Health and Care Bill

Debate between Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and Lord Rennard

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 5th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, support the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, in his amendment. My noble friend Lord Faulkner would of course have been in his place to speak in favour, but he is unable to be here, so perhaps I may make a few remarks which I think he might have made.

Going back to Report, the Minister suggested that the tobacco industry is already required to make a significant contribution to public finances through tobacco duty, VAT and corporation tax. But I do not think that states the case as accurately as possible, because we know that tobacco manufacturers are skilled at minimising the amount they pay. For example, between 2009 and 2016, Imperial Brands, the British company that is market leader in the UK, received £35 million more in corporation tax refund credits than it paid in tax. The largest amount of tax collected by the Government comes from excise tax and VAT. This, of course, is not paid by the manufacturer; it is passed on to the consumer. That was a point HM Treasury made in 2015, when the Government consulted but, alas, decided not to put an additional tax on tobacco products to pay for tobacco control.

My understanding is that, in total, smokers spend nearly £11 billion on tax-paid tobacco products, more than three-quarters of which goes to the Government in taxes. We know that the majority of smokers are not well off; they often suffer multiple disadvantages. We must compare that huge tax take with the pitiful amount that is actually spent by the Government encouraging people to stop smoking. It is certainly not enough to make England smoke-free by 2030.

I listened carefully to the Minister’s introductory remarks. The noble Lord, Lord Kamall, objected to the terms of the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, because, he said, the independent review had not yet reported and therefore we were seeking to pre-empt what the review will say. I thought the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, responded to that incredibly well. I do not think he is seeking to pre-empt the review; his amendment asks the Government to consult on recommendations in the review if the Secretary of State thinks that it is required. It is left entirely in the Secretary of State’s hands to act according to whether he or she considers that the recommendations should be consulted on.

This is a sensible amendment, it points us in the right direction, and I hope that, even at this late stage, Ministers may be sympathetic.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, if I understood the Minister correctly in his introductory remarks, he was saying that the Government’s case against the amendment is that they do not want to consult on something to which they are not already committed. So what is the point of consultations if they are only on things to which the Government are already committed? Should the Government not consult on what they might do, and take into account the opinions of experts and others?

Amendment 85B, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Crisp, has the support of these Benches. It is in accordance with my party’s policy but, more importantly, it is essential to the Government’s stated objective of reducing the prevalence of smoking to below 5% by 2030. The amendment does not require the Government to do anything that they do not want to do; it just asks them to consult on something which they have said that they would consider—namely, to make tobacco companies pay more towards helping save and prolong the lives of their customers.

Last year, I found myself outside the HQ of British American Tobacco. It is an enormous headquarters: it looked like a palace of which any Russian oligarch would be proud. This company makes huge profits that could be diverted towards ameliorating the damage done by its products. The amendment would mean taking action to help people live longer and more healthily, with fewer families living in poverty because of smoking.

I expect we will have more warm words from the Minister and from the Department of Health and Social Care, but I believe that Parliament wants to adopt the polluter pays principle in relation to tobacco. So I end with a quote from a great parliamentarian, John Pym, who, in 1628—I am sorry that I do not have the Hansard reference—said: “Actions are more precious than words”.

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

Debate between Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and Lord Rennard

Tuesday 4th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for this opportunity to discuss e-cigarettes. It is also a great opportunity to press the Minister on the Government’s Brexit situation. I do not think that we have heard him on this matter before. It is interesting to reflect on the confidence set out in the Explanatory Memorandum that,

“as a responsible government, we will continue to proportionately prepare for all scenarios”.

That is just as well because I do not share the Minister’s confidence that the future is at all clear or, indeed, that all scenarios have been planned.

I am sure the regulations are sensible but the Explanatory Memorandum takes us back to our debate when they originally came through your Lordships’ House, during which a number of us expressed concerns that the directive on which they were based takes too draconian a view on e-cigarettes. I happen to think that e-cigarettes are one of the most successful public health measures to help reduce smoking that we have ever seen. It is a great pity that some elements of the public health community that I know well and love have such a downer on e-cigarettes that they have encouraged a disproportionate approach to their regulation. In Grand Committee, the argument was put that e-cigarettes should be regulated in a completely different way from tobacco-based products. I remain convinced of that.

Of course, we must be very careful about the potential impact on young people. I know there are those who think that attractive advertisements and the way e-cigarettes are marketed can sometimes lead young people to take up smoking. The evidence for that is very dubious. We know that e-cigarettes are attractive to people over whose heads most public health campaigns completely fly. Although I fervently hope that we do not exit the EU next March, if we do and if the Government bring forward at some point new regulations on tobacco products in general, I hope they will take note of our debates and look at e-cigarettes in a completely different way.

[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.

House of Lords: Labour Peers’ Working Group Report

Debate between Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and Lord Rennard

Thursday 19th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rennard (LD Ind)]

My Lords, when future assessments are made of this Parliament, I suspect that the biggest disappointment for many—but certainly not all—Liberal Democrats will be our failure to achieve substantial reform of this House. For over 100 years, Liberals have fought to complete a reform that was begun with the Parliament Act 1911 to move this place from depending upon the hereditary principle to resting upon the popular principle.

Only in this House could 100 years be too short a period to consider properly making such a change. I suspect, however, that our failure to achieve House of Lords reform will not be such a concern to the wider electorate. The failure of the House of Lords Reform Bill came as a relief to many Members of this House. Nevertheless, among most Members there is at least widespread agreement, as this debate has shown, that the size of the House is now too large.

Failure to achieve reform means that there also remains significant concern about the powers of patronage exercised by the major party leaders to put their loyal friends and supporters into Parliament. This power of patronage may make the numerical problem even greater in the near future. We could perhaps be heading for a series of Parliaments in which power changes regularly, and each new Prime Minister will wish to add to his or her ranks in the House of Lords to reward their followers, sustain support in their party and assist the swift passage of new legislation.

In the latter part of the 20th century, the Conservative and Labour parties both won large majorities in the House of Commons, which took long periods to ebb away. In the 30 years between 1979 and 2009, we had had only three Prime Ministers. However, in the next 30 years we may have many more than three Prime Ministers, and with each new occupant of 10 Downing Street might come new waves of appointments to this place. The House of Lords could become simply incredible because of its increased size, and much less respectable in public perception than it is today.

Something therefore needs to be done, and it needs to happen soon. I do not think that a lengthy commission is required to work out what should happen; we already have too many dust-gathering reports on this subject. Most of these reports have come to some broad conclusions: that the number of Peers must be contained and eventually reduced; that elections should take place for at least some of the future places in the House of Lords; and that any elections should at any one time elect no more than a third of the Members of the House. Most recent reports have also suggested that Members should serve a single long, non-renewable term, thereby preserving the independence of the House and the primary accountability to the electorate of the House of Commons.

The Government presented Parliament with a Bill that would have done all these things two years ago while retaining a strong contingent of Cross-Bench Peers. Despite strong support in all three parties and an overwhelming majority at Second Reading in the House of Commons, that Bill could not make progress. As it became clear that the idea of more democracy was too much of a threat for some to let a Bill such as that progress, I came to the conclusion that any plan for reform must be rather more pragmatic while retaining a clear aim and purpose.

I would hope that the parties could agree in advance of 2015 that there should be no new lists of politically appointed Peers beyond the Dissolution Honours List.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

Would that include the current list that is in preparation?

[Lord Rennard]

My Lords, I have no knowledge of the current list. My proposal was simply that there should be an agreement that there should be no more lists of that nature beyond the Dissolution Honours List in 2015. In the mean time, we should pledge to stop the absurd practice of the hereditary by-elections. The idea of “topping up” to keep their number at 92 is simply ridiculous. The hereditary presence in the House should therefore be ended for all but some of the most active hereditary Peers.

We should let voters elect 120 Members of the House early in the next Parliament. Such an election could coincide with the devolved elections in 2016, including in Scotland if it remains a part of the United Kingdom. Such an election could be held rapidly, as indeed Members of the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly were elected shortly after the 1997 general election. Each of these Members should be elected for a single, non-renewable term of 15 years. At the same time, the number of appointments made through the Appointments Commission should be limited to 30 over the course of a five-year Parliament. That is probably enough for one Parliament. Those in both Houses who prophesied that the sky would fall in if we elect a number of Members of this House, rather than have them appointed by party leaders, will see if their prophecies prove true.

If they do not, it will be after 2020 before Parliament has to think again and consider whether to elect, say, another tranche of 120 Members in that Parliament, or whether to return to a system of patronage. In the mean time, we would be joined by elected Members who would contribute to the work of the House. Such a number could not and would not fundamentally change the character of the House as a revising “think again” Chamber. If the sky has not fallen in by 2020, the parties could agree again not to make any patronage appointments, and a further set of elections for, say, 120 Members could happen soon after the 2020 general election. At this point, the number of life Peers—by a process that it is quite hard to find appropriate and polite words to describe—will have reduced significantly.

The use of proportional representation in the elections will ensure the continuation of a healthy balance of opinion in the House, in which no single party has a majority. Those of us who believe that elections to this House can happen without a fundamental upset to the balance between the two Houses will have a chance to prove our point before further stages of election are considered, and everybody will be able to examine the evidence of such an arrangement working over time.

Queen’s Speech

Debate between Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and Lord Rennard

Monday 14th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rennard]

I agree that it would be difficult for Parliament to say no in that event. I do not totally rule out the idea.

Let me first refer the noble Lord back to the report on referendums by your Lordships’ Constitution Committee. In the debate in this House on that report, it appeared to be generally agreed by almost all noble Lords present that referendums should be rare and that there were significant problems with holding them—not least the propensity of the electorate to vote in response to a different question from that which appeared on the ballot paper. However, the report concluded that it would be appropriate to hold a referendum if abolition of either House of Parliament was considered. It is probably on that basis that some noble Lords consider the justification for a referendum. Yet when we look back to the 1911, 1949, 1958 and 1999 Acts, they were never considered to be Acts of abolition, even though they significantly changed both the powers and the composition of the House.

Gradually reforming composition does not amount to abolition. The draft Bill and the proposals of the Joint Committee suggest a transitional period that would not be complete before 2025—some 114 years after the 1911 Act and 15 years after all main parties promised in their manifestos to work for such an outcome. Ending the hereditary principle, removing patronage from party leaders and allowing people to choose their legislators do not amount to abolition of this House, so I do not see any case for a referendum before 2015. In the mean time, I believe that in 2015 we should begin the first phase of real reform by electing a small proportion of the membership of your Lordships’ House and finally ending completely the hereditary basis for membership. There may be more of a case for a referendum later, on proceeding to the second or final stages of reform.

I also want to address briefly another important constitutional issue in the gracious Speech—

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

Can the noble Lord clarify that? Earlier in our debate, the proposition was made that the coalition is now considering a new option, which is essentially to go for a small number of elected people in 2015—rather following the Wakeham and Irvine proposals at the beginning of the previous decade—and then pausing to ponder whether we move on from that position, perhaps by referendum. If the noble Lord is saying that, it is important, given that he speaks with a great deal of authority on those Benches.

[Lord Rennard]

My Lords, I hope to speak with authority, but I have to say that I speak for myself on this issue. It is logical that if we were to consider a reform which meant that 92 hereditary Peers were no longer Members of your Lordships’ House—which was of course the aim of the 1999 legislation—and if, for the sake of argument, we were to elect 120 Peers in 2015, that would not be a great change. It would not be revolutionary and it would not justify a referendum. We might consider it at some point in the following Parliament—perhaps on the same day as the country was voting in the European elections in 2019, to minimise the cost of a referendum. Then, when people saw the House working effectively without an hereditary element—although I have great respect for many hereditary Members of this House—with a small elected element of, say, 120 Members, that would not be dissimilar to the initial proposals of the commission of the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham. We could then say, “That is how it is working. Do you want to proceed with the remaining life Peers going in phases and a wholly elected House?”. We could vote on that at some point. Complete change is abolition of this House. I suggest that if we were proceeding along that way by 2015, there would be no need for a referendum before then.

I have spoken a number of times about the important issue of individual voter registration. I would like to say little about that as it was also referred to in the gracious Speech, but I will be brief. It is of considerable importance in all elections that we have a complete and accurate electoral register.