Tobacco and Related Products Regulations 2016

Debate between Lord Rennard and Lord Lansley

Monday 4th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, from my point of view, my noble friend Lord Callanan chose to talk very selectively about the record of the Conservative Party and the coalition Government in relation to tobacco control. I think he should bear in mind that Conservatives—myself, my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham—worked hard from the Opposition Benches in another place, and succeeded in securing the ban on smoking in public places. When we came into the coalition Government together, we implemented the ban on sales through vending machines and a progressive ban on displays in shops. I also initiated the consultation on standardised packaging, following discussions with Nicola Roxon, who was then Health Minister in Australia, which my successors have taken forward. The product of all that is that we have not only secured continuing reductions in the overall prevalence of smoking—albeit I could wish this rate was faster—but we secured, I think three years ago, recognition that we had among the toughest tobacco-control regimes anywhere in the world. That is right and we should strive to make that the case.

I know it would not be the effect of the Motion in the name of my noble friend Lord Callanan, but were it passed it would indicate your Lordships’ desire to withdraw the regulations if they could. That would be an entirely retrograde step. I will not go through all the ways in which the tobacco products directive helps to strengthen the tobacco control regime other than in relation to e-cigarettes, but it certainly does.

I will isolate one important point which has not yet been mentioned. Much of what we have done in recent years, from my point of view and that of my colleagues—Anne Milton when she was Public Health Minister, and I believe it was among Anna Soubry’s and Jane Ellison’s objectives subsequently—was to focus on reducing the initiation of smoking among young people. We have some 200,000 young people a year initiating smoking. That is what we have to bring down. We want to arrive at the point where the initiation of smoking is minimised. As part of that, we have to look frankly and critically at how electronic cigarettes and vaping can contribute to the reduction of smoking, through access to smoking cessation services. It is absolutely right and I do not have any brief against e-cigarettes in that respect. But, to pick up the final point made by the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester, we have to understand what the social and behavioural impacts of large numbers of people continuing to smoke e-cigarettes in the long term look like. I am not sure that promoting it through advertising is necessarily the right way to go.

We should enable smokers to access e-cigarettes and vaping, and do everything we can through the public health budget. Noble Lords will know—I will go into it on another day when more time allows—that my objective in creating a separate public health budget with local authorities was to maximise and protect our preventive activity, not to see it subsequently reduced. I deplore that fact because we were making considerable progress with smoking cessation services, as we should. But we also have to ensure, in addition to the use of e-cigarettes in a way that reduces smoking, that we do not create a new mechanism which might entrench in young people an expectation that they should initiate any kind of smoking, be it through vaping and using e-cigarettes or, even worse, through smoking tobacco. For that reason I agree entirely with many other speakers that it would be undesirable to support my noble friend’s Motion, and I hope that the Minister will agree that we should reject it.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, is to be greatly congratulated on his tremendous record of achievement in this area, and his advice this evening should be followed very carefully. I must declare my interest as a former director of Action on Smoking and Health. There is a consensus in the debate that using e-cigarettes is much safer than smoking. Together with other clean nicotine products, they have an important role to play in cutting tobacco consumption and improving public health, but I do not agree with the e-cigarette trade body brief which has been circulated. It claims that nicotine is not itself dangerous. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, pointed out so effectively, we have to recognise that nicotine is a known toxin that is poisonous when swallowed and is also addictive.

I do not want to see e-cigarettes subject to more regulation than is necessary, but I do want to see them subject to all the appropriate regulation necessary to support public health objectives. We know that the best chance of success for people seeking to quit smoking is to use smoking cessation services as well as alternative nicotine products in order to help reduce withdrawal symptoms. The regulatory regime required for e-cigarettes and related products must be one that supports their use by smokers trying to quit. It is also right to discourage their use by children and young people who have never smoked. Both these objectives are supported by the regulations being introduced.

I agree with the many noble Lords who have said that we need a public information campaign to reassure smokers that electronic cigarettes are less harmful than normal smoking but, as the Motion in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, points out, there have been major cuts to the media campaigns to persuade smokers to quit. That is very regrettable because such campaigns can be highly cost effective in supporting quitting. We know that alternative nicotine products for smokers have most public benefit when they are used together with expert behavioural support. That is one reason why we need to make sure that such products can be available on prescription for people seeking help to quit tobacco products. Our approach to e-cigarettes, therefore, must be to treat them not as an exciting new social drug or as a cash cow for e-cigarette companies, many of which are owned by the tobacco industry, but as a potentially important means of improving public health and reducing the toll of death and disease caused by smoking.

The regulations under discussion are not perfect, but they include important steps in tobacco control that must not be lost and must be part of a tobacco control strategy that must be properly resourced to produce real public health dividends.