Tobacco Products (Plain Packaging)

Mark Field Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd September 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

As my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) has made clear, the Government, at the behest of the very well funded, vocal and influential health lobby, are examining whether to introduce plain packaging for the nation’s tobacco industry. I, for one, believe that that is an entirely unjustified step and that it would create an unsettling precedent—the state prohibiting the producers of a legal product to use its legally protected and valuable branding. It is a serious challenge to all those who believe in free markets, enterprise and the economic system of capitalism.

I would very much agree with what was said in the earlier exchanges: if it is such a terrible product, have the honesty, as many in the health industry do not, to say that the whole product should be banned. I would accept that if it is felt to be such an unhealthy product, it should be banned, but we would also then be going down a road that would probably, before long, affect the alcohol industry, fatty foods and so on. That is not a state of affairs that I would like.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

Would my hon. Friend not wish to make a distinction between moderate consumption of alcohol and fatty foods, which is perfectly tolerable, and moderate consumption of cigarettes, which have an appalling effect, no matter how many are consumed? There is a real distinction.

[Mark Field]

No doubt the health lobby would quickly suggest that alcohol and fatty foods were equally intolerable, even at the lowest level.

Let me make it clear at the outset: I accept fully that tobacco is addictive, but it is a legal drug for adults. I am the father of two young children—a son of five and a daughter of two—and I would not want them to take up tobacco, not least because my late father also died of lung cancer. In passing, it is worth making the observation that our coalition partners and the Opposition would allow 16 and 17-year-olds to vote, but not to purchase cigarettes. The age restriction for tobacco, of course, has risen from 16 in recent years.

I accept that tobacco smoking is subject to commensurate regulations and restrictions. No one should sensibly want to see children take up smoking or should encourage them to take up the habit. I believe that we should do all we can to discourage, to educate and ultimately to prevent those under the legal age from taking up smoking. However, I also believe passionately in the concept of freedom of choice. The decision of whether or not to smoke should remain that of an informed adult, without gratuitous interference from the state.

One should not forget that tobacco is already one of the most highly regulated products in the world. The introduction of plain packaging would almost certainly amount to a regulation too far, and the so-called “denormalisation” of tobacco is not a sufficiently valid policy decision to justify such action. Any decision by the coalition Government must be unequivocally evidence-based. To contemplate taking such a significant measure for a legal product, the evidence base must be rock solid and reliable, with a guarantee that it will have the outcome intended.

I must confess that I am very pleased that the Department did not place a bid in this year’s Queen’s Speech, and that the Government, with a very libertarian junior Minister as we know, have sensibly delayed making a decision until it is clear what impact plain packaging has in Australia, where a plain-packaging law has been introduced. In my view, it makes sense to see how that experiment works first, before following their lead.

Any decision must be categorically made on the basis not of who shouts loudest or which side of the debate is able to muster the largest number of automated e-mail responses. The enforced introduction of plain packaging would infringe fundamental legal rights that are routinely afforded to international business. It would erode some important British intellectual property and brand equity, and it would create a dangerous precedent for the future of commercial free speech in areas such as alcohol and, indeed, within the food industry.

There is so much more that I would like to say, Mr Hollobone. It has been an interesting debate. I accept that my contribution is on a different path from those of many other Members here, but it is a voice that perhaps needs to be heard in this debate, which we will no doubt have in the months and years to come.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Williams (Bristol West) (LD)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) on securing the debate. He is my honourable friend in a different context, as an officer in the all-party parliamentary group on smoking and health, which I have chaired for the past three years.

We have two debates in Parliament that will attract public attention today—this one and the debate on lobbyists this afternoon. I think that we could move seamlessly from one to the other, because the fact that the Government have stalled on this important public health measure is proof positive of the effectiveness of the lobbying industry. The industry must see it as a triumph that it has caused the Government to stop and think again.

Over the past 18 months or so there has been frantic and frenetic lobbying by the tobacco companies to stop the Government introducing legislation to standardise the packaging of cigarettes. That is because it is the last remaining marketing ploy that the tobacco companies have. They have used the same arguments they made about the ban on smoking in public places and the display ban: that it will destroy small shops, and lead to a huge increase in smuggling and criminal activity. Those arguments were wrong then and they are wrong now.

[Mark Field]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Stephen Williams]

The hon. Gentleman has spoken, so I will follow the Chair’s mandate and not give way.

Other people are lobbying against the policy, such as Unite the Union. I took part in a debate during the recess on BBC Radio Bristol with a shop steward from the tobacco packaging factory in east Bristol. He said that if legislation went ahead that factory would lose hundreds of jobs. I say to the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) that I see no problem at all with being a constituency MP—Imperial Tobacco, one of the largest tobacco companies in the world, is based in Bristol—and arguing against the tobacco trade, because tobacco kills people in my city and kills people from poorer communities. It is a public health tragedy that smoking now disproportionately affects poorer people in society. The middle classes have largely followed all the health warnings and given up smoking.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Field]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Ms Abbott]

I am afraid that I cannot.

We know that half of lifetime smokers will die from smoking, that it remains the largest preventable cause of cancer, that it causes one in four deaths from cancer and eight in 10 deaths from lung cancer, and that smoking is the biggest cause of health inequality. That is what makes tobacco packaging different and makes the measures so important.

On children, the key to the debate is not whether a change in packaging would make established smokers alter their habits, but the attraction that packaging holds for children. The question is one of child protection: although adults can make their decision about smoking, society has a responsibility, which some speakers have ignored, to protect children. Even Members who do not accept that must agree that we have a responsibility to bear down on the millions of pounds a year that it costs the NHS to deal with the consequences of smoking.

We have seen important local leadership on smoking. A lot can be done locally, which is why it is so important to move public health to local authorities. I want to name the leader of Newcastle city council, Nick Forbes, and Fresh North East for their innovatory work.

This is one of those issues on which what is done upstream—Government measures—has the most impact. In the lifetimes of everyone in the Chamber, levels of smoking have gone down, and attitudes to smoking have changed. When I was a child, people smoked on the television, in films, in meetings and in offices, none of which is now acceptable. That shows what we can do in public health with a mix of moral suasion and legislation, but there is more to be done, and I believe that the packaging measure is the last brick in the wall.

It is important to make the point that we are discussing UK packaging. As part of my role as shadow public health Minister, I have been to Europe—to Brussels and so on—to talk about the issue. In Brussels, people are clear that one reason why the tobacco industry is so exercised about packaging is not profits in the UK, but the example that UK legislation would set to the rest of the world, including the huge markets in China and Africa. What is at stake is not a marginal decrease in profit here; it is the big problem of profits forgone in the huge markets elsewhere. That is why it is so important for us in Parliament to set the right example—not just for the health of British people or because of the costs to the health service, but for the rest of the world.

In closing, I congratulate such organisations as Cancer Research UK and Action on Smoking and Health that have been ceaseless in bringing the facts before the public and MPs. We know that the issues are difficult and that the Government face the money and power of big tobacco. To be candid, that is why my Government in the end allowed a free vote. If this debate can get one important thing rolling, it should be pressure on the Government at the highest level to allow Parliament to discuss the question: let us debate and decide. The health of Britain’s children and the general population depends on it and the spiralling cost of the NHS depends on it, as does the health of people all over the world, to whom we can set an example with exemplary legislation on cigarette packaging.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Anna Soubry)]

It is a pleasure, as ever, to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I echo the remarks of many speakers by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman)—a long-standing friend, if I may say so—on securing the debate and on his excellent speech. As he knows, I have been called many things, but I have never been called “very libertarian”, and I am still in a state of shock at that description.

I make it clear that I am no great fan or supporter of the nanny state. I do not have a particular problem with standardised packaging, because that does not relate to the nanny state. As we have heard in the many excellent speeches from Members of all parties, the issue is the protection of children, not preventing anybody from smoking or going out to buy cigarettes. It is about protecting young people from the attraction of taking up smoking.

It is important that I declare my interest. My father, a lifelong smoker, died at the age of 56 from lung cancer. I do not think that there was any doubt that that cancer was caused by his lifelong addition to tobacco—to smoking. I say with considerable shame, if I may put it that way, that until just over five years ago, I, too, was a smoker; both my brothers continue to smoke. I am not for one moment saying that if people are not or have not been smokers, they cannot engage in the debate, because that would obviously be complete nonsense, but they have to have been a smoker to understand the perverse psychology of smoking.

We know that 8 million people in this country continue to smoke and that the overwhelming majority of them want to stop. It is an admission of some weakness within us, which I think is the power of nicotine. It is often said that nicotine is more addictive even than heroin. Although I have never directly experienced heroin, when I was a criminal barrister I had enough clients to know how powerful heroin and cocaine are. Goodness me, even they would say that nicotine is a dreadful substance in its addiction. That accounts for why so many smokers, like me, found it so difficult to give up.

I want to make it clear that like so many smokers, I took up smoking before the age of 18. I accept that I sound very weak when I say—this is one of those moments where one almost wants to confess—that the power of the packet had an effect on this 17-year-old from Worksop who was working in a toy shop, which, bizarrely, sold cigarettes in those days. Younger people listening to this debate will be amazed to hear that a toy shop could sell cigarettes, but those were the days.

I have never forgotten the first time that I bought a packet of cigarettes. I deliberately chose a packet of St Moritz because they were green, gorgeous and a symbol of glamour. Do hon. Members remember the madness of those advertisements that talked of the cool fresh mountain air of menthol cigarettes? Those were the days that some of us remember because of our age. I distinctly remember the power of that package. It was the opening of the cellophane and the gold and the silver that was so powerfully important to many people who, as youngsters, took up smoking. I say that to my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) who says that he has never met anyone so drawn; well, he has now, because I am that person, and I am not alone by any means.

[Mark Field]

There is little doubt that if alcohol were synthesised for the first time today, or if we discovered sugar for the first time, it would be banned. The Minister has made the case about nicotine. Ideally, does she want the product banned? She talked about protecting young people. What age is she talking about? In America, for example, alcohol is banned for anyone under the age of 21. Is that the age she is considering, especially as we could outlaw both tobacco and alcohol at university when people are at an impressionable age?

[Anna Soubry]

My hon. Friend is most naughty. He asks me in a short period of time, when I have other matters to address, to answer about three or four questions all at once, most of which are completely irrelevant. We cannot say that there is a correlation between alcohol and tobacco; of course there is not. One can enjoy a glass of wine on an occasional basis. Indeed there is evidence that it can help certain people with their health. I am talking about the gentle consumption of alcohol or sugar. Indeed there is nothing wrong with eating sweets for goodness sake or even chips and other fatty substances. It is all a question of how much one eats; it should be part of a sensible and well-balanced diet. There is nothing in support of cigarettes or tobacco. It is about as barmy as saying, “If you want to help yourself after a stressful day, have a fag.” Cigarettes—tobacco—kill people and harm people’s health. Get it!