Health and Care Bill

Debate between Alex Norris and Christian Wakeford

Report stage
Monday 22nd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Alex Norris]

There is a danger that the right hon. Gentleman has missed the point. The reality is that for a decade there has been historically low investment in our health service, which of course has Barnett consequentials for Wales. That is the reality and why the system is as distressed as it is. I do not think he can put that at the door of the Welsh Government.

Let me come back to public health. Over the past five years we have removed £1 billion in public health funding, which means that the challenges in respect of childhood obesity, smoking, sexual health and access to drug and alcohol services are all developing and growing. The sad thing is that such cuts make an immediate local government saving for the Treasury but create greater costs for the public purse later, never mind the impact on people’s lives. They are the falsest of false economies. For all the talk of the end of austerity, last month’s Budget did nothing to tackle that reality. Indeed, local authorities are under greater pressure and the cycle will continue.

Being smoke-free by 2030 is a major national prize, and with that I turn to new clauses 2 to 11, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy). She made an excellent case and has shown tremendous leadership on this issue, in concert with the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), through the all-party parliamentary group on smoking and health. They have given the Government a number of really good ways to improve our nation’s efforts and I hope we will hear from the Minister that they will be taken on.

Tackling smoking is a crucial part of not only improving the nation’s health but addressing health inequalities. A child born where I live, Nottingham, can expect to live seven years fewer than a child born here in Westminster. When it comes to healthy life expectancy, we can expect that difference to double. Tackling that inequality should be a core part of the business of this place. Nearly half that inequality is attributable to smoking—that is how pivotal this issue is.

Successive Governments have shown over the past 25 years that we can make inroads with public policy on smoking, but the benefits have been unevenly felt: the smoking rate among those in professional occupations is now down to just one in 10, so is well on track to meet the 2030 target, but incidence rates among those in manual or routine occupations remain a stubborn one in four, so we must now renew our efforts with that group of people who are, of course, disproportionately likely to use stop smoking services—the very services we have lost over the past decade. Of course, as my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham said, the pandemic has posed new challenges, with a new group of people who have started smoking but would not otherwise have done so.

We have been promised a new tobacco control plan by the end of this year, but that promise looks a little less secure by the day—I hope the Minister will tell me I am wrong. We could get on with impactful interventions right away. The labelling and information interventions set out in new clauses 2 to 4 have very strong evidence bases from other countries, as my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham said, and would be quick, easy to implement and impactful.

On new clause 4 in particular, we know that e-cigarettes and vaping are important quit aids, but we would not want them to be a gateway for children to smart smoking. We should be concerned about the 2021 YouGov research for ASH—Action on Smoking and Health—that suggests that more than 200,000 11 to 17-year-olds who had never smoked previously had tried vaping this year. As my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham said, we must make sure that that age group does not take smoking through that route and that products are not targeted at it.

New clause 5 would tackle the bizarre loophole, which colleagues sometimes struggle to believe is true, that would allow the egregious practice whereby e-cigarettes or similar kit could be given free to someone under 18, although they cannot be sold. That is an extraordinary part of the law and I know that the Minister agrees it is daft—he said that in Committee, but also that he did not feel there was quite the evidence that it was a risk. Well, risk or not, I think the loophole should be closed, because I suspect that eventually someone will happen on it as a bright idea.

New clauses 8 and 10 are a beautiful support to any Minister who wants to improve smoking outcomes in this country, as I know this Minister does, but is conscious about the finances. This gives the Minister a chance, through a US-style polluter pays model, to fund all these interventions, including the restoration of the lost smoking cessation services in this country. He did not close the door to that in Committee when we talked about it, so I hope that he might tell us today that it is likely to form part of the new tobacco control plan. New clause 11 promotes a consultation on raising the age of sale, as we know that the older a person gets, the less likely they are to start smoking.

Let me turn to new clauses 15 to 17 and amendments 11 to 14 in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden). Colleagues will have been profoundly moved to hear him speak of his battle with alcoholism, and I know that his bravery has connected with people across the country. I associate myself with the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham regarding his entirely understandable absence from the Chamber today. With him in mind, I speak in support of those new clauses and amendments.

New clause 15 seeks to improve alcohol product labelling. This is overdue and it is popular. It is about not taking alcohol products out of people’s hands, but instead making sure that they can make an informed choice.

[Christian Wakeford (Bury South) (Con)]

While an energy drink carries not only calorific information but a health warning that drinking too much can have a laxative effect, alcoholic drinks carry no calorific information and no health warning. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that is a damning indictment of where we are in society and that a change, which the amendment could make, is needed?

[Alex Norris]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I completely agree with him. I would be the last one to police people’s consumption habits in the night-time economy for fear of being a hypocrite, but I do think that we should all have informed choice. What we have at the moment is inconsistent and unclear. We know that that frustrates people. A recent survey has shown that: 75% of people would like to know the number of units in a product; 61% would like to know the calorie information, as he mentions; and 53% would like to know the amount of sugar. We should give people the chance to have that full information to make their own decisions.