Children and Families Bill

Eleanor Laing Excerpts

Monday 10th February 2014 Commons Chamber

Consideration of Lords amendments

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

I must draw the House’s attention to the fact that financial privilege is involved in a large number of Lords amendments, which are listed in the notes on the Order Paper. If the House agrees to any of them, I will cause an appropriate entry to be made in the Journal.

New Clause

Protection of Children’s Health: Offence of Smoking in a Private Vehicle

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Jane Ellison)]

I beg to move, That this House agrees with Lords amendment 125.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Lords amendments 121 to 123.

Lords amendment 124 and amendments (a), (b) and (c) thereto.

Lords amendment 150.

[Jane Ellison]

I am very pleased to speak to this package of Government amendments aimed at protecting young people from tobacco and nicotine addiction. I will also speak to the amendment on smoking in cars carrying children, which was agreed in another place.

I am sure that I need not remind hon. Members that tobacco use is a leading preventable cause of death, accounting for nearly 80,000 premature deaths per year in England alone and being a contributory factor in many other aspects of poor health. Taking action to prevent young people from taking up smoking in the first place is vital in our efforts to reduce rates of smoking.

When I first became the Minister responsible for public health I was made very aware of just how critical the teenage years are in smoking addiction, and that came up repeatedly in a Backbench Business Committee debate at the time. Almost two-thirds of smokers take up smoking regularly before they are 18—that is, they were addicted before becoming adults. That is a shocking reality, which many hon. Members have spoken about in this Chamber.

Stopping smoking can be extremely difficult because the addiction is so powerful. While two-thirds of smokers say that they want to quit, only a small fraction succeed in doing so. That is why we must stop young people taking up smoking in the first place. We want to see our young people enter an adulthood that is healthy and long-lived, but half of all long-term smokers will die from a smoking-related disease.

The amendments we have introduced seek to do the following: introduce regulation-making powers to enable the Government to bring in standardised tobacco packaging, if such a decision is made; introduce regulation-making powers to prohibit the sale of nicotine products to people under the age of 18; and to create a new offence of the proxy purchasing of tobacco. Also returning to this House from another place is an amendment which would provide the Government with regulation-making powers on smoking in cars carrying children, which is for hon. Members to consider.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Paisley]

The Minister has touched on two important points. One involves the packaging rights of companies. Is there anything in the legislation that would enable compensation to be granted to those companies if the Government chose to remove their trademarks and branding rights? I understand that, under European law, billions of pounds of compensation could be payable in those circumstances. Secondly, will the Minister clarify whether the Chantler review—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman is making an important point, but I am sure that he will wish to be brief, as many people wish to speak in the debate.

[Ian Paisley]

I apologise for the longevity of my intervention, Madam Deputy Speaker, but these important issues affect many jobs in my constituency. My second point involves the illicit trade in tobacco products. Will the Minister tell us whether that will be covered by the Chantler review?