Tobacco Packaging

Paul Burstow 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.

[Jake Berry]

On the subject of free choice, I am interested to hear that three-quarters of smokers take up smoking between the ages of 16 and 18. If people are not capable of exercising free choice at the age of 16, why does the right hon. Gentleman think it right that the Lib Dems have a policy of reducing the voting age to 16?

[Paul Burstow]

To make sure that the record is clear, I said that two thirds of smokers are addicted by the age of 18. It is entirely right that we have the debate on the voting age. The House has voted on the matter and has supported the idea that we should allow people to exercise a democratic choice at the age of 16, but that is not today’s debate. Although I would hope that voting was an addictive behaviour, it is not, and getting people to vote at an earlier age is more likely to get the participation rate up. That is why I support it and why my party does as well.

Let me move on to another point about what the industry has as its agenda. Imperial Tobacco’s global brand director, Geoff Good, has said that package redesign has been worth

“over £60 million in additional turnover and a significant profit improvement. . .the UK had become a dark market, the pack design was the only part of the mix that was changed, and therefore we knew the cause and effect.”

That was in 2006. Tobacco advertising is already banned in the UK. The branding and brightly coloured packaging clearly meet the legal definition already in existence. They are a form of commercial communication with the aim or direct or indirect effect of promoting a tobacco product. In the words of Imperial Tobacco’s global brand director, Geoff Good,

“pack design was the only part of the mix that was changed”.

The cause and effect are clear. Package-based advertising should be banned.

In earlier contributions to the debate, reference was made to some types of packaging. One example was Vogue cigarettes. The packet looks like a lipstick container or a perfume product. It is intended to convey the glamour of smoking, about which the hon. Member for Hornchurch and Upminster (Dame Angela Watkinson) spoke earlier.

I have a question for the Minister, which she might be able to address in her contribution later. It concerns the World Health Organisation’s framework convention on tobacco control. I understand that the UK plans to sign the protocol on the elimination of illicit trade in tobacco products. The protocol makes it clear that arrangements for tracking and tracing tobacco products should be independent of the tobacco industry. In other words, the industry should not be allowed to self-police. Does the Minister agree that the EU draft revision of the EU tobacco products directive should give full effect to the World Health Organisation protocol to ensure independence of action for our enforcement agencies in dealing with the illicit trade?

I welcome the Minister’s remark at Health questions a week ago that she was examining the issue “very carefully”. However, having already considered the evidence, her predecessor made it clear in the House and elsewhere that she supports the measure, as does my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Department of Health. Why do we still have to wait for the Australian scheme to be tested further? We know after the first 11 months that it has been bedding in well. As we have heard already, it is having a material effect on consumer behaviour. Consumers are reporting that they think the same product tastes different. The same product is less attractive. Standardised packaging is affecting behaviour, which is a key element of this drive.

There is clear and sustained public support for standardised packaging. National polls show that two thirds of the public want to see the Government act on this agenda. When my local paper, the Sutton Guardian, ran a poll recently, it found that 80% of those who took part in that poll backed standardised packaging. Other nations in the United Kingdom are choosing to act. Other nations in Europe are choosing to act. The evidence is mounting, as is the death toll and as is the recruitment of children and young people to this pernicious habit. May we now see action? May we have something that children and young people deserve—this Government and this Parliament acting to protect them from the harm of smoking? Standardisation of packaging is the next step in effective tobacco control and I hope the Government will take that step soon.