Tobacco Products and Nicotine Inhaling Products (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018

Debate between Baroness Thornton and Lord Rennard

Tuesday 4th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, there are those—I am certainly not among them—who welcomed the idea of Brexit because they did not like the restrictions on the promotion of tobacco that we agreed across the EU. Contrary to the biased and selfish claims made on behalf of the tobacco industry, these regulations have been successful in reducing significantly the prevalence of tobacco smoking and its related diseases. We should never forget that tobacco products shorten the lives of half the people who smoke.

The tobacco lobbyists will be disappointed with the regulations because they show that they have lost the argument and there is now cross-party consensus on tackling tobacco-related problems. As the Minister said, even if we have the disastrous no-deal Brexit that some of those people want, the regulations will allow for a set of pictures, as currently used in Australia, to continue to appear on cigarette packs in the UK to warn smokers of the terrible damage done to their health by smoking.

As the Minister said, the regulations have the support of the excellent Action on Smoking and Health, of which I am a former director. Of course, they have my support too, but I would like to remind the Minister that the Tobacco and Related Products Regulations 2016 require the Secretary of State to review those regulations and publish a report before 20 May 2021. Some of the important points made by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, should be examined when that report is made. Some of us also feel passionately that e-cigarettes can and must be promoted effectively as an alternative to smoking tobacco, but in such a way as not to encourage people who have never smoked tobacco to take up an addiction to nicotine. I would like the Minister to confirm as well as he can that there will be no going back on our successful tobacco regulation policies, which are doing so much to improve the health and life expectancy of so many people. We should do nothing that reverses the excellent progress being made on this issue.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I apologise to the House for being a minute or so late. I am afraid that business moved too quickly and the lift too slowly.

As the Minister said, the current regulations for tobacco and related products are designed to promote and protect the public’s health. Speaking as a veteran of tobacco regulation from the previous Labour Government and the Minister responsible for the point of sale retail advertising regulations that put tobacco products out of sight in our shops and supermarkets, all those actions were rigorously and energetically opposed by the noble Lord’s party and the Minister’s predecessor but one. I welcome the Government having definitely seen the light on this; it is wonderful. I am pleased to learn that the Government’s priority is to maintain the same high standards after the UK leaves the European Union, if that is indeed what happens.

The noble Lord and I are discussing regulations that will be necessary if there is no deal. I suspect they are the first of many. We have a whole load of embryonic and blood things to discuss next week. I wonder whether that is really a productive use of his time or mine.

On what these regulations do, in the event of no deal we will be obliged to introduce legislation to ensure that the policies and systems in place to regulate tobacco products and e-cigarettes will continue to function effectively and maintain continuity with current arrangements. The website and the Explanatory Notes use the words “where possible”, so I suppose my first question to the Minister is to explain the words “where possible” and where the current arrangements might not be possible.

If the UK leaves the European Union in March 2019 with no agreement in place, that will mean, as the noble Lord said, that the tobacco products directive and the tobacco advertising directive will no longer directly apply to the UK—which is ironic, as we were the pioneers in these matters all those years ago. UK domestic law that implements these directives, such as the Tobacco and Related Products Regulations 2016, would remain in force.

My understanding is that these regulations’ purposes are threefold: to introduce a new domestic system to allow producers to notify e-cigarettes in accordance with existing rules; to introduce a new domestic system to allow producers to notify tobacco products in accordance with existing rules; and to introduce new picture warnings for tobacco products, already mentioned by noble Lords, based on the picture library owned by the Australian Government. The noble Lord and I have both learned that the pictures in use at the moment come from a library based in Brussels. We will no longer have access to it.

I thank ASH for its views and vigilance on these important matters, and for its participation in the consultation process. I agree with it that the system set out for notification of e-cigarettes and novel tobacco products in the consultation document is pragmatic and practical, and would minimise the additional work involved in the notification process if there were to be a no-deal Brexit. Products notified to the UK prior to the UK leaving the European Union would not require re-notification and data will be accepted in the same format as currently submitted. Those arrangements seem satisfactory.

For the purpose of providing an alternative to the current picture warnings in the event that the UK leaves the EU with no deal, since we would no longer have access to the rather revolting and graphic pictures in the SI—I have not seen any other legislation with pictures in it, but this instrument has them; I suggest that if noble Lords have not read the statutory instrument they should at least open it and look at the pictures it contains—the Minister has said we will switch to the ones used in Australia, which I gather are even more horrible. However, I remind the Government that, in the longer term, the Tobacco and Related Product Regulations 2016 require the Secretary of State to review the regulations and publish a report before 20 May 2021. This review needs to examine the objectives intended to be achieved by the regulatory provision made by these regulations, and to assess how far they have been met and whether they remain appropriate. That will allow a review of quite a fast-moving area in terms of product development to take place. Does the Minister agree that is the case?

For the purpose of providing an alternative to the current picture warnings in the event that the UK leaves the EU with no deal, switching to the pictures from Australia is a short-term quick fix for this emergency. However, current best practice in Australia and the UK is to rotate, regularly review and update those health warnings. Therefore, it is essential that in the longer term the Government review the warnings—they are currently being evaluated by the Australian Government—and find ways to increase the number to allow for rotation, as is currently the case. When can we expect that review to take place?

I do not need to add to my noble friend Lord Hunt’s remarks about the importance of vaping and its role in reducing smoking. These statutory instruments serve their purpose.

Electoral Conduct

Debate between Baroness Thornton and Lord Rennard

Monday 1st December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, on putting down this Question for debate and thank those Members of the House who have taken part in the inquiry and have spoken today.

As we have all agreed, the report that they have produced is an excellent document, and its recommendations give all political parties and the Government issues to reflect on. The need to address the recommendations and conclusions of the inquiry is as urgent as other noble Lords have said, as we are coming up to the general election. As my honourable friend Sharon Hodgson said in the debate in May in the Commons, we support the report’s recommendations.

As noble Lords have said, the inquiry was chaired by my honourable friend Natascha Engel. In addition to the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, it also included my noble friend Lord Beecham among its members. I was very struck, as were other noble Lords, by some of the things that are in the report. Natascha Engel said in that debate:

“Our inquiry found that people in some areas were not putting their names forward as candidates out of fear for their lives, which happened across the board. Whether the tensions were religious, ethnic or based on their sexuality or gender, we found that people who would have been good candidates for elected office at any level were not putting their names forward”.—[Official Report, Commons, 7/5/14; col. 97WH.]

I think that we would agree that this is unacceptable in a modern UK and a modern, mature democracy.

We can all cite, as did the noble Lord, Lord Rennard—although I notice that he cited only Labour cases—examples of malpractice.

[Lord Rennard]

I referred also to the Liberal campaigns in the Brecon and Radnor by-election and in Tower Hamlets. I was not being one-sided. I cited examples of bad practice by both my party and the noble Baroness’s.

[Baroness Thornton]

I accept that rebuke, although I have to say that the noble Lord went into some detail.

I remember being Harriet Harman’s “minder”—as they are called these days—during a by-election in 1982. She was pregnant with her first child, and the Liberal candidate, who is now a Member of your Lordships’ House, used the fact that she was pregnant all the way through the campaign as an argument for her not being fit to be an MP. As we all know, Simon Hughes has apologised for the campaign that was mounted against Peter Tatchell, the gay rights campaigner, during the by-election in Bermondsey. We all have issues that need to be addressed. Even today, none of us can cease to be vigilant as party politicians to ensure that every single word that we utter and every single word that is printed in our name is appropriate.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, that, as far as I can tell—and it was certainly what I was taught as a Labour activist and someone who has run lots of elections—that you have the responsibility to make sure that every single word that is published and every single leaflet that is put out in the name of your party is proper and correct, and does not contravene any rules. That is difficult, and people will make mistakes, but there is no doubt where the responsibility for those things lies. It is true that we have a proud history in the UK of fair and free elections with proportionate regulation, and broad agreement that discrimination and racism have no place in society in general, and certainly not in our democratic processes. However, as we all have agreed, we know that racist, homophobic and other discrimination takes place during election campaigns.

The committee produced a series of recommendations and we give our full support to those, tackling, as they do, discrimination as it affects our democratic process. Like other noble Lords, I am puzzled as to why the Equality and Human Rights Commission has to be urged in the way it is being in this report—and by noble Lords—to produce a plan for engaging with electoral conduct, which is clearly an excellent idea. It would pick up on the work carried out by the former CRE. This should be done as a matter of course. It makes sense that the EHRC, the Electoral Commission and the police should work together to make sure that the guidance produced for our elections and election procedures is clear; makes it easy for people who are running elections, particularly in local elections where it is being done by volunteers; makes it clear what our responsibilities are; but also tells everyone how to deal with issues of redress.

Since the political parties’ annual briefing from ACPO and the Electoral Commission focusing on voter fraud takes place, the report is right in asking: why not expand that sort of event to include discrimination? I think the Electoral Commission trialling an online briefing for candidates seems an excellent idea and, where possible, should be integrated into the work political parties are undertaking with their candidates. However, as the report rightly points out, it is new parties, as the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, mentioned, and independent candidates, who are the ones who may not know their responsibilities and what they should or should not say. Of course, parties from a racist background are the ones we need to be particularly wary of and which need to be watched most carefully.

All police forces appoint a single point of contact for matters concerning electoral fraud. This has proved invaluable. Expanding that role and appointing a second officer may be one way to deal with these issues. One of the other issues not referred to in quite the same way in the debate is the code for parties to work within concerning non-broadcast media. While it is the case that generally parties and candidates have behaved responsibly, surely there will be those who have pushed the boundaries. What does the Minister think should happen in those cases?

I turn to new media. We face an election where social media and online campaigning will be present in a way that it never previously has been in our general elections. I remember a few years ago being targeted by the online discussion in our local newspaper in Bradford—I think it was by UKIP, to be honest—in a vile and horrible way. The problem was that the newspaper was not mediating the online discussion properly. When eventually it was pointed out to the editor that they had a responsibility not to allow people to be vilified in this fashion on the website of their newspaper, they took action. Multiply that by hundreds and hundreds of other incidents and I think all noble Lords would agree that we potentially have some very serious problems.

It will take concentrated and co-ordinated action to deal with such issues. I believe the Government have a responsibility to make sure that those things are pulled together. Every single political party has a responsibility, as the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, said, for the behaviour of its own candidates. Certainly in the Labour Party we take this extremely seriously: we have no hesitation in referring people to our disciplinary committee. We carry out the appropriate punishments, including expulsion from the party, and occasionally involve the police. We have no doubt that those are our responsibilities as a political party, but also that we all need to work together to ensure that our free and fair elections continue to be so.