Tobacco Products Directive

Debate between Ian Swales and Jane Ellison

Monday 28th October 2013 Commons Chamber

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

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker. I congratulate the hon. Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt) on securing a very timely debate. I enjoyed her thoughtful speech. I suspect that there will be things on which I cannot respond in quite the level of detail she would want, but she has posed all the important and current questions, and I will try to cover as many of them as I can.

We all agree that smoking has an enormously harmful impact on health. Nearly 80,000 people die in England every year from smoking-related illnesses, and the Government are obviously committed to reducing the number of those premature deaths—it is a priority for us—so this is a welcome opportunity to debate tobacco control. I will first take a moment, however, to highlight the UK’s international reputation on tobacco control. Successive Governments have demonstrated a commitment to improving public health through effective tobacco-control policies, and a wide range of measures have contributed to our long-term success. Over the past decade, complementary domestic and EU legislation has contributed to a decline in smoking prevalence among both adults and young people, and in England today the rate of adult smoking prevalence is under 20% for the first time. But clearly we want to keep making progress.

Since the 2001 tobacco products directive, there have been several scientific and international policy developments on tobacco control, an obvious one being the World Health Organisation’s framework convention on tobacco control, to which every EU member state and the European Commission are parties. It has become necessary to update the current directive, however, and that work is ongoing. The revised directive, to which the hon. Lady devoted much of her speech, proposes new requirements across a range of areas, including: the ingredients and emissions of tobacco products; labelling and packaging; product traceability and security features; cross-border distance sales; and novel and nicotine-containing products. The UK Government welcome the revised tobacco products directive and believe that the proposals will be good for public health across Europe, particularly in helping to prevent children from taking up smoking—it is of concern to us all that the vast majority of smokers started before they turned 18.

Our key objectives for the directive include: bigger pictorial health warnings; ending tobacco with characterising flavours, which the hon. Lady described, including menthol and fruit flavours; and requiring nicotine-containing products such as e-cigarettes to be regulated as medicines. During the negotiations, my predecessor and officials worked to secure adequate freedom for member states to introduce domestic policies within the scope of the directive that aim for a higher level of health protection where justified. That is important because we want to retain the freedom to do more if we want to. For example, we need the ability to introduce standardised packaging if we wish to do so.

[Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)]

Does the Minister share my concern that some packaging is clearly aimed at children—for example, there is one with a Lego-style pattern called “14”—and women, through pastel colours and so on?

[Jane Ellison]

Yes, I share that concern. I saw a presentation only last week with some of those adverts and imagery. As I said, it is a key priority of ours to prevent children and young people from taking up smoking, so anything that might contribute to their taking it up is extremely worrying.

The UK’s support for the general approach agreed at the June Health Council was important in securing the qualified majority needed to avoid losing hard-won negotiated improvements to the text of the directive. Hon. Members will also be aware that the European Parliament has been scrutinising the proposal, and this is obviously where we have had some recent pushback in some areas. We were pleased to see that, on 8 October, the Parliament agreed with the Council and voted to ban packs of cigarettes with fewer than 20 sticks, to increase health warnings to 65% of the front and back of packs, to make pictorial warnings mandatory throughout the EU—as they are already in the UK—and to prohibit characterising flavours.

It should be noted that the Council and the European Parliament rejected the Commission’s proposal to ban slim cigarettes, so that will not form part of the final revised directive. As the new Minister, I made inquiries into why that was the case, and I understand that there was not enough support among EU member states or parliamentarians for such a ban. We in the UK felt that we had to go with the majority to ensure the progress of the directive, as it will be good for public health overall. That was a pragmatic decision. Like the hon. Lady, I believe that this package of measures will help to reduce the number of young people who take up smoking in the UK.

We are currently considering the detailed amendments that the European Parliament would like to make. We were disappointed that the Parliament did not support the regulation of nicotine-containing products as medicines. We believe that the medicines regulatory regime, applied with a light touch, is the best fit for these products. Although I cannot say too much more about that now, we recognise that there is a lively ongoing debate on that subject, and it is one that we are engaged in. It is also vital that we maintain momentum on the overall negotiations over the coming months, so as to finalise the directive as soon as possible.

The hon. Lady devoted some time to considering what the tobacco products directive will mean for small retailers. As a Back Bencher, I was co-chairman of the all-party parliamentary retail group, and I heard many of the same representations that she mentioned. I recognise those concerns. We recognise that some of the proposals will have impacts on tobacco retailers in regard to the range and pack size of tobacco products that they will be able to sell. During the negotiations, as with all of our tobacco control measures, we continue to consider the impacts on all areas of society, including businesses large and small.

I share the hon. Lady’s doubt that introducing the proposed revised directive, if and when agreed, will have any immediate or drastic effect on small retailers. As she said, retailers face an ongoing challenge to diversify the range of products that they sell so that they are not over-dependent on tobacco sales. British retailers are, and always have been, the most innovative in responding to consumer needs and diversifying. The earliest any new requirements would be likely to take effect in the UK would be 2016, meaning that shopkeepers have time to start making changes now.

The hon. Lady made some interesting points on illicit tobacco. Like her, I have heard that some tobacco manufacturers and retailers believe that certain measures in the proposed directive could drive more smokers to purchase illicitly traded tobacco products. We are not aware of any peer-reviewed and published studies that show that that would happen. However, we are not complacent when it comes to counterfeit or non-duty-paid tobacco products in the UK. The illicit tobacco market is complex and decisions by individuals to get involved in purchasing illicit tobacco depend on a range of factors. The proposed directive envisages a Europe-wide tracking and tracing system for tobacco products, the details of which we are still negotiating in Brussels. The European Commission says that that will reduce the amount of illicit products in the EU. Security features against counterfeiting will also allow consumers to verify the legal status of the products. The hon. Lady suggested that we were perhaps paying insufficient attention to the security features on the packaging, because they are often not very plain at all.

I am glad that the hon. Lady has pointed out that the illicit market in cigarettes and roll-your-own has diminished significantly since the launch of the first Government tobacco strategy in 2000, with the mid-point estimate of the tax gap for illicit cigarettes decreasing from 21% in 2000-2001 to 9% in 2012-13, for example, according to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs data. The UK’s success in reducing illicit tobacco is in no small part due to successive Governments’ commitment to, and investment in, enforcement, and that remains a key part of our policy. We should also see further progress on illicit tobacco on a global scale when the new framework convention on tobacco control protocol on illicit trade is implemented.

The hon. Lady made some interesting points about proxy purchasing. Obviously that is something that, as a new Minister, I have just begun to look at, and I was glad that she explored some of the arguments. I want to emphasise the valuable contribution that the majority of retailers make to ensuring that legitimate tobacco products are sold according to the law, including by not selling tobacco to people under 18 years old. Retailers get frustrated that we hear only about the occasional instances of poor practice that hit the headlines, and that decent, ordinary retailers do not get any credit for the way in which they uphold the law. I want to place on record my thanks to all those retailers who make strenuous efforts to uphold the law and who do not sell tobacco products to children.

I sympathise with the difficulties retailers face in ensuring that they do not make sales to under-age people. I also understand why some retailers feel that buying tobacco on behalf of a child should be an offence. However, we need to think carefully before introducing a proxy purchasing offence. I understand that the supply of cigarettes to children is a problem, but an offence of proxy purchasing would not necessarily tackle the wider problem of supply.