Tobacco and Vapes Bill (Second sitting)

Jim Dickson Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 7th January 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Dr Chambers]

Q I am assuming that from a public health point of view, looking at the epidemiology, certain communities and demographics will be more greatly affected by this. Is that something that you are mindful of? How do you see the Bill changing health inequalities?

Alison Challenger: We are very mindful of that. Some of the statistics we give around smoking prevalence are an average smoking prevalence for often quite large geographical areas. For my own area in west Sussex, our local survey suggests there is a variance of 4.3% in our most affluent area compared with 16% in our least affluent area. Those are still averages. We also know that in households in the most deprived part of our area, 40% of children are exposed to cigarette smoking from a parent or carer. That is through our own survey.

The point I am trying to make is that there is very much a health gradient, and in those who are most disadvantaged and living in our most disadvantaged areas, we see both higher rates of smoking and more children exposed to that smoking. Those children are more likely to take up smoking if they have been exposed to it.

[Jim Dickson (Dartford) (Lab)]

Q This is to Councillor Fothergill. Are there any circumstances you can envisage where local enforcement would not be enough and the Secretary of State would need to utilise the powers granted in the Bill under clauses 130 and 131 to intervene?

David Fothergill: We have discussed this outside the room, and I think the area we would be most concerned about is illegal sales online. Our local teams could not get into those, and therefore we might need more national resources to break into how people are bringing illegal substances into the UK.

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[The Chair]

I call Jim Dickson.

[Jim Dickson]

I am fine, Sir Mark.

[The Chair]

If there are no further questions, I thank the witness, Professor Bauld, for her contribution. We will move on to the sixth panel of witnesses.

Examination of Witnesses

Lord Michael Bichard and Wendy Martin gave evidence.

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[The Chair]

One final quick question from Jim Dickson, before we have to go on to the next panel.

[Jim Dickson]

Q Tobacco companies, as we know, collect a pretty rich dataset on their sales. Do you think that requesting, or placing in legislation an obligation on them to publish, that sales data would be a useful tool for trading standards?

Lord Michael Bichard: I cannot see that it would not be useful, but it is not something that has come across my desk.

Wendy Martin: Mine neither, but intelligence-led enforcement means the more that intelligence is available, the better one is able to target. I do not know exactly what tobacco companies collect, but generally any intelligence is useful.

[The Chair]

I thank both panellists for their evidence. We will move on to the next panel.

Examination of Witness

Inga Becker-Hansen gave evidence.

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[Mary Kelly Foy]

Q As we know, we have very high levels of child poverty in this country. Much of that poverty is in the areas where there is high smoking prevalence, as well as many other health issues. How important do you think the Bill is for the health of children as they grow into adulthood, for the impact that it will have on the communities they live in, and for addressing inequality?

Professor Steve Turner: Touching on what I have said before, there are communities, invariably the poorer communities, in something called the tobacco map. If you look at the areas where tobacco use is greatest, it maps totally on top of deprivation. We have an opportunity to break that generational social norm of, “It’s okay to smoke.” The people who come to the greatest harm from cigarette smoking and nicotine addiction are invariably the poorest. What is proposed here will be a good step towards narrowing the divide we see in this country in health outcomes, which is totally determined by poverty.

Professor Sanjay Agrawal: We estimate that around 350 children a day start to smoke. A lot of those will be from the most deprived communities. In addition, smoking in the UK brings around a quarter of a million families into poverty, and those families have children. The Bill will go a long way to not only reducing the health harms to individuals, but reducing poverty and hopefully smoking-related deprivation.

To answer one of the questions earlier about the cost of smoking to the NHS, it is estimated that it costs secondary care about £1 billion a year. With primary care in addition, that is a total cost of £2.6 billion to the NHS, around £20 billion a year to social care, and about £50 billion a year in lost productivity. That is the overall cost of smoking to our society, whether at the level of the individual, poverty, deprivation, social care or workforce productivity, and that is why the Bill is so important.

[Jim Dickson]

Q Some other countries, notably Australia and Canada, have introduced mandatory health warnings for manufacturers to place on individual cigarettes and filters, because quite often, young people in particular are accepting cigarettes away from the packaging. Do you see that as a useful way of increasing the saliency of health warnings?

Professor Sanjay Agrawal: These additional measures warn people away from smoking—those who might be looking at the packaging or the individual cigarette. Remember, an individual cigarette—every time someone takes out a cigarette—is an advertisement for cigarettes. Lots of times, children are sold cigarettes on a per-cigarette basis, and they have never actually seen the packet; they have only seen the cigarettes. Therefore, having on-cigarette warnings is another measure that we can introduce to warn people off the harms of smoking. It would be great to see that.

[The Chair]

I was incorrect; we have until 5 o’clock, rather than 4.50 pm, which is now. Do we have any more questions from Members? No. In that case, I thank Professor Turner and Professor Agrawal for giving evidence, which I am sure will be useful to the Committee in its deliberations. The next panellist happens to be the Minister. Instead of asking questions, he will come under fire from his own Committee.

Examination of Witness

Andrew Gwynne MP gave evidence.