Smokefree 2030 Target

Virendra Sharma Excerpts

Tuesday 20th June 2023 Westminster Hall

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Virendra Sharma (in the Chair)]

Order. I have two announcements to make before I call the next speaker. This debate will still finish at 11 am. I intend to start calling Opposition Front Benchers at 10.30 am. Rather than setting a time limit now, I make this request of all Members: try to be brief, so that everybody can contribute. I hope that, in that way, we can deal with the situation. I call Mary Kelly Foy.

[Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma, and to follow my co-sponsor of this debate, the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman). He is also the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on smoking and health, of which I am a vice-chair. I declare that interest.

As we have heard, the measures announced by the Minister in April were a step in the right direction. However, they fell very short of the comprehensive strategy outlined by the APPG and the Khan review, and it has taken far too long—almost four years—for the Government to get going on this. In the meantime, tobacco continues to kill an estimated one person every five minutes in Britain. The deaths are disproportionately concentrated in regions such as the north-east—regions that have some of the highest rates of poverty and, in turn, the highest rates of smoking in England. In the north-east, nearly 13,000 people died prematurely from smoking between 2017 and 2019. This has an economic cost for our communities of over £100 million in healthcare costs and £64 million in social care costs. All the while, tobacco companies make record profits, leaving the taxpayer and families to pick up the pieces.

We are fortunate in the north-east to have a highly effective regional tobacco control programme—Fresh—funded by all the local authorities in the region and the local integrated care board, and it has proven successful over the years. Just yesterday, it launched a new behavioural change campaign called “Smoking Survivors”, which features two women from the north-east who have quit smoking and survived cancer. However, national funding for behavioural change campaigns such as that fell by around 90% between 2008 and 2018. Although regional activity is vital, we need strong leadership from the Government if we are to see every region be smoke free by 2030.

Like the hon. Member for Harrow East, I welcome the Minister’s recent announcement on tackling youth vaping, but why did it take so long for the Government to act? When the Health and Care Act 2022 was going through Parliament in 2021, I tabled amendments that would have given the Government powers to prohibit child-friendly branding on e-cigarette packaging and to ban the free distribution of vapes to under-18s, which, as we know, has strong cross-party support. To my amazement, not only did the Government fail to adopt my amendments, but they voted them down.

As the Minister will remember, one of Dr Khan’s must-do recommendations was raising the age of sale for tobacco beyond 18, so I was disappointed not to see that included in the April announcement. The all-party group has already urged the Government to launch a public consultation on raising the age of sale, and I urge them to do that too.

I will end with a few questions for the Minister, which probably echo what the hon. Member for Harrow East asked. Will the Minister commit to consulting on a “polluter pays” levy to raise funding for a comprehensive tobacco control strategy?

Will the Government consider measures to address the affordability, accessibility, appeal and advertising of vapes, which were recommended by ASH in its response to the Government’s call for evidence on youth vaping? Once again, I highlight the fact that big tobacco companies rigorously lobby against vaping regulations, so I would like the Minister to take note of that.

Will the Minister confirm that a consultation on raising the age of sale will be considered? Finally, will he reassure the House that a comprehensive strategy to address smoking and vaping will be delivered—if not through the tobacco control plan, as promised by his predecessors, then in the forthcoming major conditions strategy?

[Mr Virendra Sharma (in the Chair)]

I urge Members to stick to about five minutes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) on securing the debate. I must confess to some trepidation about taking part, because it is on an England-only topic: health is devolved, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) pointed out. However, smoking is of specific and acute importance to young people, and many young people from Arfon work, live, love and play in England, so it has relevance.

I am a former smoker. I smoked until my 30s, when a friend pointed out the folly of rolling dried leaves up in paper and setting fire to them in my mouth—that eventually persuaded me. More relevantly, as long ago as 2005 I was a supporter of the Smoking in Public Places (Wales) Bill, a private Member’s Bill promoted by Julie Morgan, the then Labour MP for Cardiff North, that would have devolved power to the Welsh Assembly to ban smoking in public places. Unfortunately, the then UK Labour Government did not provide time for that Bill, and by the time an England and Wales Bill had become law, more people employed in bars, hotels and restaurants in Wales had contracted fatal smoking-related diseases. I am not being too dramatic about this: the lack of devolution in that instance actually cost lives.

In Wales, as in England, smoking is the largest single cause of preventable and premature death. Poverty is an issue. Wales is a poor country: when we were in the European Union, parts of Wales qualified for regional aid on the same basis as the most poverty-stricken parts of the former Soviet bloc in eastern Europe. That is how bad it was and, tragically, that is how bad it remains.

Smoking is responsible for half the difference in life expectancy between rich and poor. Smoking hits us hard in Wales: our smoking rates are some of the highest among vulnerable populations. The Welsh Government’s tobacco control plan, published in July 2022, sets a target for Wales to become smoke free by 2030. Meanwhile, England’s tobacco control plan has expired, and the promised updates have been delayed time and again.

As I said, this is an England-only matter because health is devolved. Health policy has diverged between Wales and England, not least in that the wellbeing approach adopted in Wales is markedly different from the illness policy introduced elsewhere. Reducing smoking is an urgent element of that wellbeing approach. However, many of the key policy interventions in Wales that require legislation are reserved and must be voted through in this Parliament. The Welsh Government do not have the power to put warnings on individual cigarettes, put inserts in tobacco packs or strengthen the regulation of e-cigarettes—by the way, if they did, I suspect that those warnings would be in both our languages, but that is a matter for another day. The Welsh Government have even been told that they do not have the power to raise the age of sale for tobacco to 21.

Those were all key measures that were recommended in the Khan review and are supported by the people of Wales, but they cannot be taken forward because of a lack of devolution and powers. By being so slow, the UK Government are undermining the ability of the Welsh Government to achieve their Smokefree 2030 ambition. That ambition is supported by seven out of 10 people in Wales, a figure that rises to eight out of 10 among those who voted for my party, Plaid Cymru, at the last election.

The “polluter pays” levy is vital for Wales, as it is for England. I was pleased to put my name, on behalf of Plaid, to the amendments to the Health and Care Bill that the hon. Member for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy) tabled on Report, and particularly to the amendment that called for a consultation on a levy on tobacco manufacturers to pay for measures needed to deliver a smoke-free future. If the Government had adopted that amendment, we would now be much closer to achieving the target. A UK-wide levy would have raised as much as £700 million per year, which would have been sufficient to fund the programme both in England and Wales.

There are many other regulations that would benefit Wales but that need action from Westminster. Because of the time available, let me just say that those measures include: warnings on cigarettes; a ban on all tobacco flavours; prohibition of free distribution of vapes to children; a ban on sweet names, bright colours and cartoon characters on vapes, which are all so appealing to children; and a requirement that tobacco packs have inserts. These are all measures that the Government have refused to adopt in the past and are still slow to adopt today. Announcements on pack inserts and free vape distribution are urgent, so that both Parliaments have clarity. Will the Minister confirm the dates for the launch of the consultation on the pack insert regulations that was announced in April, and at the very least to reassure us that it will take place before the summer recess?

[Mr Virendra Sharma (in the Chair)]

I hope that the Front Benchers and the Minister will spare about a minute or two for Bob Blackman to wind up at the end of the debate.