Health Bill

Lord Rennard Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 11th November 2026 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Rennard]

53A: After Clause 11, insert the following new Clause—
“Duty as to a smoke-free EnglandIn the National Health Service Act 2006, after section 1CC (inserted by section 6 of this Act) insert— “1CD Duty as to a smoke-free England(1) In exercising functions in relation to the health service, the Secretary of State must act with a view to England becoming smoke-free as defined in section 7(1) of the Health Act 2006 (offence of smoking in smoke-free place).(2) The Secretary of State must, within 12 months of the day on which the Health Act 2026 is passed, publish a roadmap setting out how the health service will contribute to England becoming smoke-free, including interim targets and the stop smoking services to be commissioned by integrated care boards.(3) The Secretary of State must lay before Parliament an annual report on progress against the roadmap.””Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would add a duty as to a smoke-free England to the Secretary of State’s health service duties, and require a roadmap and annual progress reports.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak first to my Amendment 279QA, which would require the Secretary of State to review the funding available for NHS stop-smoking services in England, including options for contributions from the tobacco industry. It is a moderate and, I hope, acceptable amendment in that it asks the Government to think about whether further funding to tackle the harms caused by tobacco should come from the hard-pressed taxpayer or from those companies that are responsible for the huge costs associated with smoking tobacco.

We need more onus on the tobacco industry to pay up from its huge profits to help reduce the huge damage done when it makes its victims addicted to nicotine. It would not in itself increase the financial burden on smokers, as funds would come only from profits, not consumers. I hope that the Minister will accept that my approach in this amendment is not about further taxes on unfortunate consumers. It is about the “polluter pays” principle being applied to tobacco companies.

Action on Smoking and Health estimates that smoking costs £44.8 billion in England alone every year. There is a huge financial burden on our NHS, our social care system and wider society through large-scale losses in productivity that are caused by tobacco smoking. Tobacco addiction places a huge burden on mental health, and it causes great damage through increased levels of ill-health generally, disability, and all the consequences that come from bereavement. My argument is simply that it is right that tobacco manufacturers, whose lethal and addictive products kill two-thirds of long-term users, should pick up more of the tab.

The APPG on Smoking and Health is arguing this at a time when the Government need to raise more funds and when they do not want to increase the burden on ordinary taxpayers. It is no wonder that, in opposition, Labour was emphatically in favour of this principle. On Report of the Health and Care Bill, the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, said that the principle

“strikes me as wholly pragmatic”.—[Official Report, 16/3/22; col. 297.]

Earlier in Committee, she said that such a measure had

“broad cross-party … and public support”.—[Official Report, 4/2/22; col. 1266.]

The noble Baroness, with her eloquence, helped to persuade the House to carry the amendment in support of considering a tobacco levy, by 213 votes to 154. In the Division, 86 out of 87 Labour Peers voted in favour of the principle of a tobacco levy. They included the noble Baroness, Lady Merron; the present Leader of the House, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith; the Deputy Leader of the House, the noble Lord, Lord Collins; and the Government Chief Whip, the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy. They cannot all have been wrong on this occasion.

The Treasury is reluctant to have such a hypothecated tax, however popular it might be, but the Treasury should consider how Prime Minister Andy Burnham has expressed his desire to extract revenue from businesses that do not make a positive contribution to communities. I simply ask: could there be any businesses in this country that are more negative in their impact on communities than the tobacco industry?

The Prime Minister and the Chancellor are desperately seeking ways of raising cash. Depending on the levy agreed, a levy could be applied to the profits of tobacco companies, raising perhaps £5 billion over five years. A very poor argument comes back from the Treasury to try to suggest that it might not raise very much because the actual level of the money raised would depend on the level of the levy, which it does not know and has not set. But there is great scope for taking taxes from tobacco companies’ enormous profits, and the revenue could be quite considerable.

I make a request to the Minister. Can she press His Majesty’s Treasury to meet the APPG on Smoking and Health, which strongly advocates the tobacco levy, to discuss this issue? The levy has been shown to be a revenue raiser, supported by 76% of adults in England. To fulfil the aims of the Government and all of us seeking to reduce further the prevalence of tobacco by helping smokers to quit, we need to do more and to find the money to pay for the action required.

In some respects we are going in the wrong direction, and we have to address that. We want to help the Government with their manifesto commitment to deliver opt-out smoking cessation support within routine care. Amendment 53A in my name would provide for a specific duty concerning a smoke-free England to be included in the Secretary of State’s health service duties and would require a road map for making further progress with annual reports to Parliament.

The world-leading Tobacco and Vapes Act will introduce a smoke-free generation from next year and marks the beginning of the end of the tobacco epidemic in this country. However, it is not job done. There are still 4.9 million smokers across the UK. We need a new target for ending smoking in this country. The previous Government had a target of Smokefree 2030, with less than 5% prevalence of smoking tobacco by that year; sadly, that target is now unlikely to be met.

I applaud the ambition of the Government with the “stopping the start” programme to try to prevent the tobacco habit being taken up in the first place, but we need a similar ambition for current smokers. Less than 5% prevalence would still leave millions of people smoking, and the Government should set a bold new target for when smoking rates will be less than 1%. We need a plan for how that will be achieved, a road map. This would set out which populations have the highest rates of smoking, where we are going to target our efforts and how we will do that. We are making progress. We know it can be achieved when we have clear, funded policies such as financial incentives, a bold target and system-wide change to support quit journeys. I beg to move.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, and to agree with every word he said. I would have signed the amendment had I caught up with it.

I will speak to my Amendments 267 and 274 in this group. These line up very well with Amendment 224 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, about a duty to promote public health. I do not think they are contradictory; they could both be included and would work together quite well. My Amendment 267 would add a new clause to establish a public health committee and health creation unit to promote public health and cross-government policy-making. At Second Reading there was a lot of discussion that this Bill is about institutional arrangements and has very little in it about actually delivering health; a number of amendments in this group, including mine, seek to address that.

This amendment builds on a proposal put forward by MPs at the Commons Committee stage. I am bringing it forward again because I do not think we can keep treating public health as the responsibility of one government department. We are in a terrible condition. Life expectancy gains have stalled and healthy life expectancy is falling. The latest ONS figures show that healthy life expectancy has dropped to its lowest level since records began in 2011 to 2013. Men in the UK can now expect just 60.7 years in good health and women 60.9 years. Those statistics represent millions of people spending more of their lives in poor health and reflect deep inequalities in our society.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Hyde of Bemerton (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for that question. The Government are aware of the whack-a-mole nature of this and the constantly evolving picture. There are things that we cannot even imagine today that tomorrow will seem inevitable. I will write to her with a more comprehensive reply. We absolutely accept that this is not just about vaccines and that there is work to do.

[Lord Rennard (LD)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate and particularly appreciate that we are all on the same page on the principles of these issues. However, when it comes to the tobacco levy, the Government Front Bench were more on the same page as us when they were in opposition than they are this evening.

I reiterate my invitation to the Treasury to come and meet the APPG on Smoking and Health to discuss these issues. We know that increasing the price of cigarettes has reduced consumption, but we worry about the fact that many smokers are poor. Often, they are poor because they smoke—and are in ill health. We want to improve their health. If we simply tax them more and not the tobacco companies, the wrong people will be paying for the damage caused by the industry. Looking at models, we see that in the pharmaceutical industry it is perfectly possible to tax profits while preventing price increases hitting the consumer. That is the principle we must examine.

On that note, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 53A withdrawn.