Standardised Packaging of Tobacco Products Regulations 2015

Debate between Baroness Tyler of Enfield and Viscount Falkland

Monday 16th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate the Minister and the Department of Health on producing a high-quality and thorough set of regulations after a thorough consultation exercise. I join the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, in adding my congratulations to the department for receiving the Luther Terry Award for Exemplary Leadership by a Government Ministry. It is measures such as these that make Britain a world leader in public health.

In our debates on this subject, I have spoken extensively about the need for these regulations and the evidence that they would make a real difference. The bare facts are these: only one in 10 smokers in the UK started after the age of 19, and two in five started before 16. We have already heard from the Minister the figures on how many people die each year from smoking-related diseases, and the number of children between the ages of 11 and 15 who take up the habit and risk their health by spending hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds a year on a toxic product.

The unconscious trigger of attractive packaging is an extremely successful marketing tool that encourages children and young people to glamorise and take up smoking. Bright colours, sleek designs and slim cigarettes—to name but a few—all make people falsely believe that such cigarettes are less harmful. I remember as an impressionable teenager the impact that some of those cigarette pack designs had on me. It made a big difference and I indeed wanted to start smoking, and did so; and I think I was influenced by some of that marketing material.

I should like briefly to turn to some of the objections that have already been advanced by opponents of these regulations in this debate. First, the tobacco industry has claimed that standardised packaging would increase the volume of illicit tobacco on the market. This is flatly contradicted by a recent HMRC assessment and an independent review by Sir Cyril Chantler, both of which indicated that there is no evidence for such a claim. Indeed, there is no evidence that standardised packs would be easier to counterfeit. Standardised packs are not “plain packaging”—that is a misnomer. They would carry the same security systems as current packs. There is no evidence that that there has been an increase in the illicit tobacco trade in Australia since the implementation of the policy. The total weight of illicit tobacco detected by Australian customs has remained roughly static since 2007-08. Indeed, a recent study shows that there was no change in the availability of illicit tobacco in Australian shops since the introduction of standardised packaging. At any rate, it seems logical that the way in which to reduce illicit trade is through more effective regulations, which these regulations clearly are.

Secondly, the tobacco industry has claimed that standardised packaging would damage small businesses because it would make it more time-consuming for shop assistants to retrieve packs, and that this delay would make tobacco less profitable for small businesses as opposed to large supermarkets. Tobacco companies based these predictions on interviews with just a handful of retailers. In contrast, peer-reviewed studies of small shops in Australia before and after the standardised-packaging policy demonstrate that there was no significant increase in serving time.

It is true that standardised packaging is likely to result in reduced tobacco sales. In fact, it is the very purpose of these measures; it is the Government’s hope and certainly mine. Every pound that consumers no longer spend on tobacco they will surely spend on other goods and it is very likely that small businesses will pick up some of this trade. After all, shops, including small shops, have adjusted to the continuous decline in the prevalence of smoking from half of the population in 1960 to roughly one-fifth now and there is no reason to suppose they will not be able to adapt further. On this point, can the Minister confirm that in the interests of reducing costs to retailers the measures will be implemented at the same time as the packaging and labelling measures in the EU tobacco products directive in May 2016? Can he also confirm that retailers will be given a full year after the implementation date to sell through existing stores of non-standardised packs? It comparison, retailers in Australia were given just eight weeks to do that.

The tobacco industry has made what I think is a very convoluted argument that standardised packaging will lower prices and thus increase tobacco consumption. In the process of conducting his review last year, Sir Cyril Chantler was told by tobacco companies that sales had increased slightly, despite the fact that the industry had told its investors the opposite. Analysis by the independent market research company Euromonitor concurred that there had been a decline in sales in Australia between 2012 and 2013.

As we have already heard, it seems to be contested—although frankly I do not know why—what the impact in Australia has been since the introduction of standardised packaging. I have looked very carefully at what the helpful leaflet Standardised Packaging for Tobacco Products, produced by very reputable organisations such as the British Heart Foundation, King’s College London, the University of Waterloo, Cancer Council Victoria and the UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies, has said about the impact so far. It shows that there is a reduction in young people taking up smoking and an increase in the proportion of existing smokers who are trying to quit. Indeed, the National Drug Strategy Household Survey in Australia showed that the proportion of 18 to 24 year-olds who had never smoked increased from 72% in 2010 to 77% in 2013.

A 2014 study from Australia that reported in the British Medical Journal shows that the prevalence of smoking among adults fell by 15% in the second half of 2013 alone. Finally, following evidence that smokers find cigarettes in standardised packs less appealing—which of course is the very purpose of it—there is new evidence that calls to Quitline, a free smoking cessation service, have increased by 78% since the introduction of standardised packaging.

It is a credit to the very thorough and painstaking way that this measure has been developed by the Government that these are the best criticisms opponents can level. Above all, it is time to listen to the 72% of Britons and the majority of all political parties and support standardised packaging.

[Viscount Falkland (CB)]

My Lords, I am a non-smoker but having been in your Lordships’ House for some years one thing that concerns me about this measure is the unintended consequences. One is always worried in this House about them and so we should be. It seems very odd that so few people have expressed the view that tobacco is a legal product. How can you interfere with the marketing and the sales of a legal product? I think the product is undesirable and the arguments of the scientific community about its danger to health are indisputable. However, we have to think rather carefully about what may follow. If you get away with this without too much protest there are all kinds of bien pensants and vigorous politically correct people who will seek to do various things. For example, it could happen quite easily that in some local authority someone of limited life experience might suggest that, with obesity and the compulsion that people have to eat too much, it might be a good idea to prevent restaurants allowing people to eat on the pavement under an awning because that attracts people to sample the restaurant’s delicious wares. Noble Lords may think that this is a trivial, Clarksonesque point, but it bears thinking about.

I am grateful for the efforts that have been made to curb the ill effects of smoking. I am a frequent cinema goer—I have been a film buff since I was a boy. I do not think I would be talking to noble Lords today if they had not banned smoking in cinemas. I may have a husky voice, but I would probably be dead by now, I should think. These are things that have to be considered.

In the speeches so far, there has been scant respect for one thing that is very important to this country, and I hope it will be borne out in the speeches during the election campaign. This is a trading country, and trading countries require freedom in order to encourage the production of goods, to sell them and to market them correctly. If you do not like smoking, then ban it, for heaven’s sake. Do not try to pretend that this is going to deal with it—it is not going to deal with it. We have already seen the unintended consequences on the streets. In some of our best streets in the West End of London you see cigarette ends everywhere because people are smoking at lunchtime in doorways, smoking in the open air and smoking in groups; they are also smoking in their homes because it is unsatisfactory outside so that the smoke filters through badly constructed walls.

There are all kinds of aspects of this whole problem which have not been properly addressed, and I do not think that packaging is the answer. Should the noble Lord who introduced this amendment guide us towards the Lobbies, I shall follow him.