Tobacco Control Plan

Kenny MacAskill Excerpts

Thursday 10th June 2021 Westminster Hall

[Kenny MacAskill (East Lothian) (Alba) [V]]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Miller, as others have said.

I also follow others in thanking the hon. Member for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy) for securing this debate. I also thank Action on Smoking and Health for providing a briefing for it. I am conscious that most of this debate and this documentation relates to England. There are some aspects that apply to Scotland; indeed, I hope they will be replicated in Scotland and I will do my best to encourage some action to be taken, because some actions are cross-border, if not universal. It is from that perspective that I come to this debate.

As others have said, or confessed to, I do not smoke; I never have smoked and I have discouraged my family from so doing. I come from a generation in which youngsters, such as myself, who were quite interested in sport were told by Jim Watt, the boxer, that he could be caught by a right but never with a fag in his hand. I think that Scotland would be a better place if we had had similar efforts on alcohol, but we only concentrated on smoking. That is where we are coming from. We have made progress from the time of my childhood in the ’60s and ’70s, but there is still a considerable distance to travel, especially when we find smoking rooted in the poorest areas, where there are already underlying health vulnerabilities, and indeed in other sections of our society. There is considerable work still to be done.

The question is this: what action is to be taken? It is not a question of what action per se, because action has to be taken; it is more about the extent and calibration of the action that is taken. I say that because I wish to ensure that the social progress that we need to make, and want to make, in tackling smoking and the social ill that it is does not come at a cost to other communities or, indeed, in the form of other aspects that cause harm in our community.

I come from the perspective of having served as Justice Secretary in Scotland for seven and a half years. I established a serious organised crime taskforce. As other speakers have mentioned, there is a link between illegal tobacco and serious organised crime. Not only is there a link between them; it also turns into other harms that plague our communities. In my interlude between Parliaments, I chaired the Scottish Anti-Illicit Trade Group, which sought to bring together all organisations involved in law enforcement and keeping communities safe, at whatever level and in whatever jurisdiction. Indeed, it also brought in business, because a problem shared is a problem halved.

I want simply to highlight that cost loading has limits. That is not to say that there should not be cost loading. It is quite correct that the “polluter pays” aspect should be considered. I certainly argued that as Justice Secretary in the case of alcohol, and that has been taken up. Equally, to what extent do we load it? I am no free market capitalist, but I recognise, as did Adam Smith, that there has to be some regulation and that we have to ensure that there is some control over the market, because we know that in other aspects of society, if we close down supply, we find it simply results in aspects coming around in other ways.

I am not here to make a special plea for big tobacco. I would not seek to do that. They can fight their own battles, but there is an effect on others. As was mentioned by the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley), small grocers—people who pay their taxes—are affected. They employ staff, provide for their communities, work on limited margins and yet they lose out. The tragedy we face is that people view illicit tobacco as simply ripping off big tobacco or, even more likely, ripping off the taxman—they have no love for him either—but the reality is that they are harming their communities and those who pay their taxes and work hard. They are harming their families and, indeed, their neighbours who work in and depend on employment in local stores, whether they purchase from a pop-up Facebook page or from a white van man.

Action has to be taken, and I support calls for an improvement in what we do to tackle the illicit trade. Much more could be done at a governmental level on both sides of the border. In terms of today’s debate, I welcome progress and fully support what has been called for here today. I simply emphasise that we have to ensure that we get the calibration right. In seeking to tackle harm within our communities, we must keep it proportionate and at a level that will not be counterproductive, because we do not want to make further progress in tackling tobacco that at the same time results in fuelling organised crime and in other aspects being abused. It is therefore a matter of balance.