difficult, may need to be considered. However, for legislation to work, I understand that it must be proportionate and enforceable. In this respect, my amendment is probably defective, as it will be difficult to police and to enforce, much in the same way, I suppose, as is the case with the mobile phone offence, which is legislated for but is difficult to police.

I hope that my noble friend will provide me with some of the concessions that I seek. I do not think that they are small ones but they will help to ensure that over the next year, and certainly over the next three months when we hear the results of the Welsh review and Sir Cyril Chantler’s review—and it is to be hoped that he will extend that further—we will have more information on which to make a decision as to whether we should introduce legislation or non-legislative measures.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I have put my name to Amendments 60 and 62. I will first address Amendment 60 on standardised packaging and move on to the amendment to which the noble Lord, Lord Ribeiro, has spoken so eloquently. I hope to avoid covering the ground that has already been covered. In terms of standardised packaging, those of us who contributed in Committee to a very powerful and widely supported debate across the House are grateful to the Government for having done exactly what they said they would; namely, take the proposal away and look at it. They have returned with an elegant amendment. Before finally legislating, it seems wise to have an independent review by Sir Cyril Chantler.

This is definitely a public health and a child protection measure. I should like to address that briefly but not repeat what was said previously. The Minister has already said how many children start smoking before the age of 18. That figure is particularly high in looked-after children, where about one-third report that they are current smokers. However, when looking at children in residential care, the figure rises to more than two-thirds. There is a real problem with very vulnerable children.

In 1999, the tobacco industry’s magazine, World Tobacco, said that,

“if your brand can no longer shout from billboards … it can at least court smokers from wherever it is placed by those already wedded to it”.

The problem is that we know that tobacco is a highly addictive substance, and that the products of tobacco damage health and do not have any positive benefit. Recently, a study published in the European Journal of Public Health has shown that,

“the removal of brand imagery from tobacco packaging reduces the appeal of tobacco products, including perceptions of brand attractiveness and smooth taste and perceptions of lower tar or lower health risk”.

Those perceptions are an illusion. The study was in the UK, and I am sure that it will be considered in the evidence review and that Sir Cyril will be an independent reviewer in every sense.

It is worrying that it has taken us so long to get to this point. Like other noble Lords who have put their name to this amendment, I sincerely believe that the day will come when we will see standardised packaging. That day is not far off, because research study after research study reports are reinforcing that standardised packaging is making cigarette packs less attractive to young people.

I have had discussions with Her Majesty’s Customs as regards illicit trade. It pointed out that it is not that difficult to detect counterfeit standardised packaging, just as it is not difficult to detect other counterfeit packaging. Indeed, the cover marks, number codes and security marks are the clue, rather than the bald, external appearance of the pack. It also is well aware that tobacco firms have been producing and exporting cigarettes far in excess of any known demand in a stated target market abroad, knowing that this excess production will be smuggled back into the UK. The tobacco companies appear to have been complicit with what has been termed the illicit trade. It seems logical that this move and the government amendment are because of child protection issues and the importance of preventing children from starting to smoke.

On tobacco and smoking in cars, the British Lung Foundation study, which was addressed by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, included another set of figures which I hope the House will consider. One has to remember that the children responding in the study were of an age at which they could answer competently. When asked about being a passenger in a car, 31% said that they had asked someone to stop smoking but 34% said that they had not dared to ask because they were too frightened or too embarrassed. The child in the back seat, belted in, is effectively imprisoned in the vehicle for their own safety while travelling. They are stuck there. They have no control over what the adults do, and it is worth remembering that they do not feel able to do anything about it either. As was pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, if they are in a house, they can move to another room or another area and the volume of space is much greater than in a car.

[Lord Cormack]

Would this amendment apply to open-topped cars such as sports cars where children would presumably not be at risk?

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

It is worth pointing out that the noble Lord, Lord Ribeiro, has already indicated that he will not press his amendment, which is quite specific, and the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, simply addresses the ability to bring forward regulation but does not specify what those regulations should be. I respectfully suggest to the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, that his question is an important one for us to have at a later stage, in the event that the House decides to support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt.

My last point relates to my home country of Wales, where I am delighted that the problem of tobacco consumption has been taken seriously. The results of the Welsh campaign will be published fairly soon. But it is with regret that I have to note that at the end of the first year of the campaign, 22% of smokers still pointed out that smoking was allowed in their car at any time. There is a perception that if it is allowed it is okay. I am concerned over the results that will come forward from the education campaign, although I fully support the campaign itself.

I remind the House that we had a parallel debate over seat belts in cars. Yet the seat-belt wearing rate increased in the UK from 25% before legislation to 91% after legislation. That was introduced alongside awareness campaigns. We cannot have legislation without a large education and awareness-raising campaign. The efficacy relates to the education and awareness-raising campaign rather than to any kind of punitive measures that go alongside it.

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester]

I added my name to Amendments 57BB, 60 and 62 and will speak briefly to those, but I start by congratulating the noble Earl on bringing forward his Amendment 57B and for overseeing a significant change in government policy on the subject of standard packaging. Like many of your Lordships, I was heartened when I heard the then Public Health Minister, Anna Soubry, around a year ago saying that the Government were minded to go down the standard packs route and then bitterly disappointed last summer when the plans were suddenly dropped. Various conspiracy theories were propounded at the time and I will not go into those now, but it looked as if the issue was dead, at least for the foreseeable future.

At that point, it seemed sensible to look at whether there was any possibility of adding a standard packaging amendment to another Bill, which might not immediately present itself as the most appropriate, in order to be able to give the House the opportunity to debate the issue and come to a view on it. With the help of staff in the Public Bill Office—about whom I cannot speak highly enough, as their help was invaluable in framing our original amendment in Committee and the subsequent amendment that we tabled for today—we were able to bring the issue to the Committee and approach the issue in an entirely cross-party and non-party way. The amendment that we put together was signed by the noble Baronesses, Lady Finlay and Lady Tyler, the noble Lord, Lord McColl, and myself.

Amendment 60 is an improved version of what we had in Committee, but the Government’s amendment today is a great improvement on that as well. I congratulate them on picking up a number of the points that were defective in ours and coming forward with one that, I think, is very effective. Tobacco control should not be a party-political matter; it should be the common concern of everyone who cares about the health and the well-being of the public. As we have heard from the Minister, smoking-related disease still kills more than 100,000 people across the UK and is by far the most common form of preventable death—it accounts for more premature deaths than the next six most common causes put together.

As most smokers start as teenagers, the teenage market is the one which the tobacco companies are anxious to promote, which it is the responsibility of all of us to try to prevent. Two-thirds of existing smokers report that they started before their 18th birthday, and around two in five before they were 16. The younger the age at which they start, the greater the harm is likely to be, because the early uptake of the habit is associated with subsequent heavier smoking—of the sort that the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, experienced with his mother and her 60-a-day habit—high levels of dependency, a lower chance of quitting and a higher chance of death from smoking-related disease.

For the tobacco industry to keep its market, it is necessary for it to recruit new smokers every year. That is because older smokers die or quit—or indeed lose their lives prematurely as a result of their habit. Since most smokers start when they are young, it follows that, for the industry, young people are the most important target group of potential new consumers.

We know what the tobacco industry would do in this country to promote its products if the law and the authorities allowed. Indeed, we probably know more about the commercial strategies of the tobacco industry than about any other major industry in the world, in large part because so many previously confidential documents were made public as a result of the US master settlement agreement with the industry in 1998.

Given the restrictive legislation around marketing and advertising tobacco in the UK, the industry is left with few options to promote its products. Of these, the most important is now packaging. Packs can be used to market and advertise, to create brand identities and to help present an image of smoking that may indeed seem “cool” to a curious teenager. There are many diversionary arguments advanced by the tobacco industry and the front groups it funds so lavishly about why we should not proceed with standardised packaging. So we hear tobacco industry claims that the UK is being flooded with illicit tobacco and that standard packs will make the problem worse. But the level of illicit trade has fallen sharply since it peaked back in 2000, and the security features on existing packs will also be present on standard ones. Both our amendment and the Government’s would allow the Secretary of State to specify packaging requirements that would enhance and not reduce product security, and make smuggling and counterfeiting more difficult.

However, the tobacco industry’s real, core argument is quite simple. It is advancing the proposition that its claimed so-called “intellectual property rights” trump the requirements of public health—or to put it more sharply, that its right to design products designed to get children addicted is more important than the children’s right to be protected from that addiction and the health damage that it causes. I believe that the overwhelming majority of your Lordships, and indeed Members of the other place, reject the tobacco industry’s arguments and want to make cigarettes as unattractive to children and young people as possible. So, as I said at the beginning, I warmly welcome the Government’s amendment. I congratulate the Minister on bringing it forward and on his announcement regarding proxy purchasing of tobacco products by adults for young people, and the regulation of e-cigarettes, about which we shall hear more at Third Reading.

I am not going to speak about smoking in cars because the speeches on that subject by the noble Lord, Lord Ribeiro—with whom I agree, and whom I congratulate on his perseverance in taking a Private Member’s Bill through your Lordships’ House on this subject—and the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, have covered the main points. However, I strongly commend the points that my noble friend Lord Hunt made about the desirability of moving towards a smoke-free atmosphere in cars where children are trapped and subject to appalling levels of second-hand smoke.

I am very happy indeed to support the government amendment. We shall not be pressing our own amendment on standard packaging, but I shall be supporting my noble friend.