Clause 1 - Meaning of ``tobacco advertisement'' and ``tobacco product''.
Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Bill
10:30 am
Mrs Caroline Spelman (Meriden, Conservative)
The amendment is designed to draw attention to a problem caused by the drafting of the Bill. I want the Government to think long and hard about this. They define the ultimate goal of the Bill as reducing the prevalence of smoking. Their declared aim is for a 2.5 per cent. reduction. On Second Reading, we spent much time pointing out to the Government that unless we do something about smuggling it will be difficult to achieve that target.
There is no doubt that the Government are concerned that cigarette smoking is on the increase and the whole point of the Bill is to do something to curtail it. There may have been a dispute on Second Reading about the statistics, but interestingly, on Saturday 28 January, the Daily Mail carried a front-page article by Sean Poulter on the increase in smoking. The point is that we have to be careful to be clear what we are talking about, whether it is prevalence, or the number of cigarettes smoked. According to the most recent information, the total consumption of cigarettes rose to 107.6 billion in 1999-2000 compared with 101 billion in 1997. During the same period, profits on tobacco smuggling exceeded even those of drug smuggling. Smuggling was estimated to account for 3 per cent. of the market in 1996-97, but that has risen to 18 per cent. of the market in 1999-2000. Those can only be estimates because we cannot be absolutely sure of the volumes of tobacco smuggled.
My major concern about the Bill, as I stated on Second Reading, is that it will not deal with the major problem. The problems start to arise in the first clause, which deals with the meaning of ``tobacco advertisement''. It is patently obvious that smuggled tobacco does not even have to be advertised, it sells itself. As any smokers in the Room will know to their cost, duty-paid cigarettes are £4 a packet now, compared with a black market price of £2.50 or under, which still enables the smugglers to make a handsome profit. There is no need to advertise and a Bill that bans advertising will probably not touch the promotion of smuggled tobacco. It is usually sold out of the back of a white van and word gets round on the street. There is nothing in the Bill to tackle that problem.