Standardised Packaging of Tobacco Products Regulations 2015

Lord McFall of Alcluith Excerpts

Monday 16th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord McFall of Alcluith (Lab)]

My Lords, I want to provide a few anecdotal points in this debate today. I was prompted by the remarks made previously about criminals engaging in illicit cigarettes. Eight or nine years ago, I went on a parliamentary visit to China and saw for myself the number of sophisticated cigarette factories that the Chinese were closing down every week. In China, 25 to 30 factories were closed every week. But in the UK, the total number of Customs representatives that we had patrolling China was exactly one, and that person was based in Hong Kong. I say that if the Government want to crack down on this illegal trading, which is supposed to be producing about one in three illicit cigarettes in London, they have to tackle it very robustly at HMRC level. That is the lesson that we have to learn from this.

I was a smoker when I was young. The noble Lord, Lord Geddes, made the point that plain packaging on cigarettes did not have any effect on him. It did not have an effect on him because—I say this with due respect—that was a number of decades ago. At that time, there was a culture of smoking. All of us smoked at the time; I smoked when I was in school. In fact, we smoked Woodbines. If anyone has seen the Woodbine packaging they will know that it was not very attractive, so the more sophisticated ones went on to Benson & Hedges or Marlborough. We had a particularly nasty teacher in the school, who was a smoker. He could detect the schoolboys who were smoking. He smelled our hands, called us smoky beasts, took our five Woodbines or whatever off us, and gave us a belt at the same time—not very fair. But lots of us were engaging in smoking, because that was a good thing to do.

I was brought up very short when my late father had to enter hospital with vascular problems. I visited the Western Infirmary in Glasgow—this was about 50 years ago—and to this day, I remember the name of the consultant and I remember the brutal message that he gave me. The consultant’s name was Mr Gray—Mr Reid, sorry. Mr Reid—I wrote it down, but that is what happens when you get into the House of Lords—said to me, “Your father is suffering from severe vascular problems and he will most likely have to have his legs amputated”. Indeed, he had both his legs amputated. Mr Reid asked me whether I was a smoker, to which I said yes. He said, “Listen, my boy, you look round every bed in my ward and you will see no one other than smokers, so the lesson I have for you and your friends is that the sooner you stop smoking the better”. That stayed with me. I did stop smoking and it was the best thing that I did in my life.

I commend the noble Earl for the work that he has done and say to him that this legislation has come not a day too soon.

[Baroness Tonge (Ind LD)]

My Lords, I cannot resist putting in my oar at this stage, very briefly. I have been associated with the anti-smoking campaign for many years, in the Commons and in the Lords. I gave up smoking in 1974, I think—the noble Lord, Lord Walton, will correct me—when the report was published on the links between smoking and lung cancer. I had taken up smoking as a teenager—I say this to support all those people who say that packaging is important in attracting young people to start to smoke—and was taught to smoke by my brothers and their friends in somebody’s back garden because they did not want a sister who choked and did not know how to do it. I do not think that we used the word “cool” in those days, but they wanted me to be cool and be able to smoke. It must have been a very rich friend of my brother, because the cigarettes that he produced to teach me were those wonderful multicoloured ones with gold tips—I think that they were called cocktail cigarettes; I shall not mention the brand. I had never seen anything quite so attractive in my life and, for a while, I was seriously hooked on them until I found out how much they cost. I then investigated something called Black Russian, which were even smarter, if that was possible. I as a teenager then knew perfectly well that it was not just the packaging but the appearance of the cigarettes that was attractive. They were very smart to be able to handle because they were different colours—some noble Lords are smiling; they obviously remember them.

What is important about this measure is that it tackles the appearance of cigarettes, which should be uniform. I wholeheartedly support it. I am glad that I gave up smoking all those years ago. I hope that the majority in this House will support the regulations.

NHS: Clinical Negligence

Lord McFall of Alcluith Excerpts

Tuesday 20th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, potentially, independent sector providers may elect to be members of the negligence scheme, although only in respect of their NHS services. Therefore, only NHS-related liabilities would be covered in those circumstances. It is a pay-as-you-go pooled scheme, and I do not therefore have the figure that my noble friend requested. If I can get the figure disaggregated for him, I would be happy to write. In answer to his last question, I take it that he is asking whether the provider would be allowed to continue treatment, having been found to be negligent or having admitted negligence. That decision would be clinically led, with the patient exercising choice in each individual case.

[Lord McFall of Alcluith (Lab)]

My Lords, may I suggest an examination of the area of clinical governance? I and my family are not alone in having a negative experience of a disjointed, rather than an integrated, clinical governance network, where communication between departments and individuals was virtually non-existent. The admirable Reith lecturer, Dr Atul Gawande, examined the concept regarding why doctors fail, and one of the main reasons he came up with was that policies that fragment a unified system rather than cohere the system were in the interests of neither patients nor the NHS, as can be seen with these claims.

[Earl Howe]

The noble Lord makes a series of good points. He may be interested to know that part of the series of pledges that form the Sign up to Safety campaign, which hospitals can apply for, can include the principles of being transparent with people—including about any mistakes that have been made and what is being done to tackle safety issues—and collaboration, by taking a leading role in supporting local collaborative learning, so that the system genuinely can work together and learn together.