Children and Families Bill

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Monday 10th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jane Ellison]

My understanding is that if a nicotine-containing product is licensed for medicinal use—licensed as a quit-smoking tool—it can already be prescribed by doctors. Some e-cigarette manufacturers have already indicated that in order to make a medicinal claim about their product’s ability to help people quit, they will seek to use the medicines regulations. If such a product becomes licensed as a medicine, it will be able to be prescribed as a smoking cessation aid in the same way that other nicotine-containing products can be. I hope that answer is helpful.

On proxy purchasing, we believe we must take action to address both the supply of and demand for tobacco products among young people if we are to reduce the uptake of smoking. Many retailers over the years have felt a little left alone to bear the burden of enforcement in this area, so I welcome both the work of responsible retailers to ensure that tobacco is not sold to people under the age of 18, and the support provided to them by retailer bodies such as the Association of Convenience Stores. There is support in both Houses for creating a proxy purchase offence for tobacco, and the Government have carefully reflected on the arguments that have been made. Retailers feel it is unfair that it is an offence for retailers to sell cigarettes to children and young people, yet there is no offence of proxy purchasing on behalf of children and young people. Retailers also feel it is inconsistent to have a proxy purchase offence for alcohol but not for tobacco. The Government want to continue to tackle the access that young people have to tobacco, which is why we have proposed this amendment.

The provisions would make it an offence for an adult to buy, or attempt to buy, tobacco for someone under the age of 18. That will be enforced by local authority trading standards officers, who will be able to issue a fixed penalty notice if they believe an offence has been committed, rather than taking prosecution action in the first instance. Local authorities will not be required to carry out regular programmes of enforcement in the way they have to on age of sale of tobacco, so we do not believe that this offence will bring into place any significant new regulatory burdens. Local authorities know their communities better than anyone and will know how best to address their public health priorities. We have devolved wide public health responsibilities and ring-fenced budgets to local authorities, and this amendment allows them to take targeted enforcement action on proxy purchasing where they consider it is needed.

The arguments relating to effective enforcement have been well rehearsed in previous debates. Experience in Scotland suggests that we should not to expect a vast number of convictions, and we should not measure the success of this new offence by the number of prosecutions or fixed penalties issued. I expect, however, that the new offence will generate worthwhile deterrent effects. As I said, in a new public health landscape where more powers are devolved to directors of public health there may be opportunities to explore work where there is a particular local problem.

Finally, I will address the issue of smoking in private vehicles carrying children. In another place an amendment was agreed to enable the Government to make regulations to make it

“an offence for any person who drives a private vehicle to fail to prevent smoking in the vehicle when a child or children are present”.

The amendment we are debating today was drawn up by the Government, with the support of the peers who tabled the initial amendment, to deliver the intention of the amendment in a legally workable way. We have a responsibility to be sure that any amendment that could make its way on to the statute book should work in practice. The technical amendment was agreed on Third Reading in another place.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

My hon. Friend says that she wants this to be workable. If a 17-year-old was driving a car and smoking at the same time, but nobody else was in the car, would they be guilty of an offence?

[Jane Ellison]

We have been discussing the issue earlier today, but we will look in more detail at that sort of detail when the House has voted on the principle of this and we have the view of both Houses. Today, the House is examining the principle, not detailed regulations, which would need to be brought forward and which would be subject to the affirmative resolution.

--- Later in debate ---

[Luciana Berger]

I shall come on to talk about measures on vehicles that were introduced in the 2006 Act. Lords amendment 125 refers specifically to private vehicles.

I also welcome Lords amendments 122 and 123, which deal with nicotine-containing products. I agree with the Minister that it is sensible to prohibit the sale of e-cigarettes to under-18s. E-cigarettes can help smokers who are trying to quit, but they should not be available to children, especially when there are so many question marks about the long-term health effects of nicotine and when concern has been expressed that e-cigs might act as gateway products that could lead some young people to take up tobacco smoking.

I am especially pleased to support Lords amendment 121, on proxy purchasing, which will prevent adults from buying cigarettes on behalf of children. Labour proposed that policy by tabling amendments in the other place last year. It is already illegal to buy alcohol on behalf of under-age children, so it does not make sense that the same offence does not apply to tobacco products given that, if they are used as directed, they kill half of all lifetime smokers. I am glad that the Government now agree with us, but I hope that the Minister will be able to share with hon. Members the Government’s rationale for introducing a maximum fine of £2,500, given that the equivalent penalty for the alcohol offence is £5,000.

Let me turn to Lords amendment 125 and the question of protecting children from adults smoking in cars. I pay tribute to everyone who has campaigned for such a measure, especially the British Lung Foundation and my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham). I also applaud my noble Friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, who tabled the original amendment. Since that amendment was successfully passed, the Government have laid out how that Labour proposal could be written into law. In the final analysis, the decision before the House comes down to a simple question: if we know beyond doubt that passive smoking in an enclosed space can do serious harm to a person’s health and that hundreds of thousands of children are being subjected to passive smoking in a car every single week, and if we know from our experience of similar laws passed in this country and others that legislation can have a major impact by changing behaviour and improving public health, should we act and do something, or stand by and do nothing? We say that we cannot afford not to act.

[Tim Loughton]

By that same token, does the hon. Lady concede that we should criminalise pregnant women who smoke, on the basis that their child is in an even more confined space than a car?

[Luciana Berger]

We are considering a specific provision, but if the hon. Gentleman wants to bring forward further measures, I am sure that the House would wish to debate them. We are talking about children who do not have a choice when travelling in a car.

We all know the dangers of passive smoking, but the reality is that its worst consequences are inflicted predominantly on the very youngest in our society. Children are especially vulnerable to the dangers because they have smaller lungs and faster breathing rates than adults.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab)]

I met the school council at Broadmead primary school in Croydon last Friday and I took part in a school assembly at Norbury Manor primary school this morning. I asked the children what they thought of the proposal to ban smoking in cars that are carrying children like them. Every single child supported the ban. When I asked how many of them had been inside a car when an adult was smoking, nearly half the children put their hands up. I asked one little girl what she did when she was in a car and an adult was smoking. She held her nose and told me that she tried not to breathe.

Although those children hated the experience of being forced to breathe in cigarette smoke, they did not understand the damage that it does to their health. The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and other professionals estimate that up to 160,000 children a year develop lung diseases, including asthma and bronchitis, as a result of breathing in second-hand cigarette smoke. Developing lungs are far more susceptible to smoke-related disease than those of adults. That raises the question of why we protect adults in the workplace, on public transport and in pubs from the dangers of second-hand smoke, but subject children to it in cars.

I have listened carefully to the arguments against this proposal, but I find very little merit in them. The idea that this measure is an example of the illiberal nanny state is misguided. Law making is often about striking a balance between competing rights. On what balance of rights does the right of a smoker to smoke outweigh the right of a child to grow up healthy? I do not accept that an adult should have the right to harm a child who is powerless to protect him or herself. An adult who is in a car with a smoker can get out if they want to. Often, a child cannot.

To those who say that the measure is unenforceable, I say that we heard exactly the same about the seat belt law. Education in this case has clearly not worked well enough. We need to change behaviour. That requires a strong education campaign but, crucially, that needs to be backed up by law to show how seriously the country takes the issue and to create a sufficiently powerful deterrent.

We have taken many steps to protect people from passive smoking. Without this further measure, too many children will be left struggling to avoid breathing in smoke in the back of cars and, far worse, could find themselves struggling with lung disease in later life. It is our duty today to act to protect them.

[Tim Loughton]

I am a veteran of many children’s Bills. Yet again, such a Bill has been hijacked at the 11th hour by a subject that was not part of the original Bill. Usually, the subject is smacking; today, it is smoking.

I hate, loathe and detest smoking. I do not want any of my children or anybody else’s children to smoke. However, I also hate, loathe and detest the nanny state and its increasingly frenetic and insidious tentacles, which are creeping into individuals’ private lives and spaces.

I support many other measures that will suppress smoking and reduce the prevalence of smoking. I am for in-your-face, horrific graphics that show people the ghastly things that smoking does to their insides. I am in favour of higher tax. I am in favour of pariah status for people who smoke. I have no problem with the Lords amendments on packaging and on discouraging people from buying tobacco for under-age people.

However, I am against a measure that yet again undermines the parenting role of parents in favour of the state. The state makes for a poor parent. This measure will criminalise good parents, as my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) said. People should not smoke in front of their children, whether they are in a car, outside a car, in a house or wherever else, not because the state threatens them with a fine or a criminal record, but because it is a stupid thing to do. I will not quite use the language of the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley), but it is stupid on so many levels. We should have much more empathy towards the health and welfare of our children, but we should support parents, not seek to supplant them, as the state has an increasing tendency to do and is trying to do yet again with this amendment.

If we are serious about this measure, we should have the courage of our convictions and ban smoking altogether. There is only one way that this legislation can go, and the natural conclusion is that there will be a ban on smoking in private homes. As I said earlier—not entirely facetiously—we must face the logic that pregnant women who can do untold damage to their unborn children through smoking and through foetal alcohol syndrome, which affects one in 100 children with very serious consequences, should be criminalised for doing the same thing in principle that this amendment tries to criminalise. Then there are the implications of not feeding our children healthy food. The amendment is unenforceable. It is bad law and is about supplanting, not supporting, the parent, and I cannot support it.

[Mr Winnick]

There is the notion that this amendment on the safety of children in cars is an attack on freedom, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) rightly said, a model society will always need to put various restrictions on what individuals can and cannot do.

Reference has been made to seat belts, and it so happens that I was in the Chamber during the debates on that. I imagine that if the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) had been present at the time, he would have argued strongly against compulsory seat belts in cars—of course he would have because when I was listening to him today, I heard the authentic voice of primitive Toryism.