Tobacco Products (Plain Packaging)

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd September 2013 Westminster Hall

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) for making possible this important debate at this stage in the Parliament. I also thank you, Mr Hollobone, for your exemplary chairing, which has allowed everyone who wanted to speak to do so.

In my brief remarks, I want to deal with the bogus point that doing anything about cigarette packaging necessarily affects how we treat alcohol and fatty foods, and to talk about the importance of protecting children and local leadership. I first want to congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith),for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) and for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) on their excellent speeches, as well as my colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane), for his helpful visual aids, which enabled us all to focus on what the debate is about in practice. I found the contribution from the hon. Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) quite moving. For me, the image of a child on his father’s ward with all those men dying from lung cancer, a type of cancer in which people drown, was particularly vivid and moving.

First and foremost, I will deal with the bogus idea that we can compare the packaging of cigarettes with that of sweet or fatty foods, alcohol and so on. If people consume alcohol and packaged sugary or fatty goods in the quantities indicated on the packaging—all packaged goods now have information about calories and what proportion of people’s diets should be made up of particular food groups, and all alcohol packaging tells people the advisable level of consumption—the effect on health is marginal. If they consume tobacco in the way manufacturers indicate, half of lifelong smokers will die—no ifs, no buts. Tobacco is the only legal substance for which, if consumed as indicated, half of consumers will die. In relation to packaging, that makes tobacco a wholly different case from alcohol and sugary and fatty foods. In my view, it is a dishonest argument to try to make that comparison.

[Mark Field]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Ms Abbott]

I am afraid that I cannot.

We know that half of lifetime smokers will die from smoking, that it remains the largest preventable cause of cancer, that it causes one in four deaths from cancer and eight in 10 deaths from lung cancer, and that smoking is the biggest cause of health inequality. That is what makes tobacco packaging different and makes the measures so important.

On children, the key to the debate is not whether a change in packaging would make established smokers alter their habits, but the attraction that packaging holds for children. The question is one of child protection: although adults can make their decision about smoking, society has a responsibility, which some speakers have ignored, to protect children. Even Members who do not accept that must agree that we have a responsibility to bear down on the millions of pounds a year that it costs the NHS to deal with the consequences of smoking.

We have seen important local leadership on smoking. A lot can be done locally, which is why it is so important to move public health to local authorities. I want to name the leader of Newcastle city council, Nick Forbes, and Fresh North East for their innovatory work.

This is one of those issues on which what is done upstream—Government measures—has the most impact. In the lifetimes of everyone in the Chamber, levels of smoking have gone down, and attitudes to smoking have changed. When I was a child, people smoked on the television, in films, in meetings and in offices, none of which is now acceptable. That shows what we can do in public health with a mix of moral suasion and legislation, but there is more to be done, and I believe that the packaging measure is the last brick in the wall.

It is important to make the point that we are discussing UK packaging. As part of my role as shadow public health Minister, I have been to Europe—to Brussels and so on—to talk about the issue. In Brussels, people are clear that one reason why the tobacco industry is so exercised about packaging is not profits in the UK, but the example that UK legislation would set to the rest of the world, including the huge markets in China and Africa. What is at stake is not a marginal decrease in profit here; it is the big problem of profits forgone in the huge markets elsewhere. That is why it is so important for us in Parliament to set the right example—not just for the health of British people or because of the costs to the health service, but for the rest of the world.

In closing, I congratulate such organisations as Cancer Research UK and Action on Smoking and Health that have been ceaseless in bringing the facts before the public and MPs. We know that the issues are difficult and that the Government face the money and power of big tobacco. To be candid, that is why my Government in the end allowed a free vote. If this debate can get one important thing rolling, it should be pressure on the Government at the highest level to allow Parliament to discuss the question: let us debate and decide. The health of Britain’s children and the general population depends on it and the spiralling cost of the NHS depends on it, as does the health of people all over the world, to whom we can set an example with exemplary legislation on cigarette packaging.