Smoking

Lord Young of Cookham Excerpts

Thursday 25th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord. Actually, Khan recommended four major things to achieve that in his report Smokefree 2030. The first was to increase the anti-smoking spend that the noble Lord refers to. As part of this, we propose to increase that spend from £70 million to £140 million—so we are doing absolutely what the noble Lord suggests. The second was to increase the age of sale, which of course this legislation is all about. The third was to promote vaping to help quit smoking. Again, the legislation will do that. The fourth was to increase NHS prevention methods which, again, we will do from here. So it is very much a range of measures to stop people ever smoking but also to stop many who are currently smoking by helping them to quit.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My Lords—

[The Earl of Courtown (Con)]

My Lords, I think the House would like to hear from my noble friend Lord Young.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for giving way.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

Further to the Question from the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, the Government commissioned the independent Khan review, which concluded that the Government would miss their smoke-free target for England by several years unless an additional £125 million a year was spent on prevention. Given the pressure on public expenditure, the Khan review instead suggested a levy on the profits of the tobacco industry, based on the polluter pays principle. Does that proposal not commend itself to my noble friend?

[Lord Markham (Con)]

As I say, we have tried to answer the four major points that Khan put forward, including doubling the spend from £70 million a year to £140 million. The levy was the one thing that was not so much favoured; there was a lot of modelling done on it and the thought was that the net increase would be only about £25 million or so. That is why it was thought better to look at taxes on tobacco itself as a way of raising revenue, and generally introducing the four major methods that Khan recommended.