Clause 15 - Penalties
Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Bill
11:15 am
Mr Peter Luff (Mid Worcestershire, Conservative)
I hope she may think that because the Opposition find itself in a difficult position. We have reservations about the Bill, and whether it will have the effects that the Government claim that it will, but we do not want a Bill that will not work to pass into law. Bad legislation is in no one's interest. I agree with the hon. Member for North Devon very strongly, for reasons that I will explain, that this may be the case as a result of this clause.
The hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (Mr. Taylor) talked about the effect of reputation on a company. That is the case for the major tobacco companies. They will be fearful and they will respect the terms of this legislation. In that sense, the larger game is won. It is the smaller players who worry me.
In my constituency there is a company that has consistently and persistently broken the terms of environmental law. It has taken years and years of fines. The company is called Ivory Plant Hire and it has been caught endlessly and the magistrates have consistently imposed inadequate fines on them. It has not been embarrassed by the adverse publicity in local papers; it has continued to livery its lorries and run them around my constituency proudly, breaking the law consistently and persistently.
I understand that, yesterday, at last the fines reached such a level that the company went into voluntary liquidation—I do not know the terms of that. It has taken years to get there and during that time my constituents' lives have been made a complete and utterly misery because the courts, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset rightly said, were reluctant to imprison anyone. The firm had to be encouraged to realise the seriousness of the situation by the various enforcement authorities—the police, the Environment Agency, the district council, the county council and the traffic commissioners. All these people were up in arms against the activities of the company but it carried on breaking the law because the level of the fine imposed upon it was inadequate to deter it from its criminal activity. It is a real problem.
My hon. Friend the Member for Meriden rightly expressed concerns about the small companies—the small retail tobacconist who makes a genuine error—for whom the fine might be excessive, but the fine is not adequate for companies that are determined to break the law. There is a real precedent here. I understood that, for many years, tobacco advertising was illegal in Italy yet every publication in that wonderful country regularly carried tobacco advertisements, for the simple reason that the fine was so small that the advertising agencies just factored it into their costs and carried on. Although Italy could claim with all conscience that it had banned advertising, tobacco advertising was widespread throughout the country.
There is a real issue here for the Government to address. Are they satisfied that these fines are adequate to deal with both medium-size wholesalers and retailers, operating at regional or local level, or possibly, and perhaps more worryingly, by larger operators who decide to move into the vacuum—
It being twenty-five minutes past Eleven o'clock, THE CHAIRMAN adjourned the Committee without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.
Adjourned till this day at half-past Two o'clock.