Tobacco Products and Nicotine Inhaling Products (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018

Lord Rennard Excerpts

Tuesday 4th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for this opportunity to discuss e-cigarettes. It is also a great opportunity to press the Minister on the Government’s Brexit situation. I do not think that we have heard him on this matter before. It is interesting to reflect on the confidence set out in the Explanatory Memorandum that,

“as a responsible government, we will continue to proportionately prepare for all scenarios”.

That is just as well because I do not share the Minister’s confidence that the future is at all clear or, indeed, that all scenarios have been planned.

I am sure the regulations are sensible but the Explanatory Memorandum takes us back to our debate when they originally came through your Lordships’ House, during which a number of us expressed concerns that the directive on which they were based takes too draconian a view on e-cigarettes. I happen to think that e-cigarettes are one of the most successful public health measures to help reduce smoking that we have ever seen. It is a great pity that some elements of the public health community that I know well and love have such a downer on e-cigarettes that they have encouraged a disproportionate approach to their regulation. In Grand Committee, the argument was put that e-cigarettes should be regulated in a completely different way from tobacco-based products. I remain convinced of that.

Of course, we must be very careful about the potential impact on young people. I know there are those who think that attractive advertisements and the way e-cigarettes are marketed can sometimes lead young people to take up smoking. The evidence for that is very dubious. We know that e-cigarettes are attractive to people over whose heads most public health campaigns completely fly. Although I fervently hope that we do not exit the EU next March, if we do and if the Government bring forward at some point new regulations on tobacco products in general, I hope they will take note of our debates and look at e-cigarettes in a completely different way.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, there are those—I am certainly not among them—who welcomed the idea of Brexit because they did not like the restrictions on the promotion of tobacco that we agreed across the EU. Contrary to the biased and selfish claims made on behalf of the tobacco industry, these regulations have been successful in reducing significantly the prevalence of tobacco smoking and its related diseases. We should never forget that tobacco products shorten the lives of half the people who smoke.

The tobacco lobbyists will be disappointed with the regulations because they show that they have lost the argument and there is now cross-party consensus on tackling tobacco-related problems. As the Minister said, even if we have the disastrous no-deal Brexit that some of those people want, the regulations will allow for a set of pictures, as currently used in Australia, to continue to appear on cigarette packs in the UK to warn smokers of the terrible damage done to their health by smoking.

As the Minister said, the regulations have the support of the excellent Action on Smoking and Health, of which I am a former director. Of course, they have my support too, but I would like to remind the Minister that the Tobacco and Related Products Regulations 2016 require the Secretary of State to review those regulations and publish a report before 20 May 2021. Some of the important points made by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, should be examined when that report is made. Some of us also feel passionately that e-cigarettes can and must be promoted effectively as an alternative to smoking tobacco, but in such a way as not to encourage people who have never smoked tobacco to take up an addiction to nicotine. I would like the Minister to confirm as well as he can that there will be no going back on our successful tobacco regulation policies, which are doing so much to improve the health and life expectancy of so many people. We should do nothing that reverses the excellent progress being made on this issue.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, I apologise to the House for being a minute or so late. I am afraid that business moved too quickly and the lift too slowly.

As the Minister said, the current regulations for tobacco and related products are designed to promote and protect the public’s health. Speaking as a veteran of tobacco regulation from the previous Labour Government and the Minister responsible for the point of sale retail advertising regulations that put tobacco products out of sight in our shops and supermarkets, all those actions were rigorously and energetically opposed by the noble Lord’s party and the Minister’s predecessor but one. I welcome the Government having definitely seen the light on this; it is wonderful. I am pleased to learn that the Government’s priority is to maintain the same high standards after the UK leaves the European Union, if that is indeed what happens.

The noble Lord and I are discussing regulations that will be necessary if there is no deal. I suspect they are the first of many. We have a whole load of embryonic and blood things to discuss next week. I wonder whether that is really a productive use of his time or mine.

On what these regulations do, in the event of no deal we will be obliged to introduce legislation to ensure that the policies and systems in place to regulate tobacco products and e-cigarettes will continue to function effectively and maintain continuity with current arrangements. The website and the Explanatory Notes use the words “where possible”, so I suppose my first question to the Minister is to explain the words “where possible” and where the current arrangements might not be possible.

If the UK leaves the European Union in March 2019 with no agreement in place, that will mean, as the noble Lord said, that the tobacco products directive and the tobacco advertising directive will no longer directly apply to the UK—which is ironic, as we were the pioneers in these matters all those years ago. UK domestic law that implements these directives, such as the Tobacco and Related Products Regulations 2016, would remain in force.

My understanding is that these regulations’ purposes are threefold: to introduce a new domestic system to allow producers to notify e-cigarettes in accordance with existing rules; to introduce a new domestic system to allow producers to notify tobacco products in accordance with existing rules; and to introduce new picture warnings for tobacco products, already mentioned by noble Lords, based on the picture library owned by the Australian Government. The noble Lord and I have both learned that the pictures in use at the moment come from a library based in Brussels. We will no longer have access to it.

I thank ASH for its views and vigilance on these important matters, and for its participation in the consultation process. I agree with it that the system set out for notification of e-cigarettes and novel tobacco products in the consultation document is pragmatic and practical, and would minimise the additional work involved in the notification process if there were to be a no-deal Brexit. Products notified to the UK prior to the UK leaving the European Union would not require re-notification and data will be accepted in the same format as currently submitted. Those arrangements seem satisfactory.

For the purpose of providing an alternative to the current picture warnings in the event that the UK leaves the EU with no deal, since we would no longer have access to the rather revolting and graphic pictures in the SI—I have not seen any other legislation with pictures in it, but this instrument has them; I suggest that if noble Lords have not read the statutory instrument they should at least open it and look at the pictures it contains—the Minister has said we will switch to the ones used in Australia, which I gather are even more horrible. However, I remind the Government that, in the longer term, the Tobacco and Related Product Regulations 2016 require the Secretary of State to review the regulations and publish a report before 20 May 2021. This review needs to examine the objectives intended to be achieved by the regulatory provision made by these regulations, and to assess how far they have been met and whether they remain appropriate. That will allow a review of quite a fast-moving area in terms of product development to take place. Does the Minister agree that is the case?

For the purpose of providing an alternative to the current picture warnings in the event that the UK leaves the EU with no deal, switching to the pictures from Australia is a short-term quick fix for this emergency. However, current best practice in Australia and the UK is to rotate, regularly review and update those health warnings. Therefore, it is essential that in the longer term the Government review the warnings—they are currently being evaluated by the Australian Government—and find ways to increase the number to allow for rotation, as is currently the case. When can we expect that review to take place?

I do not need to add to my noble friend Lord Hunt’s remarks about the importance of vaping and its role in reducing smoking. These statutory instruments serve their purpose.