Children and Families Bill

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2014 Lords Chamber

Finally, I have already registered my gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, my noble friend Lord Ribeiro, and the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, for supporting the amendment on smoking in cars. I pay tribute, too, to the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, for adding his name to the other amendments in this package. I hope that noble Lords will support them, and I beg to move.

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

First, I thank the Minister for his kind words about my signing all the amendments in this group with the exception of Amendment 41, which I did not sign not because I disagreed with it—I think that it is absolutely excellent—but because other noble Lords put their names to it ahead of me and the list was full when I asked whether I could add mine.

I start with a general point, which I cannot resist making. I first went to see the Public Bill Office after Second Reading last July and asked its advice on whether there was any possibility of including a clause on standard packaging for tobacco products as a child protection measure in the Bill. I never dreamt that by Third Reading the Bill would contain such a range of powerful tobacco control measures, especially in view of the fact that there was no reference to a single one when the Bill came to us from another place.

I particularly thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Finlay of Llandaff and Lady Tyler of Enfield, and the noble Lord, Lord McColl, for agreeing to sign our original cross-party amendments on standard packaging. I commend the noble Lord, Lord Ribeiro, for persisting with his campaign to ban smoking in cars when children are present, and my right honourable friend Andy Burnham and my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath for their support on all these issues. I particularly thank the Health Minister, the noble Earl, Lord Howe, whose courtesy, willingness to listen and determination to get the policy right nobody in this House could possibly fault. I also mention in dispatches the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach. As the Minister said, he indicated on the second day of the Report stage of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill, as recently as 14 January, that he had an open mind on proxy purchasing, although he was not as forthcoming as the Minister has been with his amendment today.

When the Government come to implement the policy on proxy purchasing, I wonder if they would like to look at one element of the experience in Scotland. When Scotland introduced a law on proxy purchasing in October 2011, it brought in a retailer registration scheme at the same time. This is a low-cost licensing scheme that operates in conjunction with fixed penalty notices and gives the courts the ability to impose banning orders. It requires all tobacco retailers to be registered on one national register in order to sell tobacco. The costs to the industry of the scheme are minimal and are limited really to the one-off labour cost needed to fill out the form. Costs to the Government include the initial set-up costs of advertising and marketing to give retailers information about the need to comply with the scheme and the process to be undertaken, and the cost of a database to hold national-level information on retailers. Such a scheme would give local enforcement agencies a very valuable weapon in tackling illicit trade and in enforcing other tobacco control regulations—for example, the ban on sales to minors. It would also help to protect the great majority of honest retailers from unfair competition from the unscrupulous minority who are prepared to deal in illicit products.

Finally, I go back to the speech from the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, on the anti-social behaviour Bill and commend one sentence in it that I have not heard from any Minister before. He said:

“The Government are determined … to stamp out smoking as a habit, particularly among young people, so they are being proactive”.—[Official Report, 14/1/14; col. 141.]

Indeed they are and the amendments before us today are proof of that. They are an indication of just how far we have come and noble Lords in all parts of the House deserve great credit for the contribution that they have made to public health by adding these vital tobacco control amendments to this Bill.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, would like to say a few words about Amendment 41. I also was one of those disappointed to get there too late to add my name to it. I thank the Minister for listening and for everything that he has done to get us to the position we are now in. The amendment he has brought forward with other noble Lords is laudable, and it is right that we are working hard to make sure that it is legally workable. I pay tribute to him for that.

I have a couple of other comments. I, too, am so pleased that this is part of a comprehensive package of tobacco control measures—something to try to prevent young people picking up that nicotine addiction that too often leads to dependency early in life. This is a landmark set of measures, both for child protection and for the public health of young people. I thank everyone who has been involved in that. It also demonstrates what we can do in your Lordships’ House when we work in a non-partisan way. The discussions and the debates that we have had across the House and across Benches have brought home to me how good it can be that we can work in this way.

Finally, on enforcement and workability—I made this point on Report—I am very pleased that there will be opportunities for both Houses to discuss methods of implementation, provided we get to that stage. There are many people who have a lot of expertise to bring to bear. Only this morning, I was looking at a Canadian Cancer Society review from this year which listed the countries which already have bans of this type in place. It includes Canadian provinces, Australian states, six of the US states, Mauritius, South America, Bahrain and Puerto Rico. I say that to emphasise that it can be done. It is being done in other parts of the world. Of course, they all have their own ways of doing things. I suspect that none of them will be directly comparable, but it clearly can be done. The fact that there is so much experience elsewhere in the world is something that we should take account of when we have those follow-up discussions on implementation.