Tobacco Packaging

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 1:39 pm on 7 November 2013.

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Photo of Luciana Berger Luciana Berger Shadow Minister (Public Health) 1:39, 7 November 2013

This is the first time I have had the privilege of speaking with you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I look forward to it.

I thank Bob Blackman for seeking this debate, the co-sponsors from all parties and the Backbench Business Committee for making it possible. It has been a very good debate, with many thoughtful and powerful contributions and, I think, a large degree of consensus. There is a clear reason for that consensus. In the final analysis, this is a debate about children. Adults do not take up smoking; children do. Despite hon. Members having referred to a drop in the take-up of smoking, more than 200,000 children still take up smoking every year. Eight out of 10 smokers start by the age of 19. As my right hon. Friend Mr Barron said, there are few new smokers over the age of 21. In my patch, there are 460 regular smokers across Liverpool who have not yet turned 15. As Paul Burstow said, we are talking about a childhood addiction, not an adult choice.

We know that about half of those children—half of all regular smokers—will eventually be killed by their addiction. Contrary to the presentation by Mr Evans, who I am sorry to see is not in his place, tobacco is different from other products, because if it is used properly, as instructed, it kills one in two of its users. It is the only product for which there is an international treaty, the World Health Organisation’s framework convention on tobacco control, precisely because it is not like any other product and has to be treated differently.

Smoking remains by far the largest preventable cause of cancer. As my hon. Friend Dan Jarvis said, more than 100,000 people die across the UK from smoking-related diseases every year. In Liverpool, 346 deaths per 100,000 are attributable to smoking, whereas the national average is 201 deaths per 100,000. Jake Berry spoke about NHS spending on the cancer drugs fund.

The question that we should be asking ourselves is whether we are doing everything we can to discourage children from starting to smoke in the first place. Contrary to what Guto Bebb said, I make no apology for asking the emotive questions. Are we doing all that we can to protect our young people? Have we exhausted every measure at our disposal? With that in mind, I want to cover three broad themes: first, why packaging matters so greatly; secondly, why the arguments against standardised packaging do not stand up to close scrutiny; and thirdly, why we cannot afford to wait.

I echo what was said by Alex Cunningham and for Barnsley Central and my right hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley about the part that packaging plays in encouraging young people to smoke. It is widely accepted that in the years since the last Labour Government banned tobacco advertising in 2002, the tobacco industry has developed far more sophisticated ways of using packaging to entice people to smoke.

We have all seen what cigarette and tobacco packaging looks like in Britain today, with its bright colours, shiny veneers and slimmed-down packets. We have heard about the boxes shaped like perfume bottles and lipsticks, with the glamorous slogans to match. One slogan that struck me was,

“Indulgence—change the taste to suit your mood”.

Such novelty packets appeal to young people, because that is exactly what they are designed to do.

Academics at the university of Stirling tested that by surveying more than 1,000 children for a study that was published in the British Medical Journal a few weeks ago. They found that the children were overwhelmingly more attracted to the packets with such designs.