Tobacco Packaging

Mark Durkan Excerpts

Thursday 7th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Paul Burstow (Sutton and Cheam) (LD)]

I rise as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on smoking and health. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), a fellow officer of the all-party group, on securing this important debate, which is an important opportunity for the House to continue to put pressure on the Government to move on this issue. I am a co-sponsor of the debate. It should come as no surprise that the APPG strongly supports effective action to reduce the harm that is caused by tobacco. I welcome the contributions from the hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham), my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, East and the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis), all of whom set out compellingly the piles of evidence that show the effectiveness of standardised packaging as a further aid to tobacco control and reduction of the harm that tobacco does. That surely has to be a key goal of public health policy in this country.

Reducing the number of people dying from preventable disease and of people living with chronic disease has to be a key part of what this debate is all about. How do we address that? By tackling risk factors—in this case, the risky behaviour of taking up smoking in the first place. A variety of interventions can make a difference. In this country over the past few years, parliamentary action and parliamentary pressure have persuaded Governments to do something. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr Barron) on his initiative when he was Chair of the Health Select Committee to enable the Labour Government to bring in via a free vote the ban on smoking in enclosed public places.

No Government have a particularly good record of leadership in this area. Most Governments tend to have to be led by this place. That is why we are having this debate today, and I hope the Government will take their lead from this House and the other place, because both Houses have a cross-party unity of purpose in addressing these issues. We have seen that progress over the years.

Over the past 15 years the combination of measures has made a difference. Smoking prevalence has fallen among adults by a quarter and among children by as much as half. More clearly remains to be done, as the debate so far has demonstrated. Smoking is still a major cause of preventable disease and death. It far outweighs the next six major causes. When it comes to public health and to children and young people, we have a special duty, over and above that which we owe to all our fellow citizens. That duty is clear: we should act. Above all, standardised packaging is about protecting children and young people, as has been said in this debate.

Big tobacco must attract children. Why? Because its product kills 100,000 of its customers every year in this country, and it needs to replace those dead customers. The evidence is clear. Smoking is a childhood addiction, not an adult choice. We need to understand that. Some 40% of smokers are addicted by the age of 16, and two thirds are addicted by the age of 18. Two hundred thousand children take up smoking every year and about 530 of them do so in my borough, the London borough of Sutton. Very few people start smoking over the age of 20, as we have heard.

The focus on the recruitment of children has been admitted by big tobacco. The tobacco industry knows how sensitive children and young people are to brands of all sorts. Removing the brightly coloured packaging has been shown to make a difference. It has made those products less attractive to children.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

The right hon. Gentleman rightly emphasises addiction, but have we not heard, even in this debate, that this is addiction marketed as freedom?

[Paul Burstow]

Absolutely, and that is the most pernicious part of it. It is addiction posing as freedom of choice, whereas once they are addicted, people have lost their freedom of choice, and it is very hard to step back from that.