Tobacco Products (Plain Packaging)

Debate between Sammy Wilson and Julian Huppert

Tuesday 3rd September 2013 Westminster Hall

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) on securing this important debate and on his excellent speech. I hope that we do have a debate and a vote in the House on this issue. I also pay tribute to the work that has been done over many years by my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Stephen Williams). He recently got a World Health Organisation medal for his work to try to control tobacco. That is very well deserved.

The tobacco industry clearly has a desperate fight on its hands to keep its profits. Over many years—many decades—it has resorted to a range of techniques. One story that used to be told was that if someone smokes, they are less likely to get Alzheimer’s disease. That is absolutely true, as has been said—but the main reason is that they are quite likely to die before they get Alzheimer’s disease. I am not sure that that is quite what was intended.

The question that we must ask when thinking about proposals to introduce plain packaging, which I completely and utterly support, is this: will it work? Study after study shows that with plain packaging, the packs will be less attractive to adults and to children and that that will reduce the number of people taking up smoking. Some 200,000 children take up smoking each year. We could make a real change. Smoking is presented as cool, but that is not the type of cool that we want to see. We can make a difference.

In Australia, there is already research on what the effects of plain packaging have been. It is very clear that plain packaging increases smokers’ urgency to quit and lowers the appeal of smoking. It is going the right way; it is having the right results. That is why I was so disappointed to see the Government’s decision to wait until we have a clearer view of the impact in Australia.

From a scientific perspective, it always makes sense to wait for better evidence. We could wait another year, five years, 10 years or 100 years and we will get more and more evidence, but in the meantime people will be taking up smoking and dying as a result. We simply do not have the luxury of waiting for ever to get the most perfect possible results. Australia has understood that and taken action, and many countries around the world, from Ireland to India, are following that lead. As the Australian Attorney-General, Mark Dreyfus, highlighted, the laws are “anti-cancer, not anti-trade”. That is where we should want to be.

[Sammy Wilson]

The hon. Gentleman talks about how plain packaging makes smoking less attractive, but the evidence from Australia is actually that plain packaging makes those cigarettes less attractive than those that have a brand name on them, not that it makes smoking less attractive. It simply makes one packet less attractive than the other. There is no evidence that it reduces the number of people coming forward to smoke.

[Dr Huppert]

I think that we have seen different data sets from Australia. My understanding is very clear that there is a substantial reduction there.

We will continue to see the resistance; we will continue to hear the arguments that if tobacco is legal, it must be possible to sell it freely. We have already heard the summary from “The Oxford Medical Companion” that tobacco is the only legally available consumer product that kills people when used entirely as intended. That is something that we should rightly be concerned about. Although the tobacco giants will continue to fight their case, we have a duty and a responsibility to fight on behalf of the people who will continue their lives—who will continue their healthy lives.

The fact that MPs from across the political spectrum—this is shown by the vast majority of speeches here today—have come together to ask for a U-turn on the original U-turn is proof of the political will that exists to take on tobacco. We know that that is supported by the public outside the House. I hope that we will keep raising the issue and that we will have a chance to make the difference.