Health and Care Bill

Debate between Philippa Whitford and Bob Blackman

Report stage
Monday 22nd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dr Whitford]

That is the policy of the Scottish Government, and we would absolutely support the new clause if it is voted on tomorrow.

As Opposition Members have said, key to improving public health would be restoring the non-covid related public health budget in England. We cannot hide behind covid funding, because that is used up by the pandemic and does not help us with smoking, alcohol, or drug addiction. The biggest contribution the Government could make would be to abandon their plans for yet another decade of austerity. We hear the slogan all the time—levelling up—but it rings hollow after taking away £1,000 a year from the poorest families and most vulnerable households. Over the past decade, cuts to social security have caused a rise in poverty among pensioners, disabled people, and particularly children. Sir Michael Marmot was mentioned earlier, and his research was clear: poverty is the biggest single driver of ill health, and the biggest driver of poverty is Tory austerity.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford), who brings her knowledge of the medical profession to this House on every occasion. I agreed with almost everything she had to say, apart from the last comment.

I declare my interest as chair of the all-party group on smoking and health, and I support all the new clauses tabled in the name of the hon. Member for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy). These comprehensive proposals are complementary and can be picked up by the Government. The new clauses were tabled in a different form in Committee. They were discussed and debated, and I think Ministers said they would take them away and have a further look. We have refined the proposals on the basis of the debate in Committee, strengthened them, and brought them back again, and they address the loopholes in current legislation. They strengthen the regulation of tobacco products still further, and they provide funding for the tobacco control measures that are so desperately needed if we are to deliver the Government’s Smokefree 2030 ambition.

We had an excellent debate in Westminster Hall last week, to which the new Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Maggie Throup) responded. Questions were posed to the Government from across the Chamber about when we will see the long-promised tobacco control plan, which is presumably due to be delivered by 31 December this year. We got no firm commitment on when we will see it, and I would like my hon. Friend the Minister to bring that forward as soon as possible. We can then measure what will happen.

The problem we have with tobacco control right now is that if we do nothing and none of these measures is introduced, the risk is that, as the hon. Member for City of Durham rightly articulated, we will miss the target by seven years. For those on low incomes and in deprived circumstances, it will be 14 years. We must consider how many people will die from smoking-related diseases as a direct result of the Government’s failure to achieve their Smokefree 2030 ambition. It is clear that we need to take further action, and I urge the Minister, who I know is a doughty campaigner for public health, to make sure that we deliver on the proposals.

My main focus is obviously on the new clauses that seek to provide funding for tobacco control. We all accept that not only can we implement measures, but we have somehow to fund them. That is critical. We must also consider raising the age of sale, as that, unfortunately, is a key proponent in encouraging young people to start smoking. The spending review failed to address the 25% real-terms cut to public health funding since 2015. Reductions in spending on tobacco control have bitten even deeper, by a third, since 2015. We need new sources of funding.

The Government promised to consider a polluter pays levy in the 2019 Prevention Green Paper, when they announced the Smokefree 2030 ambition. The all-party group on smoking and health has done the analysis, and we estimate that in the first year alone of a polluter pays levy, £700 million could be raised. That would benefit not only England, but the whole United Kingdom. It is more than twice the estimated cost of the tobacco control measures that we are proposing tonight, and that would then leave the Government with further funding to spend on other health priorities. The proposal is for a user fee, along United States lines, rather than an additional tax. Now that we have exited the European Union and can set our own rules, EU tobacco manufacturers’ profits can be controlled. They cannot pass the cost on to the consumer, but we can control their profits and use those for preventing people from smoking in the first place. It is quite justified that we should tax the manufacturers’ profits. This is the most highly addictive product that is legally available, and it kills those who use it for the purpose for which it was intended.