Smokefree Future

Preet Kaur Gill Excerpts

Thursday 11th January 2024 Westminster Hall

[Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma, and to speak in this important debate. It has been great to hear the large degree of consensus across the House on our ambition to secure a smoke-free future. I thank the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) for securing this debate and for his work with the all-party parliamentary group on smoking and health. I also welcome the new Minister to her place.

I thank my hon. Friends the Members for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy) and for Blaydon (Liz Twist) and the hon. Members for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for their powerful contributions on why we need a smoke-free future. They talked about the health impacts that we currently see, but also offered practical solutions.

As we have heard today, smoking is an absolute blight on the health of our society. The “Global Burden of Disease” study found that despite the fall in smoking rates in recent decades, it remains the No. 1 risk factor that causes premature deaths in England. In 2019, tobacco caused an estimated 125,000 deaths in the UK. That is one person every five minutes—a staggering statistic. On average, smokers lose 10 years of life. Not only is smoking an expensive habit, as we have heard, but it is three or four times more common in some of our most deprived communities.

If everyone quit tomorrow, it is estimated that that could lift 1 million children out of poverty. That is to say nothing of the impact on the economy. Not only is it another cost to our NHS, but Action on Smoking and Health has estimated that smoking costs the United Kingdom £32 billion in lost productivity through lost earnings, unemployment and early deaths, and another £15 billion in social care costs. The evidence is overwhelming that for the future of the NHS, the economy and the health and wellbeing of the country, smoking is bad for Britain.

As Primary Care and Public Health Minister, I will drive a prevention agenda forward. The agenda has received many warm words from Conservative MPs and Ministers in the abstract, but very little by way of action over the past 14 years. We in Labour have set ourselves a clear mission to reduce the number of lives lost to the biggest killers. Realising a smoke-free future will be integral to that.

Smoking, of course, is the leading cause of cancer in the United Kingdom. It is strongly linked to cardiovascular disease, which is highly preventable, yet causes one in four deaths in the United Kingdom. Some 15,000 deaths from heart and circulatory diseases can be attributed to smoking every single year, so Labour has set clear targets on both cancer and cardiovascular disease. We will improve cancer survival rates by hitting NHS cancer waiting time and early diagnosis targets within five years so that no patient waits longer than they should, and we will reduce deaths from heart disease and stroke by a quarter within 10 years. Building a smoke-free future will be key to that to help more people make that journey.

We welcomed the Khan review when it was published in 2022, and we were pleased to see some of the recommendations taken forward. I will not use this debate to discuss the Government’s smoke-free generation legislation. We shall await their response to the consultation when it is published—perhaps the Minister can today share the timeline for that. To be clear, the Opposition support phasing out smoking over time, and we encourage the Government to get on with it.

When we proposed phasing out smoking, some Conservatives attacked us. The hon. Member for Blackpool South (Scott Benton), who cannot take part in the debate today, called it “health fascism’’ and

“an attack on ordinary people and their culture”.

I ask those Members what freedom they think there is in addiction. Is it in the average 10 years of life lost by smokers compared with non-smokers? Or the millions of children growing up with parents who smoke? It is a shame that the Prime Minister has failed to convince his MPs of the argument for the reforms and is calling a free vote. But he can rest assured that Labour will vote to see this through.

As Members have highlighted today, the legislation cannot be a substitute for smoking cessation services and other public health measures. Two thirds of adult smokers started before the age of 18; the legislation will come too late for them. Adults who have smoked for years and have not managed to kick the habit need help, too. Does the Minister share my concern that local government funding for “stop smoking” services and tobacco control has fallen by 45% since 2015? Has she assessed the impact of that against the 2030 ambition? Can she provide an update on when the major conditions strategy will be published?

One of the clearest cases to do more on smoking is the impact on children. There has been good progress in recent decades to bring down maternal smoking, but there is more to do. Last year, 9% of mothers were smokers at the time of delivery—still some 50% above the Government’s 6% target. At the current rate of progress, we will not hit that goal until 2032. That is why, as part of Labour’s child health action plan, which was launched today, we would make sure that all hospital trusts integrated opt-out smoking cessation interventions into routine care, with a named lead on smoking cessation, meaning that parents would have all the support they needed to quit and every interaction with the NHS actually encouraged quitting.

Children born to households that smoke are more likely to be born with heart defects, born underweight, or grow up to be smokers themselves—if they grow up at all. Smoking in pregnancy doubles the likelihood of stillbirth. It increases the risk of pre-term birth and miscarriage, and trebles the risk of sudden infant death syndrome. The health of Britain’s children should be non-negotiable. For my part, I want to ensure that children born in Britain today are part of the healthiest generation to have ever lived. But to do that, children deserve a smoke-free start. Can the Minister tell us what she is doing to ensure that every expecting mother is offered the smoking cessation support they need, and that partners, as we heard from the hon. Member for Harrow East, are also encouraged to quit?

For far too long, public health has been either an afterthought or a battleground on which to have ideological arguments. Strategies have been announced and binned in short order, health inequalities have widened, and the long-term crisis in the NHS has deepened. But, just as the last Labour Government delivered one of the most significant public health interventions in history in the smoking ban, the next Labour Government will grasp the smoke-free challenge. We will get serious about prevention, deliver equitable access to smoking cessation services, and take on tobacco companies that profit at the expense of public health. As part of our child health action plan, Labour will make sure that Britain’s children get the happy and healthy start in life that they deserve.

Recently, a school in my constituency had to apologise after handing out a leaflet to a child suggesting smoking as a self-help measure—absolutely shocking and bizarre. That is why Labour has decided to legislate to make tobacco companies include information in tobacco products that dispels the myth that smoking reduces stress and anxiety, and to crack down on businesses marketing vapes to children. We will ensure that the incremental ban on smoking comes into force so that the next generation are not addicted to tobacco. The last Labour Government led the way in tackling smoking, and the next one will do so again.