Clause 22
Health Bill [Lords]
4:15 pm
Michael Penning (Shadow Minister, Health; Hemel Hempstead, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment 91, in clause 22, page 26, line 3, leave out ‘may’ and insert ‘shall’.
Amendment 91 would flush out more of the concerns that we, or rather I—we are on a free vote so I had better say “I”—have with the legislation. The evidence published to date, and the evidence produced by the Minister today, is insufficient to support a ban on point of sale displays. It is also clear that children use vending machines. I am not just speaking from the evidence produced by Cancer Research UK and ASH in videos showing young people going into licensed premises—close to where we are standing here today—putting coins in the machine and buying the product. In recent weeks, I, too, have seen young people come into licensed premises and purchase tobacco from vending machines. The important thing here is whether the existing legislation has been enforced correctly, because many of the premises in which I saw this taking place, and some of the premises in the recent DVD and video, were licensed premises, so those young people should not have been unaccompanied in the first place. We need to address that point.
We encourage more and more young people to come into the family-oriented pub or bistro. I am a keen supporter of the British pub industry and do everything I can to support pubs. At the same time, it is the responsibility of those running such establishments and providing vending machines to do everything that they possibly can to preclude young people from purchasing cigarettes. They clearly cannot get them from anywhere else at that time, otherwise they would not be paying such huge amounts for cigarettes through vending machines. There are myriad premises where that happens.
The legislation is already in place, and the assumption is that the proprietor and those working in a bar or a pub should be able to see the vending machine and whether a young person is approaching it. That is fine if they are serving only one man and his dog occasionally. But, in a busy, vibrant pub, which I am sure we all want our pubs to be, or a leisure facility, similar to Jarman Park in my constituency, which has myriad services from bowling to skating and swimming to nightclubs and cinemas, it is physically impossible for the administrators and owners to guarantee that every time under-18s walk to a vending machine to purchase cigarettes they can be stopped.
After considering the evidence, I have moved my position. I do not want vending machine operators to go bankrupt. I used to be a smoker, and given that it is so expensive I have no idea why anybody would buy cigarettes from a vending machine. However, it is a choice that people can make if they are over 18 and wish to purchase cigarettes. As is suggested, in a lot of places there are no alternatives.
Proprietors of public houses in particular do not want loose stock to sell across the counter. If they lose one packet of cigarettes—stolen or misappropriated by a member of staff or a customer—that is the profit margin on about two packets of cigarettes gone. They do not want that and we moved away from it some time ago. I want the vending machine manufacturers to have an opportunity to sell their legal product in such premises without young people having access to them. That can be done in numerous ways, but I do not think that it is the purpose of the Committee to stipulate to manufacturers and proprietors of vending machines how it should be done. It can be done with a token or an electronic key system, so a person has to go to the bar.
You will be surprised to hear me say this, Mr. Key, but I think that we need to look at our European friends and take guidance from them. Some 22 countries in Europe do not permit the sale of tobacco from vending machines at all. That is too draconian; it is a legal product and people should have the right to purchase it, but it should not be available to under-18s. The industry itself needs to come forward with proposals.