Illegal Alcohol and Tobacco Sales

Alex Cunningham Excerpts

Tuesday 27th March 2012 Westminster Hall

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Ms Dorries, and I apologise for being a couple of minutes late. I congratulate the hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) on securing this important debate, which ensures that the Government and the world at large continue to see that parliamentarians across the political divide are determined to do more to discourage smoking in our society and to act on the illegal trade in both alcohol and tobacco. I want to concentrate entirely on tobacco.

I am proud to say that the Labour Government did a great deal to reduce the illicit trade in tobacco. Better enforcement by Government agencies and strict curbs on the tobacco industry’s activities paid dividends but, as the hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire has outlined, more action is needed. Although all tobacco is harmful and costs lives, illegal tobacco makes it easier for children to start smoking, and brings crime into our neighbourhoods.

As a school nurse, my wife Evaline gave talks to children about the dangers posed by smoking. I remember her telling me about deploying an economic argument, highlighting the money that would be available for other things if a person did not smoke. I was surprised to hear that the children told her she had her figures wrong. She quoted retail prices, but they quoted “local” ones, which were considerably lower. Therefore, we know where they were getting the cigarettes from.

I am pleased to say that north-east England is leading the way in taking a stand against this blight on our society. In 2007, Fresh, the UK’s first dedicated regional programme, which was set up in the north-east to tackle the worst rates of smoking-related illness and death in the country, hosted the UK’s first summit on illicit tobacco, and in 2009 the three north of England regions introduced the world’s first pan-regional tobacco action plan: the north of England tackling illicit tobacco for better health programme. The programme aims to improve the health of the population by reducing the supply of and the demand for illicit tobacco, much of which is more poisonous than retail products, which are bad enough.

The innovative partnership approach aims to break the intergenerational cycle of health inequalities, which is caused by our poorest young people’s early addiction to freely available cheap tobacco. In some parts of the north-east of England, the sale of illegal cigarettes from tab houses, car boot sales and workplaces has threatened to undermine efforts to tackle smoking, and most people—even smokers—want something done about it. The 2010 “smokefree” survey by YouGov found that 89% of adults in the north-east wanted tougher sentences for tobacco smugglers, while a major survey of 6,000 adults in every local authority in the north of England found that nine out of 10 people believe that illegal tobacco is a danger to children. That is not surprising, given that I am told that some tab houses in the region specialise in selling to children.

However, good progress in tackling the problem is being made in many areas. The north of England tackling illegal tobacco for better health programme has resulted in less illegal tobacco being bought and sold on estates in our areas, fewer people turning a blind eye and more action aimed at bringing sellers to justice. The volume of illegal tobacco bought has gone down by 39% in the north-east. The percentage of smokers buying illegal tobacco has fallen from 20% to 18%, and the number of 16 to 34-year-olds buying it has reduced by between 5% and 6%, but 23% of 16 to 24-year-old smokers say that they still buy it. It is vital that the kind of partnership that we have in the north-east of England is replicated around the country, as it demonstrates that the illicit trade can and will be beaten.

What makes me angry is the idea propagated by the tobacco industry that introducing plain packaging for cigarettes, which would do so much to stop young people starting to smoke in the first place, will somehow increase the illicit trade in tobacco. That is simply untrue. The existing packs are already so easy to forge that they have covert markings to enable enforcement officials to distinguish illegal cigarettes. With those markings and large pictorial warnings, the so-called plain packs—we all know that they will be multicoloured—will not be easy to forge. What plain packs will do is reduce the attractiveness of tobacco products to children, thereby curbing demand, which I am sure everyone here will agree is key to stopping the illicit trade in tobacco.