Tobacco Control Plan

Bob Blackman Excerpts

Thursday 10th June 2021 Westminster Hall

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con) [V]]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Miller. I am the co-sponsor of the motion, so I crave your indulgence slightly because I have a rather longer speech than five minutes will allow. It is a pleasure to follow my co-sponsor, the hon. Member for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy). I chair the all-party parliamentary group on smoking and health, which published the report on the tobacco control plan yesterday.

We were delighted when my hon. Friend the Minister set out the need for a new control plan last December, and we commissioned Action on Smoking and Health and SPECTRUM, a widely acknowledged scientific research consortium, to put together a report for us on what needed to be done and why. The importance of the ambition is very clear: the chief medical officer, Professor Chris Whitty, recently said that smoking is likely to have killed more people in Britain than the covid-19 pandemic, with more than 70,000 people dying from smoking last year in England alone—and for every person killed by smoking, another 30 live with the serious consequences of smoking-related illnesses. Ending smoking is essential if we are to reduce health inequalities between rich and poor, level up the nation and increase healthy life expectancy by five years, in line with the Government’s manifesto commitments.

The smoking rate in my Harrow East constituency is lower than average for England, but there is no room for complacency. More than one in 10 of my constituents smoke, and smoking kills 250 of my constituents every year. In 2018, there were 1,566 smoking-attributable hospital admissions in Harrow alone. Research shows that smokers are likely to need social care a decade earlier than non-smokers because of the impact of smoking-related diseases and disability.

Inequalities in smoking have grown, not shrunk, in recent years. To be smoke free by 2030, we need to reduce smoking by two thirds in only a decade, and by three quarters for smokers in routine and manual occupations. Cancer Research UK has said that, at current rates of decline, we will miss the target by seven years, and by double that for the poorest in society, because there are still 6 million smokers in England. We will achieve a smoke-free 2030 only by motivating more smokers to attempt to quit using the most effective quitting aids, while reducing the number of children and young adults who start smoking.

It is right that the Government brought forward the ambition of the prevention Green Paper, and we need to ensure that bold action is implemented, with appropriate investment. The Health Foundation estimates that a minimum of £1.2 billion is needed to restore public health funding to 2015 levels, and that a further £2.6 billion is needed to level up public health across the country.

The APPG’s view is that when it comes to ending smoking, the industry that makes excess profits from the sale of tobacco should pay, as it does in the US. The US’s user fee legislation raises $711 million annually from the tobacco industry; a similar approach could be introduced in the UK, with a statutory smoke-free 2030 fund imposing a targeted tobacco manufacturer profit cap and utility-style price controls in order to raise funds from the industry through a charge-based mechanism on sales volumes. It would not apply just to tobacco, because obviously this is about incentivising the industry to deliver on making smoking obsolete by 2030. It is quite clear that this is more than demonstrated by the market failure that has happened, and we need to get on with it. Will the Minister commit that the APPG recommendations for a “polluter pays” approach will be considered as a funding mechanism for the forthcoming tobacco control plan?

We also need to look at raising the age at which young people can buy cigarettes. Clearly, young people who start smoking continue to smoke into adulthood, so one of the areas that we have explored is raising the age of sale. It was raised from 16 to 18, which produced a 30% reduction in smokers aged 16 to 17 years old. It would be helpful if we could get to a position whereby 18 to 20-year-olds were prevented from smoking, so will the Minister commit to conducting a consultation on raising the age of sale from 18 to 21 and to coming to a decision about whether to go ahead by the end of 2021?

We have been a leader in the tobacco control plan, but obviously the position is that we have set the record. Now that we are free from the European Union, we can make decisions on our own. Will the Minister investigate extending Official Development Assistance funding for the FCTC 2030 project for a further five years?

Finally, the Minister is the lead for the World Health Organisation’s FCTC in the Department of Health and Social Care, so will she commit to provide the leadership in other Government Departments and public authorities that we need to fulfil their legal obligations to prevent tobacco policy from being influenced by the tobacco industry?

I have been able to touch on only four of the recommendations that we have made, and there are 12 in the report. I urge all Members to read the full report and the recommendations. The recommendations are supported not just by the APPG, but by leading health organisations too numerous for me to mention. There is good evidence that the recommendations will work in synergy to drive down smoking rates, and the forthcoming tobacco control plan offers the perfect opportunity to put them in place. I commend our recommendations to the House, and look forward to the reply of my hon. Friend the Minister.